Volume 15, Tome V: Kierkegaard's Concepts: Objectivity to Sacrifice (Kierkegaard Research: Sources, Reception and Resources) [1 ed.] 9781472453891, 1472453891

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KierKegaard’s ConCepts tome V: objeCtiVity to saCrifiCe

Kierkegaard Research: Sources, Reception and Resources Volume 15, Tome V

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 Concepts Tome V: Objectivity to Sacrifice

Edited by steVen m. emmanueL, wiLLiam mcdonaLd and jon stewart

First published 2015 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 © 2015 steven m. emmanuel, william mcdonald, jon stewart and the contributors steven m. emmanuel, william mcdonald and jon stewart have asserted their right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the editors 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 a catalogue record for this book is available from the british Library The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows: Library of Congress Control number: 2014950029 isbn 9781472453891 (hbk) Cover design by Katalin nun

Contents

List of Contributors List of Abbreviations

ix xiii

objectivity/subjectivity Jamie Turnbull

1

offense Sean Anthony Turchin

7

orthodoxy/orthodox Lee C. Barrett

15

otherness/alterity/the other Marcia Morgan

23

paganism Avron Kulak

29

pantheism Curtis L. Thompson

35

paradox Sean Anthony Turchin

43

parody/satire Mads Sohl Jessen

49

passion/pathos Jacobo Zabalo

55

pastor J. Michael Tilley

63

patience Corey Benjamin Tutewiler

67

vi

Kierkegaard’s Concepts

personality Wolter Hartog

75

philosophy/philosophers William McDonald

83

poetry Laura Liva and K. Brian Söderquist

95

politics Leo Stan

101

prayer Derek R. Nelson

107

present age Gabriel Guedes Rossatti

113

press/journalism David Lappano

121

pride Daniel M. Dion

129

primitivity Maxime Valcourt-Blouin

135

progress Matthew Brake

141

protestantism/reformation Curtis L. Thompson

145

pseudonymity Joseph Westfall

153

psychological experiment Martijn Boven

159

psychology Nathaniel Kramer

167

punctuation Steven M. Emmanuel

173

Contents

vii

Qualitative difference Leo Stan

179

race Joseph Ballan

185

reason Jamie Turnbull

191

recollection Nathaniel Kramer

197

redoubling/reduplication Wojciech Kaftanski

205

religious/religiousness Lee C. Barrett

213

repentance Sean Anthony Turchin

221

repetition Ryan Kemp

225

resignation Geoffrey Dargan

231

revelation Sean Anthony Turchin

239

revolution Gabriel Guedes Rossatti

245

rhetoric Gerhard Thonhauser

255

rigorism Roe Fremstedal

263

romanticism Nassim Bravo Jordán

269

Sacrifice Deidre Nicole Green

273

List of Contributors Joseph Ballan, university of Copenhagen, faculty of Humanities, njalsgade 128, 2300 Copenhagen s, denmark. Lee C. Barrett, Lancaster theological seminary, 555 w. james st., Lancaster, pa 17603, usa. Martijn Boven, university of groningen, faculty of arts, oude boteringestraat 23, 9712 gC groningen, Holland. Matthew Brake, george mason university, 4400 university dr., fairfax, Va 22030, usa. Nassim Bravo Jordán, universidad iberoamericana, prolongción paseo de la reforma 880, Lomas de santa fe, 01210, mexico City, mexico. Geoffrey Dargan, university of oxford, regent’s park College, oxford, oX1 2Lb, united Kingdom. Daniel M. Dion, rivier university, 420 south main street, nashua, nH, 030605086 usa. Steven M. Emmanuel, department of philosophy, Virginia wesleyan College, norfolk, Va 23502, usa. Roe Fremstedal, university of tromsø, department of philosophy, 9037 tromsø, norway. Gabriel Guedes Rossatti, universidade federal de santa Catarina—ufsC, programa de Pós-Graduação em Filosofia, Campus Universitário—Trindade—CEP 88.040970—florianópolis, santa Catarina, brazil. Deidre Nicole Green, c/o søren Kierkegaard research Centre, farvergade 27 d, 1463 Copenhagen K, denmark. Wolter Hartog, Leuven university, Higher institute of philosophy, Centre for metaphysics and philosophy of Culture, Kardinaal mercierplein 2, 3000 Leuven, belgium.

x

Kierkegaard’s Concepts

Wojciech Kaftanski, australian Catholic university, faculty of theology & philosophy, Locked bag 4115 dC, fitzroy Victoria 3065, melbourne, australia. Ryan Kemp, university of notre dame, department of philosophy, 100 malloy Hall, notre dame, in 46556, usa. Nathaniel Kramer, brigham young university, department of Humanities, Classics, Comparative Literature, 3008 jfsb, provo, ut 84602, usa. Avron Kulak, york university, 4700 Keele street, toronto, ontario, m2m 3z7, Canada. David Lappano, regent’s park College, university of oxford, pusey street, oxford, oX1 2Lb, united Kingdom. Laura Liva, università g. d’annunzio—school of advanced studies, via dei Vestini 31, 66013 Chieti scalo, italy. William McDonald, school of Humanities, university of new england, armidale, nsw, 2351, australia. Marcia Morgan, department of philosophy, muhlenberg College, 2400 Chew street, allentown pa 18104, usa. Derek R. Nelson, wabash College, Crawfordsville, indiana 47933, usa. K. Brian Söderquist, c/o søren Kierkegaard research Centre, university of Copenhagen, farvergade 27 d, 1463 Copenhagen K, denmark. Mads Sohl Jessen, department of scandinavian studies, university of Copenhagen, njalsgade 120, 2100 Copenhagen s, denmark. Leo Stan, department of Humanities, york university, 262 Vanier College, 4700 Keele st. toronto on, m3j 1p3, Canada. Curtis L. Thompson, thiel College, 75 College avenue, greenville, pa 16125, usa. Gerhard Thonhauser, institut für philosophie, universität wien, universitätsstraße 7, 1010 Vienna, austria. J. Michael Tilley, Hong Kierkegaard Library, st. olaf College, 1510 st. olaf ave., Northfield, MN 55056, USA. Jamie Turnbull, Hong Kierkegaard Library, st. olaf College, 1510 st. olaf ave., Northfield, MN 55056, USA.

List of Contributors

xi

Sean Anthony Turchin, university of maryland university College, academic Center at Largo, 1616 mcCormick drive, Largo, md, 20774, usa. Corey Benjamin Tutewiler, department of theology and religious studies, university of nottingham, university park, nottingham, ng7 2rd, united Kingdom. Maxime Valcourt-Blouin, faculté de philosophie, université Laval, pavillon félixantoine-savard, 2325 rue des bibliothèques, Québec (Québec), g1V 0a6, Canada. Joseph Westfall, department of social sciences, university of Houston-downtown, one main street, Houston, tX 77002, usa. Jacobo Zabalo, universidad pompeu fabra, ramón trías fargas, 25-27, 08005, barcelona, spain.

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 1997– 2013.

SV1

Samlede Værker, vols. i–XiV, ed. by a.b. drachmann, johan Ludvig Heiberg and H.o. Lange, 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.

xiv

Kierkegaard’s Concepts

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 1992.

CUP2

Concluding Unscientific Postscript, vol. 2, trans. by Howard V. Hong and edna H. Hong, princeton: princeton university press 1992.

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

xv

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.

xvi

Kierkegaard’s Concepts

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

List of Abbreviations

xvii

on 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.

objectivity/subjectivity jamie turnbull

Objectivity (Objektivitet—noun; Objekt—noun); Subjectivity (Subjektivitet— noun; Subjekt—noun) in ordinary danish usage, the word Objekt, from the Latin objectum via the german Objekt, designates a thing, matter, or person that is subjected to the influence of an explicitly stated or implicitly understood action. in its philosophical usage the word is used to stand for the object that is thought, in opposition to the subject, or for the material object that is known, as opposed to the knowing subject.1 objectivity is the state of being independent of a subject and can sometimes mean the state of being impartial.2 the word Subjekt, from the Latin subjectum via the german Subjekt, refers to the underlying substance, or subject of judgment: the thing, case, person, or experienced entity that is perceived, thought of, or presented, as the unifying bearer of conscious phenomena or as subjective consciousness. in its philosophical usage it can be used to stand for the unchanging reality, which is taken to lie under the properties that form the experienced or presented object. the subject is that which can be predicated, but is not itself a predicate of something.3 subjectivity is the state of being a subject and indicates the nature of the knowing or conscious subject.4 Kierkegaard’s views on subjectivity and objectivity, or subject and object, play an absolutely fundamental role in his thought. if one were to attempt a general definition of these concepts, with respect to their most famous treatments in the Concluding Unscientific Postscript, it would be as follows. to be objective is to have a conception of reality that leaves out the essentially first-personal, or subjective, nature of the god-relation (a relation of faith and grace), but attempts to make that relation an objective one (to account for it, or reduce it to, a matter of social and cognitive relations.)5 Kierkegaard takes this outlook of objectivity, a view he accuses Hegelian and “speculative thinkers” of entertaining, to be an essentially pelagian and secular one.6 Ordbog over det danske Sprog, vols. 1–28, published by the society for danish Language and Literature, Copenhagen: gyldendal 1918–56, vol. 15, columns 304–7. 2 ibid., columns 306–7. 3 ibid., vol. 22, columns 923–8. 4 ibid., column 928. 5 SKS 7, 55 / CUP1, 51. 6 SKS 7, 55, 461 / CUP1, 51, 508. 1

2

Jamie Turnbull

In contrast, to be subjective is to take the essentially first-personal nature of the god-relation (a relation of faith and grace) as basic. it is to hold that this relation cannot be accounted for, or reduced to, social relations (and so to the natural and cognitive natures of human beings), because it depends upon the revelation and continuing intervention of a transcendent god. for Kierkegaard, subjectivity captures both the essence and end of human nature and Christianity, and so (as we shall see below) is intimately connected with concepts such as “truth” and “passion.”7 before we continue, a brief note about the focus of this article is in order. the concept of subjectivity might be discussed with respect to many different topics and ideas in Kierkegaard, and in this regard might be said to be pervasive. the same, of course, might be said of the concept of objectivity. yet it is the relation between subject and object that is the all-important and illuminating issue in Kierkegaard’s thought. for this reason, in what follows my exposition will focus on what Kierkegaard has to say about the relation between these concepts. while there is mention of subjectivity and objectivity in Either/Or, Fear and Trembling, and Philosophical Fragments, explicit remarks on the relation between them is almost exclusively the domain of the Concluding Unscientific Postscript. given the complexity of Kierkegaard’s views on this front, and the centrality of these notions, this article will focus on how the relations between subjectivity and objectivity are developed in that text. that the Postscript is concerned with subjectivity and objectivity, and the relevance of these concepts to Christianity, is indicated by the respective titles of the two parts of the text: “the objective issue of the truth of Christianity” and “the subjective issue, the subjective individual’s relation to the truth of Christianity, or becoming a Christian.”8 in order to outline the complex logic of Kierkegaard’s views on subjectivity and objectivity, it is important to understand these ideas in the context of his critique of Hegelian speculative philosophy.9 what occupies Kierkegaard in this respect is Hegel’s attempt to build a philosophical system on the logic of mediation.10 for it is, allegedly, in virtue of the logical notion of mediation that Hegelianism is said to be able to give a comprehensive account of the nature of god, reality, and human beings. the idea is that, in virtue of mediation, subject and object might be conceived of on the same scale, as in principle identical, as opposed to being absolutely different. it is in this vein that Kierkegaard writes of “the subject-object of mediation,” and of speculatively becoming a “subject-object.”11 Kierkegaard’s critique of Hegel illuminates three important points in his own thinking about the relation between subject and object: (1) the relation between humanity and divinity, (2) his account of the nature of human beings, and (3) his account of the relations that can obtain between human beings. first, if the logic of mediation were possible, then we would no longer need to think about the relation between humanity and divinity in terms of an absolute distinction, but could consider 7 8 9 10 11

for example, SKS 7, 183–5 / CUP1, 199–201. SKS 7, 27, 63 / CUP1, 19, 59. SKS 7, 39, 29 / CUP1, 33, 21. for example, SKS 7, 336 / CUP1, 369. SKS 7, 115, 176 / CUP1, 120, 192.

Objectivity/Subjectivity

3

those predicates as attaching to one and the same thing. the result of mediation of subject and object in this regard, Kierkegaard fears, is the reduction of divinity to humanity and a consequent deification of humanity in divinity’s place. second, if mediation were possible, human beings could form veridical judgments that incorporated themselves as subject and object. Human beings could reconcile a conception of themselves as finite and particular subjects with how they appear objectively, to god.12 there are many consequences of this move for Kierkegaard, but perhaps the most significant one is that the natural and theological (or Christian) existences of human beings could be regarded as co-extensive. Human beings could, in principle, make sense of themselves (and achieve salvation), in virtue of their interpretive capacities alone, that is, without being dependent upon a relation of faith and grace to a transcendent god. third, if mediation were possible then the Christian existence of human beings would effectively be reduced to their existence as natural creatures, and so “Christian” would become a tautological predicate when applied to human nature. the result of this is that whether or not one is a Christian might be held to fall under the province of the rational judgment of human beings. one might judge whether or not a human being is Christian objectively, that is to say based upon whether or not he stands in certain social relations to other human beings or is a member of a Christian society. this is the idea ridiculed in the Postscript’s anecdote of the wife who reassures her doubting husband that he is Christian, on the grounds that he lives in a Christian country. yet the tale is intended to illustrate that “we have become so objective that even the wife of a civil servant argues from the whole, from the state, from the idea of society, from geographic scientificity to the single individual.”13 against the attempt to mediate subject and object, Kierkegaard claims that subject and object are both absolutely distinct and necessarily related. i will attempt to sketch below how these two claims appear in the Postscript, and how they can be said to cohere for Kierkegaard. but before doing so, it is useful to outline how these claims stand with respect to the charges Kierkegaard levels against the Hegelian speculative position. for Kierkegaard charges the speculative thinker with attempting to “become a fantastical subjective-objective something,” with becoming “too objective to talk about himself,” and “the systematicians and the objectivists” with having “ceased to be human beings.”14 as such, according to Kierkegaard, the speculative thinkers are unable to give an account of human nature, or even of themselves qua human. the reason for this is that rather than giving an account of subjectivity, the Hegelian is said to leave it out of account altogether. indeed, we are told that the subtraction of subjectivity is “the falsum [falsehood] of objectivity and the meaning of mediation.”15 in taking this path one becomes “too objective to have an eternal happiness, because this happiness inheres precisely in the infinite,

12 13 14 15

SKS 7, 81 / CUP1, 81. SKS 7, 55 / CUP1, 51. SKS 7, 168, 56, 91 / CUP1, 183, 51, 92. SKS 7, 39 / CUP1, 33.

Jamie Turnbull

4

personal, impassioned interestedness, and it is precisely this that one lets oneself be tricked out of by objectivity.”16 i will now take the three points on which i have chosen to illuminate Kierkegaard’s conception of subject and object in turn, and in each case attempt to outline how he holds subject and object to be both absolutely distinct and necessarily related. first, the relationship between humanity and divinity: for Kierkegaard, god and man are not predicates of one and the same thing but are rather absolutely different. Kierkegaard stands against the speculative claim that god and man are capable of mediation by denying that god is an object, or at least by denying that divinity can be a possible object of human judgment. (this is the idea Kierkegaard ridicules in inviting us to suppose that “god had taken the form…of a rare, enormously large green bird, with a red beak.”)17 god is not immanent in human reason and nature, but rather absolutely different and transcendent. However, that god and man are absolutely different does not entail that they are forever separated from each other. for Kierkegaard, of course, it is possible that human beings can enter into a relationship with god. However, the identity of subject and object in this case is foreclosed both by the way in which human beings come to stand in a relationship to a transcendent god and by the nature of the relationship. for Kierkegaard, human beings do not stand in a direct or immediate relationship to god. that relationship, if it occurs, obtains via the intermediary, though not mediational, figure of Christ. Christ is both God and man: but we only ever see, or read about, a man. Christ’s divinity, or subjectivity, is forever hidden from us (and so is, necessarily, a matter of faith). as a man Christ is a possible object of human judgment, but as a god he necessarily transcends the limits of human ratiocination. according to Kierkegaard, it is by entering into a relationship with Christ the man that it is possible for human beings to enter into a relationship to a transcendent god. for by responding to Christ in love, and receiving the gifts of faith and grace, a human being comes to stand in a relationship to a transcendent god. such a relationship is neither cognitive nor rational, but rather one of passion (and, as such, it can obtain without mediating subject and object, leaving them absolutely apart). moreover, for Kierkegaard, Christ is necessary for human beings to enter into a god-relationship, for he is the unique and individual means by which human beings can do this. Christ thereby not only serves to separate subject and object absolutely but also forges a necessary connection between them, although not in such a way that they might be mediated or identified in terms of human reason. second, the Postscript’s account of the relation between subject and object is also an account of the nature of human beings. that this is so is already suggested by the fact that Hegelianism is said to make the existence of human beings as natural creatures and their existence as Christians co-extensive, while missing out on the essence of what it is to be human. in terms of the Hegelian speculative position, human beings can, in principle, arrive at the end of their Christian theological natures by means of reason. in contrast, for Kierkegaard, human beings cannot make 16 17

SKS 7, 34 / CUP1, 27. SKS 7, 222 / CUP1, 245.

Objectivity/Subjectivity

5

sense of their own natures in subject–object terms, but are rather dependent upon a transcendent God to reveal and fulfill the end of their nature. Kierkegaard’s absolute distinction between subject and object is thus a division within human nature. a distinction between that part of their nature that human beings can make intelligible in virtue of their interpretive capacities, reason and the universal, and that part (the soul or subject of immortality and salvation) which is dependent upon god for its revelation and fulfillment. for Kierkegaard what speculative thought leaves out of account is that the essence of the god-relationship, and the essence of human nature, lie in a subjectivity beyond the naturalistic cognitive and linguistic capacities of human beings. at the heart of Kierkegaardian human nature lies the subjective, or inward, relation of absolute passion in which the individual enters into a relationship with a transcendent god (“the human is hidden inwardness in absolute passion”);18 and in which the inward nature of the individual is transformed or qualified in the process of entering into such a god-relationship. the essence of human nature thus lies in a subjectivity that is essentially private, and hence one that human beings cannot represent or make intelligible to themselves per se. This, specifically, is the passionate relationship between the Christian believer and God, which Kierkegaard identifies both with subjectivity and truth. For “the passion of the infinite is precisely subjectivity, and thus subjectivity is truth,” and “the passion of the infinite is itself the truth.”19 it is precisely this that speculative thought is held to leave out in seeking to account for Christianity in conceptual terms alone, and in making divinity an object of human judgment. in contrast to the conjunction, or tautology, that Kierkegaard takes to characterize the Hegelian account of the relation between subject and object, or humanity and Christianity, Kierkegaard seeks to set up a disjunctive relation between them. for, as opposed to Christian subjectivity and nature being a given (as in the Hegelian position), it is now the case that either i will become a Christian or i will not. Either i will come into a subjective relationship with god or i will remain an objective and natural man. in the case of subject and object as a division within human nature, as in the case of the relation between divinity and humanity, Kierkegaard is concerned that these terms are not only absolutely distinct but also necessarily related. this necessity is indicated by the fact that it is in virtue of the passionate relationship between believer and transcendent god that the subject–object dichotomy breaks down. for example, Objectively, what is reflected upon is that this is the true God; subjectively, that the individual relates himself to a something in such a way that his relation is in truth a godrelation. now, on which side is truth? alas, must we not resort to mediation and say: it is on neither side; it is in the mediation? …An existing person cannot be in two places at the same time, cannot be subject-object. When he is closest to being in two places at the same time, he is in passion.20 18 19 20

613.

SKS 7, 462 / CUP1, 510 (my emphasis). SKS 7, 186, 210 / CUP1, 203, 231. SKS 7, 183 / CUP1, 199 (my emphasis). see also SKS 7, 553–4, 557 / CUP1, 609–10,

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moreover, the nature of the necessity connecting subject and object for Kierkegaard stems from the fact that the telos of human nature is to stand in a relation of faith and grace to a transcendent god (and so achieve the eternal happiness of salvation). importantly, it is only in virtue of our humanity, and so only in virtue of entering into a relationship with Christ the man, that human beings can fulfill the end of their natures by being related to a transcendent god. in such a god-relationship, the two natures of human beings, as both subjects and objects, are reconciled. but again, this does not happen in such a way that it becomes a matter of cognitive judgment; and so not in such a way that the speculative position might be said to follow as a consequence. it is Christ that allows human beings to reconcile the absolute division within their own natures: not in virtue of their own efforts, but solely by means of divine assistance. third, the foregoing has consequences for the nature of the relations that can obtain between human beings. for if divinity, including the relationship between a Christian believer and god, lies beyond the rational capacities of human beings, then it cannot be a matter of comparative judgment.21 Human beings can only form judgments about each other qua objects, while the subjectivity of each is necessarily hidden from the other. whether or not another person is a Christian is therefore beyond the limits of human judgment, a matter for god alone. it follows from this that while direct, cognitive, judgments can obtain between human beings, no such relations can obtain between human beings and divinity. in respect to divinity, human beings cannot stand in direct (cognitive) relations to each other. the relation between one human being and another, with respect to the end of their Christian theological natures, is necessarily an indirect relation—one that can only take place through the intermediary (though non-mediational) figure of Christ the man. a logical consequence of Kierkegaard’s conception of the relation between subject and object, therefore, is that one human being can only help another indirectly to become a Christian, by referring the other to Christ qua man and his absolutely paradoxical claim to be god. see also being/becoming; Communication/indirect Communication; identity/ difference; immanence/transcendence; mediation/sublation; reason; speculation/ science/scholarship; transition; truth.

21

see, for instance, SKS 7, 294, 497 / CUP1, 322, 547.

offense sean anthony turchin

Offense (Forargelse—noun; forarge—verb) the modern danish verb forarge is the same as the old danish, which is borrowed from the middle Low german vorargen and corresponds to the modern german verärgern. the noun arg comes from the oldest danish (ældste dansk) argh and old norse argr, meaning “rank,” “evil” or “bad.”1 in short, to offend someone is to act in such a way that the one offended feels slighted or degraded by such actions. furthermore, in a biblical sense, offense can refer to an action or relation that brings about a failure of religious faith or leads one into sin. in descending order of prevalence, the term Forargelse is found in Practice in Christianity, the Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments, Works of Love, The Sickness unto Death, and Philosophical Fragments. the category of offense denotes a reaction of disgust or a feeling of insult in the one who is offended. its use throughout Kierkegaard’s corpus relates to Christ and Christianity as causes of offense, and to human understanding as what is offended. but it is not only the individual who is offended. as will be discussed in the latter part of this article, in rejecting the forgiveness of sin, the individual offends god. the concept of offense develops dialectically in the course of Kierkegaard’s writings in response to the claims and demands of Christianity and in response to the reaction of the understanding to Christian dogma. for example, in the Concluding Unscientific Postscript Kierkegaard’s pseudonym, johannes Climacus, mentions repeatedly how Christ offended the pharisees and the scribes by virtue of his claims and his criticisms of them. Christ was offensive insofar as he demanded true righteousness from the pharisees who already thought they had it.2 by contrast, “one who has no religiousness at all certainly cannot be offended at Christianity.”3 the jews, however, claimed to have such religiousness, so that when Christ condemns them as not truly having it, they are offended. that the jews were offended indicates their disgust both at being labeled hypocrites and at being asked to believe something contrary to their understanding or beyond their ability to comprehend. the offense, which relates to the disgust evidenced by 1 Ordbog over det danske Sprog, vols. 1–28, published by the society for danish Language and Literature, Copenhagen: gyldendal 1918–56, vol. 5, columns 222–3. niels Åge nielsen, Dansk etymologisk Ordbog, Copenhagen: gyldendal 1966, p. 12 (arg) and p. 102 (forarge). 2 SKS 7, 490 / CUP1, 539. 3 ibid.

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the understanding when confronted with something it cannot understand, pertains to the paradox of the god-man who “requires faith against the understanding.”4 Within the lexicon of Christianity and Christ, offense, then, is defined as “the terrible resistance against the beginning of faith.”5 “Christianity’s crucial criterion [is] the absurd, the paradox, the possibility of offense.”6 as such, offense is described as “Christianity’s weapon against all speculation.”7 How and why the understanding is offended, as well as the significance of the category of offense for the individual in relation to faith, will now be discussed in turn. for Climacus, human understanding cannot think something absolutely different from itself.8 if it could, the understanding would have to negate itself absolutely in its thinking, and this, according to Climacus, is not possible. rather, in thinking the absolutely different, the human being “uses itself for that purpose and consequently thinks the difference in itself, which it thinks by itself.”9 the absolutely different, which the understanding seeks to know, is for Climacus “the god,” who remains unknown to human understanding.10 according to Climacus, god and man are two different qualities, which assume an absolute difference by virtue of human existence being qualified by sin.11 insofar as the understanding cannot think something different from itself, it must procure the notion of the distance between “the god” and human understanding by other means.12 therefore, if human understanding is “to know something about the unknown [the god], he must first come to know that it is different from him, absolutely different from him.”13 but this knowledge, as stated earlier, is outside the powers of human thinking. only the paradox, the god, is able to give the means in order for the understanding to know the truth of its own existence, namely, that the human being is absolutely different, and thus separated from god, and that this separation is “through his own fault.”14 Climacus notes that Christ not only confronts human understanding in the form of an absolute paradox, but also that human understanding is confronted with a paradox of its own making in seeking to know something that is unknowable.15 However, Christ wants to “annul this absolute difference in the absolute equality,”16 despite the paradoxes confronting human thought. “the god wants to be his [the human being’s] teacher, and the god’s concern is to bring about equality,”17 that is, 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17

SKS 7, 532 / CUP1, 585. ibid. SKS 11, 197 / SUD, 83. ibid. SKS 4, 250 / PF, 45. ibid. SKS 4, 251 / PF, 46. SKS 4, 251 / PF, 47. SKS 4, 251 / PF, 46. ibid. SKS 4, 223, 251 / PF, 15, 47. SKS 4, 252 / PF, 47. ibid. SKS 4, 235 / PF, 28.

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reconciliation despite the individual’s condition as being one of “untruth.”18 but all this concerning difference and reconciliation—“the understanding certainly cannot think it, cannot hit upon it on its own.”19 aware of its powerlessness to think these differences in itself, the understanding despairs and thus concludes that the paradox “will likely be its downfall.”20 and yet, the downfall of the understanding is in fact what the paradox seeks.21 When the understanding and the paradox equally affirm that such a downfall is necessary in order for the human being to know the god, faith as a moment of passion is then acknowledged as the means to relate to the paradox.22 However, with the possibility of faith also comes the possibility that the understanding will yet remain offended. if passion is not present, whereby the understanding and the paradox happily encounter one another, then offense remains the only alternative.23 according to Climacus, “all offense is a suffering.”24 To explicate this definition, Climacus compares the suffering caused by offense with unhappy love.25 regardless of how confident the self appears in its love of itself or another, it may be the case that neither love actually exists. rather, the self suffers from this lack of love, and yet all the while it “gives this illusory expression of strength that resembles action.”26 it is the same with offense.27 for Climacus, offense is always an act, never an event.28 thus offense exhibits two properties, action and suffering. when it takes offense, the understanding can actively seek to ignore or hide its suffering. insofar as an “active offense is always weak enough to be incapable of tearing itself loose from the cross to which it is nailed,”29 suffering is an innate property of offense. only in the “moment” of faith is the understanding able to overlook the offense arising from the paradox. if the understanding misunderstands the paradox, the offense, which became manifest in the initial encounter between the paradox and the understanding, abides.30 therefore, if the offense is to be overcome, “the moment” must be central to the condition of the understanding in relation to the paradox.31 in short, without the conditions arising in “the moment” whereby the understanding happily encounters the paradox, the understanding remains offended by the paradox, which is absurd according to the understanding.32 any attempt to minimize the offense arising from the god-man by means of historical investigation or speculation only 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32

ibid. SKS 4, 252 / PF, 47. ibid. ibid. ibid. SKS 4, 253 / PF, 49. ibid. ibid. ibid. SKS 4, 253 / PF, 50. ibid. ibid. SKS 4, 255 / PF, 51. ibid. SKS 4, 255 / PF, 52.

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reinforces it.33 such means are powerless in making the understanding more aware of its need for faith.34 “whether one is offended or whether one believes…awareness is by no means partial to faith, as if faith proceeded as a simple consequence of awareness.”35 Johannes Climacus’ discussion of the category of offense finds its parallel in Kierkegaard’s other pseudonym, anti-Climacus. in Practice in Christianity antiClimacus discusses the category of offense in the context of the understanding’s relation to the god-man with much more clarity than johannes Climacus’ discussion in Philosophical Fragments, which, as noted, takes into account the offense with regard to the limits of human thinking. Here, with much more explication, antiClimacus juxtaposes faith and offense in the context of what options are given to the understanding when faced with the paradox of the god-man. “essentially offense is related to the composite of god and man, or to the god-man,”36 and has two forms.37 The first form is in relation to an individual who claims to be God.38 this is an offense that arises when a human being claims to be more than human. in short, anti-Climacus designates this offense as pertaining to “loftiness.”39 the second form of offense relates to the concept of lowliness. this form arises when “one who is god is this lowly human being, suffering as a lowly human being.”40 Concerning the first form of offense, elsewhere, in The Sickness unto Death, Anti-Climacus posits that “God and man are two qualities separated by an infinite qualitative difference.”41 in the most empirical and rational sense, the notion “that an individual human being is god, that is, claims to be god, is indeed the offense [in an eminent sense],”42 because, as Anti-Climacus states, it “conflicts with all (human) reason.”43 with regard to the second form of offense, this form arises when “the one who passes himself off as God proves to be the lowly, poor, suffering, and finally powerless human being.”44 furthermore, the offenses, which relate to the god-man, must not be avoided or overcome lest one forgoes one’s salvation.45 if the incarnation poses a barrier unable to be breached by human enquiry, be it speculation or historical investigation, the individual’s relation to the god-man must reside in another mode of access. by imposing a barrier to human reason, the possibility of offense “is the guardian or defensive weapon of faith…in such a way

33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45

SKS 4, 291 / PF, 93. ibid. ibid. SKS 12, 92 / PC, 81. SKS 12, 92 / PC, 82. ibid. ibid. SKS 12, 92 / PC, 82. SKS 11, 237 / SUD, 126. SKS 12, 40 / PC, 26. ibid. SKS 12, 111 / PC, 102. SKS 12, 108 / PC, 99.

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that all human understanding must come to a halt in one way or another, must take umbrage—in order then either to be offended or to believe.”46 only faith, whereby the individual enters into the god-relation, is able to come to terms with the hidden god in Christ. “He [Christ] is the paradox, the object of faith, existing only for faith.”47 without it, one can only be offended at Christ’s claim to be god. thus offense at the god-man is not something to be bypassed. rather, one must first be confronted with the offense in order then to have faith. On this, AntiClimacus writes, “from the possibility of offense, one turns either to offense or to faith, but one never comes to faith except from the possibility of offense.”48 in other words, offense brings the individual either to remain offended or to take up the offense in the utmost passion of existence, which is what it means to have faith. this is why, for anti-Climacus, faith is subjectivity in its highest form. Human reason must first be offended, must first be left to despair its own inability, in order that faith becomes the only means to overcome the paradox. Kierkegaard thus considers despair “as the negative sign of faith.”49 but in light of the distinction between god and humanity, the believer, by virtue of faith, “is nevertheless not offended—he expresses just the opposite of offense”50—namely belief. However, anti-Climacus notes an offense that relates to Christ, which is not indicative of his form as god-man. it is an offense that arises when “an individual human being…comes into collision with an established order.”51 this offense, therefore, extends to any individual who defies the established order. Of course, Christ too was “unwilling to subject or subordinate himself to the established order,”52 but this offense need not pertain to him alone. this sort of offense becomes manifest when an individual opposes the established order in such a way that he or she appears arrogantly defiant. Anti-Climacus describes this offense as a struggle between objectivity (the established order) and subjectivity (the individual), between pietism and Christendom.53 one easily thinks of socrates who, as a teacher of inwardness, defied the Athenian order. Anti-Climacus, of course, thinks of Christ who, as “a teacher of godliness, of inwardness,” collided with the established order of the pharisees and scribes.54 the pharisees and the scribes “were offended at Christ because he made piety into absolute inwardness not directly commensurable with the external.”55 However, the offense that innately relates to the god-man extends beyond the incarnation both to the whole of Christianity and to the Christian. this is taken up in Kierkegaard’s Works of Love. there, Kierkegaard thinks that a nonchalant acceptance of Christianity belies those who claim to be Christians, since the offensive nature of 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55

SKS 12, 114 / PC, 105. SKS 11, 236 / SUD, 125. SKS 12, 40 / PC, 25. SKS 12, 92 / PC, 81. Pap. X–6 b 78 / JP 1, 9. ibid. SKS 12, 94 / PC, 85. ibid. SKS 12, 95 / PC, 86. ibid. SKS 12, 100 / PC, 91–2.

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Christianity repels such nonchalance.56 for Kierkegaard, “wherever the essentially Christian is, there is the possibility of offense.”57 although Kierkegaard considers Christianity to be the highest good, its goodness is known by a divine sense, which contends with human reason.58 Christianity, with all its moral exhortations, cannot be regarded from a human standpoint as praiseworthy insofar as it demands that which wars with human thinking. its offensiveness relates to the corrective given to human thinking with regard to ourselves and others. against a loveless mindset of “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth,” “Christianity turns our attention completely away from the external, turns it inward, and makes every one of your relationships to other people into a god-relationship.”59 this call to love is the essentially Christian and thus “to the merely human conception the essentially Christian is foolishness and offense.”60 all things considered, anti-Climacus posits “that the real reason that men are offended by Christianity is that it is too high, because its goal is not man’s goal, because it wants to make man into something so extraordinary that he cannot grasp the thought.”61 The significance of the offense given to human understanding is not one merely isolated to the inability of human thinking to unite the concepts of god and man; it is more than that. for anti-Climacus, Christianity is about the individual before god, namely, “that a person’s sin should be of concern to god, [this] never enters speculation’s mind.”62 that god came into the world as a human being to suffer and die in order to offer the individual reconciliation is beyond the mind’s grasp.63 and this is why the individual is offended, “because it is too high for him”64 to understand. in noting the individual’s inability to grasp that god is concerned for him or her, we arrive at a nuance with regard to the concept of offense: just as we are offended at god, so too do we offend god. That the self despairs over its inability to grasp forgiveness betrays “a definite position over against an offer of god’s mercy.”65 according to anti-Climacus, “at this point lies the most extreme concentration of offense.”66 “when the sinner despairs over the forgiveness of sin, it is almost as if he walked right up to god and said, ‘no, there is no forgiveness of sins, it is impossible.’ ”67 this position of the “despair of the forgiveness of sins is offense.”68

56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68

SKS 9, 198 / WL, 199. SKS 9, 197 / WL, 198. ibid. SKS 9, 369 / WL, 376. SKS 9, 198 / WL, 199. SKS 11, 197 / SUD, 83. ibid. SKS 11, 199 / SUD, 85. ibid. SKS 11, 236 / SUD, 125. SKS 11, 233 / SUD, 122. SKS 11, 226 / SUD, 114. SKS 11, 227, 235 / SUD, 116, 124.

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in conclusion, the importance of the offensive nature of Christian teachings and doctrine should not be overlooked. offense is Christianity’s essential ingredient in order to “rouse the one who has fallen asleep, to revoke the enchantment so that Christianity is itself again.”69 in other words, the category of offense is central to Christianity insofar as it confronts the individual with a choice “either to be offended or to accept Christianity.”70 any attempt to minimize the offense by seeking rationally to explain or defend Christianity removes the possibility of the offense, thereby eliminating the possibility of faith and thus the possibility of becoming a Christian.71 in short, Christ must remain “the sign of offense and [thus] the object of faith.”72 see also absurd; Certainty; Christ; decision/resolve; faith; god; immanence/ transcendence; individual; irrational; Leap; paradox; passion/pathos; Qualitative difference; reason; revelation; sin; speculation/science/scholarship; understanding/ Comprehension.

69 70 71 72

SKS 9, 199 / WL, 200. ibid. ibid. SKS 12, 39 / PC, 24.

orthodoxy/orthodox Lee C. barrett

Orthodoxy/Orthodox (Orthodoxie—noun; orthodox—adjective; occasionally Rettroenhed—noun; rettroende—adjective) Orthodoxie and orthodox are derived from the greek ὀρθοδοξία and the adjective ὀρθόδοξος, meaning (holding a) correct belief, while Rettroenhed and rettroende are derived from the old norse réttrúandi, also suggesting “right belief.”1 Kierkegaard generally preferred the more ecclesiastical-sounding Orthodoxie, although by his time both sets of words had come to be used primarily in theological contexts. Kierkegaard’s scattered remarks about “orthodoxy,” teachings taken to be fundamental and normative by the church, are often puzzling, for they seem to point in divergent directions. what exactly he meant by his various uses of “orthodoxy” is a crucially significant matter, for it is part of the broader question of the relation of his authorship to the historic traditions of Christianity. some of Kierkegaard’s references to orthodoxy and orthodox doctrines are scathingly critical. For example, Kierkegaard laments that the “superficial sanctity of the modern age” is evident “when a preacher prides himself on teaching what is orthodox or when he is busy looking for still more precise definitions against those who believe in another way.”2 His journals are peppered with such remarks as “but good Lord, Christianity is no ‘doctrine.’ ”3 Concerning the elaboration of orthodox teachings, he writes, “dogmatics as a whole is a misunderstanding, especially as it now has been developed.”4 He sadly observes that “people have completely transferred Christianity from being an existence-communication [Existents-Meddelelse] to being a doctrine.”5 throughout his notes for lectures on communication Kierkegaard condemns the identification of Christianity with the ability to recount the interrelationships of doctrinal formulae, for Christianity is not the sort of thing that can be treated as a set of propositional definitions. In recent years the growing recognition of the “literary” nature of Kierkegaard’s authorship has reinforced the suspicion that he had no positive appreciation of orthodox

1 see Christian molbech, Dansk Ordbog, vols. 1–2, Copenhagen: gyldendal 1833, vol. 2, p. 143; p. 244. 2 SKS 21, 35, nb6:45 / JP 1, 660. 3 SKS 23, 240, nb17:101 / JP 3, 2870. 4 SKS 18, 236, jj:305 / JP 1, 627. 5 SKS 22, 320, nb13:77 / JP 1, 676.

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convictions.6 if orthodoxy is a system of discursive propositions about transcendent realities which employ stable concepts used referentially, then the prevalence of metaphor, images, narrative, thick irony, multiple voices, and other tropes would seem to subvert the sort of authoritative reading and stability of reference that orthodoxy presumably requires. Literary writing opens up a plurality of meanings, and therefore his work could not have been a clarification of specific and definitive orthodox teachings. on the other hand, Kierkegaard often does speak approvingly of Christian doctrine. Climacus maintains that he had simply presented “the old fashioned orthodoxy in its rightful severity.”7 Vigilius Haufniensis expresses approbation for the Lutheran confessional documents and disavows any interest in doctrinal revision.8 in his journals Kierkegaard observes that “on the whole, the doctrine as it is taught is entirely sound,”9 and that “the doctrine in the established church and its organization are very good.”10 in light of such remarks, many commentators have treated Kierkegaard as a thinker who set out to explicate traditional Christian doctrines. they detect in Kierkegaard a set of orthodox convictions consistent with the confessional standards of Lutheranism and the broadly augustinian heritage of the west.11 Kierkegaard’s apparently contradictory uses of “orthodoxy” do not necessarily imply an unresolved tension in his writings. when considered in their differing contexts, certain patterns can be detected in his uses of “orthodoxy” and related terms, suggesting that he meant a few different things by them. some of his uses refer to very specific phenomena in his contemporary ecclesial context, and others to much broader features of Christianity Among his most specific uses is his habit of employing “orthodoxy” and “the orthodox” to critique particular factions in the danish Church. usually he had in mind either the followers of nicolai f. s. grundtvig or the adherents of andreas Rudelbach. The first group affirmed the divine authority of the Apostles’ Creed and the presence of Christ in the sacramental life of the church, while the second group trusted in the authority of the Lutheran confessions. Kierkegaard detected similar flaws in both groups’ appeals to orthodoxy. Most significantly, they were self-righteously sectarian, claiming to be the genuinely apostolic church.12 for example, Kierkegaard complained that there is a “certain party of the orthodox”

Louis mackey, Kierkegaard: A Kind of Poet, philadelphia: university of pennsylvania press 1971; roger poole, Kierkegaard: The Indirect Communication, Charlottesville: university of Virginia press 1993. 7 SKS 7, 249 / CUP1, 275. 8 SKS 4, 333–4 / CA, 26–7. 9 SKS 24, 117, nb22:23 / JP 6, 6702. 10 SKS 24, 221, nb 23:33 / JP 6, 6727. 11 arnold Come, Kierkegaard as Theologian: Recovering My Self, montreal: mcgillQueen’s university press 1997. david gouwens, Kierkegaard as Religious Thinker, Cambridge: Cambridge university press 1996. sylvia walsh, Living Poetically: Kierkegaard’s Existential Aesthetics, university park: pennsylvania state university press 1994. 12 SKS 27, 85–6, papir 34 / JP 1, 580. 6

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who band together and claim that they are the only true Christians.13 He critiqued the “old orthodox” for wanting to separate and live by themselves.14 Consequently, the “stoutly orthodox” like rudelbach are only able to communicate with a small circle of the faithful.15 to compound their vice, they fail to live out authentic Christianity.16 It is not the affirmations of the Old Orthodox that are objectionable, but the fact that they want to retain government jobs17 and keep their church property.18 their willingness to tolerate other types of Christians is simply due to their desire to keep the faith to themselves, shirk the task of missionizing Christendom, and avoid the risk of martyrdom.19 the old orthodox fail to see that authentic Christianity cannot be secured through governmental reform or by supporting populism.20 moreover, sometimes the allegedly orthodox were not really being loyal to tradition, for the “progressive orthodox” like grundtvig had abandoned Luther.21 Sometimes Kierkegaard uses “orthodoxy” to refer not to a specific faction, but more generally to a set of attitudes that pervaded the church. the attitudes that he labeled “orthodox” were multiple, but all of them shared the feature of seeming to preserve continuity with the church’s historic teachings. in this more general employment “orthodoxy” often served as a contrastive term to rationalism. for example, Kierkegaard observed that pietism was the main stronghold of orthodoxy, while the established church was only half-orthodox.22 frequently Kierkegaard used “orthodoxy” in a pejorative way to suggest a pernicious trivialization of traditional beliefs. for example, Kierkegaard lamented that there is a kind of orthodoxy which is “blather, mediocrity, prattle, chatter, playing at Christianity, living in platitudes, etc.”23 this, he explained, is the orthodoxy of millions and millions of church members and of many preachers. similarly, as early as 1835 he had cautioned that the concept “orthodoxy” should not be used like the concept “consistency” to suggest the perpetual doing of the same thing, although that unfortunately is exactly what many of the supposed “orthodox” did.24 Kierkegaard sometimes complained that the “newer orthodoxy” conceives of the world polemically.25 In 1848 he criticized a type of orthodoxy that attempts to flatter god as if god were a tyrant rather than simply trusting in god.26

13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26

SKS 16, 28–9 / PV, 47. SKS 24, 230, nb23:46 / JP 4, 4818. SKS 21, 39, nb6:54 / JP 6, 6223. SKS 23, 149, nb16:82 / JP 3, 3054. SKS 25, 104, nb26:109 / JP 3, 3057. SKS 24. 224–5, nb23:36 / JP 6, 6728. SKS 22, 312, nb13:64 / JP 3, 3053. SKS 24, 253, nb23:91 / JP 3, 2960. SKS 27, 142–3, papir 170 / JP 5, 5156. SKS 24, 140, nb22:67 / JP 3, 3320. SKS 25, 329, nb29:58 / JP 3, 2903. SKS 27, 99, papir 63 / JP 3, 3045. SKS 17, 253, dd:102 / JP 1, 428. SKS 20, 397, nb5:59 / JP 5, 6176.

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A somewhat more specific negative use of the concept occurs in Kierkegaard’s condemnation of “childish orthodoxy.”27 in the Concluding Unscientific Postscript Climacus critiques those sentimental Christians who describe the faithful individual as an innocent child showered with parental affection and thereby undermine the consciousness of sin. Climacus complains, “it is always just as sad that someone under the guise of orthodoxy wants to make Christianity into moonlight and charity school sentimentality.”28 The misguided conflation of the humility of guilt-consciousness with the humility of innocence is a strategy of the “orthodox.”29 extending his critique to sacramentalists, Climacus laments that in “hyperorthodoxy” the child becomes a Christian by virtue of baptism.30 even worse, this childish orthodoxy fails to appreciate the fact that the real paradox is that god decided to become human at all, and restricts the paradox to Christ’s adoption of the form of a servant.31 By fixating on the sensationalistic aspects of Christ’s physical suffering, childish orthodoxy does not realize that Christ came into the world in order to suffer spiritually.32 pastors remain more or less within orthodox categories but smuggle in a little paganism, immediate piety, and the direct recognizability of the divine.33 especially on festival days, they proclaim that Christ’s divinity can be discerned directly in his gentleness. this childish orthodoxy is a betrayal of Christianity because the possibility of offense and passionate inwardness are necessary for genuine faith. Climacus concludes that this type of orthodoxy is really a longing for childhood and the “loving tenderness of the pious mother.”34 it is a recollection backward from spiritual adulthood into religious immaturity. Kierkegaard also used “orthodoxy” to refer to the mistaken attempt by his seemingly traditionalist contemporaries to justify Christianity. one such strategy was to develop an aesthetic defense of the faith. “ultraorthodoxy” elides Christian concepts with aesthetic categories and makes the blunder of praising paul for his rhetorical brilliance and eloquent metaphors. this reduces paul to the category of “the genius” rather than elevating him to the status of an apostle.35 in a similar way, the “orthodox” also misleadingly suggest that Christianity is vindicated by the profundity of its doctrines. this gambit actually abolishes authority and obedience by implying that humans have access to some antecedent criteria by which to evaluate profundity.36 Kierkegaard castigates orthodoxy for basing adherence to Christianity on the argument that it is the most profound religion, rather than proclaiming that we should become Christian because we are commanded to do so.37

27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37

SKS 7, 541 / CUP1, 595. SKS 7, 539 / CUP1, 593. SKS 7, 540–1 / CUP1, 594–5. SKS 7, 541 / CUP1, 595. SKS 7, 541–2 / CUP1, 596. SKS 7, 543 / CUP1, 597. SKS 7, 544 / CUP1, 599. SKS 7, 543 / CUP1, 598. SKS 11, 97 / WA, 93. SKS 11, 108 / WA, 104. SKS 20, 260, nb3:32 / JP 2, 3477.

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Kierkegaard also attacked the “orthodox” proclivity to validate Christianity through historical research. orthodoxy has rejected contemporaneity with Christ, and the concomitant possibility of offense, and opted for demonstrating the probability of the gospel narratives. ironically, orthodoxy shares this trait with heterodoxy.38 Kierkegaard denounced “a strict orthodoxy” for downgrading Christ by insisting on the reliability of the historical details of his life, rather than resting spiritually in the presence of Christ.39 the orthodox, Kierkegaard laments, want to prove the minutiae of Christ’s life rather than confront the paradox of the incarnation.40 by trying to prove the occurrence of Christ’s miracles, “well-meaning orthodoxy” fails to realize that we are supposed to get busy following the path of the prototype.41 because “a rigid orthodoxy” tries to demonstrate the apostolic authorship of scripture, it is actually subverting the possibility of inwardness.42 sometimes Kierkegaard summarizes all his criticisms of orthodoxy by claiming that it lacks passion and erroneously identifies Christianity with cognitive assent to propositions. for example, he grieves that the orthodox do not express belief with their lives, but rather identify true Christianity with a loathing for baptist convictions.43 The orthodox, he laments, yearn for more precise theological definitions, for correct doctrinal concepts, rather than for transformed lives.44 the orthodox settle for a superficial sanctity rather than strive for authentic Christian pathos. The “zeal of the orthodox” for the “divine word” suggests that they aspire to the ideal of objective knowledge.45 accordingly, Kierkegaard decried “letter-of-the-law orthodoxy” with its ridiculous hair-splitting distinctions.46 in Kierkegaard’s pages these objections are usually accompanied with a spiritual critique of orthodoxy. the orthodox, he asserts, are cowardly, trying to cling to history rather than be alone with god.47 so-called orthodoxy regards Christianity as poetry and therefore lacks passion.48 those who regard piety as an aggregate of ceremonies, worrying about how many times one should genuflect before the throne of god, are trying to evade the cultivation of inwardness. theological literalism is a kind of superstition in which objectivity petrifies subjectivity, excluding inwardness. in general, the orthodox water down the rigor of Christianity, as bishop mynster did.49 real orthodoxy is not “the faith of the fathers,” which has been domesticated in order to accommodate prevailing cultural sensibilities, but the daunting Christianity of the new testament.50 the ostensible battle of orthodoxy and heterodoxy really 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50

Pap. Vii–2 b 235, p. 77 / BA, 39. SKS 20, 328, nb4:81 / JP 1, 318. SKS 21, 35, nb6:45 / JP 2, 1642. SKS 20, 222, nb2:209 / JP 3, 3049. SKS 4, 442 / CA, 142. SKS 20, 420, nb5:123 / JP 1, 659. SKS 21, 36, nb6:47 / JP 1, 660. SKS 27, 163, papir 224 / JP 1, 852. Pap. V b 1, p. 54 / JP 3, 3047. SKS 20, 329, nb4:82 / JP 3, 3051. SKS 25, 339–40, nb29:77 / JP 3, 3133. SKS 25, 409. nb30:34 / JP 6, 6880. SKS 26, 45, nb31:61 / JP 3, 2910.

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has no purpose, for neither camp follows the prototype into a life of suffering.51 Kierkegaard even goes so far as to propose that an adherent of the most rigid orthodoxy could become demonic.52 but in other contexts Kierkegaard used “orthodoxy” and similar concepts more positively, as terms suggesting the main themes of the Christian heritage. Kierkegaard remarked that he had grown up in orthodoxy, which was “an enormous colossus” with myriad tightly fused parts.53 He applied “orthodox” approvingly to schleiermacher, congratulating him for making wonder central to his theological project.54 in The Concept of Anxiety Vigilius Haufniensis explicitly assumes the orthodox teaching about hereditary sin in order to develop his own concept of “objective anxiety.”55 Vigilius also proclaims that orthodoxy was right to teach that paganism lay in sin.56 orthodox doctrine does not necessarily lead to dispassion and detachment, but simply requires the appropriate “how.”57 without using the word “orthodoxy,” Kierkegaard also praised traditional ecclesial doctrines. He observed, “Lutheran doctrine is excellent, is the truth.”58 He explained that the only problem with the orthodox Lutheran doctrine of justification by grace alone is that “a cunning fellow” such as himself could misuse it in order to legitimate spiritual indolence.59 in The Concept of Anxiety Vigilius distinguishes dogmatics from speculative philosophy and expresses appreciation for the content and the penitential mood of the smalcald articles, the apology to the augsburg Confession, and the formula of Concord.60 Similarly, another of Kierkegaard’s fictional authors assumes the validity of the doctrine of atonement.61 Most significantly, part of Kierkegaard’s critique of Magister Adler was that he was insufficiently trained in authoritative Christian concepts.62 Kierkegaard’s seeming ambivalence about orthodoxy need not be regarded as a straightforward contradiction forcing the interpreter to choose between Kierkegaard the critic of orthodoxy and Kierkegaard the champion of traditional doctrines. as we have seen, Kierkegaard used “orthodoxy” in several distinguishable ways. the first was to critique the deviations of contemporary traditionalists from authentic new testament Christianity. the second was to indict the abstraction of theological formulae from life. the third was to encourage the application of those very same formulae to personal existence. Kierkegaard’s critique of orthodoxy in the first sense was motivated by his conviction that the more traditionalist factions in the contemporary church were 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62

SKS 21, 90, nb7:26 / JP 6, 6252. SKS 4, 440 / CA 139. SKS 17, 21, aa:12 / JP 5, 5092. SKS 17, 249, dd:86 / JP 4, 3850. SKS 4, 361–2 / CA, 56–7. SKS 4, 397 / CA, 93. SKS 23, 339, nb19:17 / JP 6, 6643. SKS 13, 52 / FSE, 24. SKS 13, 52–3 / FSE, 24. SKS 4, 332–6 / CA, 25–9. SKS 11, 64 / WA, 58. Pap. Viii 2, b 7:11, p. 32 / BA, 89.

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complicit in a corporate self-deception.63 the citizens of Christendom could pretend that they affirmed orthodox doctrines because Christian language has been adapted to the environing culture and thereby rendered innocuous. Consequently, all moderately decent people could assume that they were Christian as a matter of course. as a result, it was not clear that Christianity presents a way of life that must be intentionally appropriated, a way of life that cannot be acquired by societal osmosis. the language of orthodoxy had to be revitalized in order for people to realize that Christianity is not something innate.64 the illusion of familiarity with orthodox doctrine was an insidious impediment to authentic Christianity and had to be exposed. Kierkegaard’s negative remarks about orthodoxy in the second sense were directed against understandings of ecclesial teachings as passion-neutral formulae. Christian convictions should not be treated as bits of information to be cognitively grasped. “orthodoxy” in the pernicious sense suggests treating doctrines as objects of study, situating them in an historical, metaphysical, or psychological schema, and diverting attention away from the self. the purpose of Christianity is not to become more orthodox through the mastery of increasingly precise definitions. rigid orthodoxy becomes demonic when it fosters clinical detachment, investigating concepts like “sin” as if they were external objects. all such speculative endeavors cast the individual in the role of the scientific observer and neutral evaluator, testing, calculating, and analyzing the data from a position of mastery. by making these observations, Kierkegaard was developing a critique of orthodox doctrinal systems that was analogous to his critique of metaphysical systems. Kierkegaard’s third, more approbative use of “orthodoxy” suggests that the genuine purpose of traditional teachings is to help create a new possibility for existence, and to enable individuals to exist in it. as we have seen, orthodox doctrines can be misused nefariously as diversions, but they can also be employed positively as life-shaping precepts. the proper use of orthodox doctrines refocuses one’s attention away from the dispassionate pursuit of knowledge and cultural conformity to concern for the quality of one’s own life, including one’s deepest hopes, fears, and values. a minimal grasp of the meaning of a set of orthodox doctrines involves the ability to envision the distinctive passional qualities that are essential to a distinctive way of life. at the very least, the reader must be enabled to picture the concerns and passions appropriate to a doctrine, experience them as possibilities for one’s own self, and imaginatively feel their attractions and repulsions. understanding an orthodox teaching even more profoundly requires the capacity to apply it to one’s own life, acquiring new habits and patterns of thought, action, and feeling. although orthodoxy rightly used requires the cultivation of earnestness about oneself, this does not displace the necessity for the communication of specific teachings. Kierkegaard insists that in communicating Christianity one does need some objective teaching.65 the way of life informed by Christian doctrine is a new subjectivity that is not the actualization of a universal capacity inherent in human 63 64 65

SKS 27, 408–9, papir 368 / JP 1, 654–5. Pap. Xi–3 b 53 / JP 6, 6943. SKS 27, 399–400, papir 366 / JP 1, 650.

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nature. rather, Christianity involves a new factor, not anticipated in the preceding immanent development of the human spirit. Christian pathos, such as gratitude for forgiveness, is necessarily linked to teachings about alleged external events, such as the atoning death of jesus. the “what” of Christianity cannot be reduced exhaustively to the “how.” for example, in Christianity “incarnation” involves a belief that god really did enter time, which does require the assertion of certain history-like propositions. of course, the apparent informational components of orthodox doctrines cannot be grasped without the corresponding pathos, for even the ostensible fact-stating force of doctrine (the “what”) requires a commensurate “how.”66 through his divergent uses of “orthodoxy” Kierkegaard was distinguishing an edifying employment of orthodox doctrines from pernicious uses, particularly from their speculative and ideological uses. doctrines are to be lived, not used as the basis for a metaphysical system or to reinforce societal values. orthodoxy should not be understood as a conceptual system governed by logical rules of entailment. for Kierkegaard, doctrines can indeed have significance, but only if the proper pathos has been fostered by the appropriate communicative strategies. without the factors that foster those particular hopes, fears, and yearnings, the doctrines are evacuated of meaning. Kierkegaard displaced grand systematic theologies in order to make room for the personal struggle to forge a coherent religious life. much of Kierkegaard’s work can indeed be read as an attempt to clarify the significance of almost the entire gamut of orthodox doctrinal teachings. His radical innovation was to insist that the doctrines are not meaningful when read in isolation from the appropriate contexts of passion, struggle, and personal engagement. see also authority; Christendom; Church; dogma/doctrine; faith; pastor; protestantism/reformation; revelation; scriptures.

66

SKS 23, 91–2, nb15:128 / JP 1, 678.

otherness/alterity/the other marcia morgan

Otherness, Alterity (Andethed—noun), the Other (det Andet—noun) the lexical meaning of Andethed in danish is a quality of being something else, characteristic of a different nature. Andethed is similar to the danish Anderledeshed (otherness, difference), which carries the meaning of a positive quality of an existence in something loftier, without which a human being is worthless.1 Det Andet, a concept that translates as “the other,” appears several times in Kierkegaard’s writings. Det Andet finds resonance in the Danish anden, or “second,” which also means “other” as in det andet køn or “the other sex” (about women), that which is in contrast in kind or what is not the same, ulig (unlike), forskellig (different), fremmed (foreign). Anden can be a reference to something that replaces something else, the nye (new), or what is modified or completely different from what has been in the past.2 the philosophical connotation of anden relates to the danish verb alterere as well as the noun Alteration (from the french altérer and Latin alterare), meaning to transform or alter, literally in philosophy “to other.”3 the concepts of otherness, alterity, and the other inform Kierkegaard’s entire authorship. although these concepts are not thematized as explicitly by Kierkegaard as by later scholars in the Continental tradition of philosophy, Kierkegaard’s structural-logical emphasis on otherness significantly influenced the subsequent philosophic scholarship on alterity. while the concept of the other is mentioned in works such as The Concept of Irony, Either/Or, The Concept of Anxiety, The Sickness unto Death, and The Book on Adler, all of Kierkegaard’s variegated musings on the aesthetic, ethical, and religious life possibilities rely on the importance of otherness. the main categories of the ways in which otherness, alterity, and the other are discussed include but are not limited to logical necessity and the other as necessity or the necessary other, and the immanent movement of negation;4 the transformation of being into becoming, and the quality of exclusion, which results in subsequent inclusion;5 otherness as nature and sensuousness, and a life of pleasure and the

Ordbog over det danske Sprog, vols. 1–28, published by the society for danish Language and Literature, Copenhagen: gyldendal 1992–2005, supplement, “andethed.” 2 ibid., vol. 1, columns 547–60. 3 ibid. 4 SKS 4, 321 / CA, 13. 5 ibid. 1

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senses;6 the female as the other and woman as being-for-other;7 otherness as the phenomenon that is observed philosophically;8 self-alienation, self-distancing, and recognition of the other within;9 the human other, external subjectivity, a person’s external actuality, or the other without;10 temptation as the “necessary other” to freedom;11 the other as the authentic power to whom people should relate;12 the other as “the moment” of the intersection of the temporal and the eternal, which, by extension is an intersection of freedom with necessity, and sensuousness with spirit.13 perhaps it is most clarifying to describe the role of otherness in Kierkegaard’s appropriation of Hegelian logic, whereby the other takes the position of necessity and therefore becomes the necessary other. this is seen, for example, in The Concept of Anxiety, where the pseudonymous author, Vigilius Haufniensis, explicates the role of the negative in logic. Haufniensis writes: “in logic, the negative is used as the impelling power to bring movement into all things. one must have movement in logic no matter how it is brought about, and no matter by what means.”14 He continues by differentiating what “is” in logic—that which excludes movement—from what “becomes.” He describes this differentiation as such: “in logic, no movement must come about, for logic is, and whatever is logical only is. this impotence of the logical consists in the transition of logic into becoming, where existence and actuality come forth.”15 Haufniensis’ description is paradoxical in that the impotence of the logical resides in the alteration from what “is,” or being, to becoming. accordingly, logic, by its own resources, is unproductive and therefore unrelated to the coming-intoexistence of phenomena. Certainly, negation plays a role in this kind of logic, which SKS 2, 68 / EO1, 61. SKS 2, 417–18 / EO1, 429–30. 8 SKS 1, 71–2 / CI, 9–10. 9 by logical extension of the category in which alterity is comprised by the transformation of being into becoming, Either/Or, part two can be referenced as a construction of the ethical as the “other” to the aesthetic domain. in regard to the aesthetic as the “is” of being (from Either/Or, part one), which is static in comparison to the dynamic movement of becoming internal to the ethical choice of the self (from Either/Or, part two), see SKS 2, 176 / EO2, 178. this is a recognition of the other within since it is the selfsame person making the transition from the static state of existing in the aesthetic to the dynamic becoming of the self-choice internal to the existence as an ethical individual. 10 by logical extension of the category in which alterity is comprised by the state of transformation of being into becoming, alterity comprises man via relation to an external other or other without. see, for example, SKS 4, 386–7 / CA, 83–5. 11 see, for example, SKS 4, 345–6 / CA, 39. 12 see, for example, SKS 11, 130 / SUD, 13–14. 13 by logical extension of the category in which alterity is comprised by the transformation of being into becoming, The Concept of Anxiety can be referenced here, in which it is written that man is “a synthesis of psyche and body, but…also a synthesis of the temporal and the eternal”(SKS 4, 387 / CA, 85). This synthesis defines the movement of being into becoming and therefore provides additional contexts of alterity. 14 see, for example, SKS 4, 321–2 / CA, 12. 15 ibid. 6 7

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immanuel Kant called “general logic.”16 but general logic does not facilitate any immanent transformation within the transcendent; it does not apply to phenomena or the life world. Haufniensis draws upon this Kantian inheritance as well as Hegel’s metamorphosis of it in the Science of Logic and Phenomenology of Spirit by pushing logic beyond its own boundaries. as such, negation serves as a productive capacity of movement in order to transform static logical forms. this is a negation of a different kind than that which is present in general logic. following Haufniensis and his development of Hegelian logic, negation is the motor of otherness, which counterposes the originary position of “the one,” the latter acting as the signifier of being. the other is in a dynamical and processual relationship with the one, and they drive each other to higher levels of existence the more they interact with one another. the one needs the other, because without it, the one would exist as an empty, static form of what simply is. the one initially negates the other and therefore experiences alterity as a vanishing point, only to countenance the other subsequently in its higher form of being as that which has been simultaneously annulled and sustained. in the following passage Haufniensis captures this logical movement and the concomitant process of edification in which the identity of being evolves through a process of becoming: the negative…is immanent in the movement, is something vanishing, is that which is annulled. if everything comes about in this manner, nothing comes about at all, and the negative becomes an illusion. nevertheless, precisely in order to make something come about in logic, the negative becomes something more; it becomes that which brings forth the opposition, not a negation but a contraposition. and thus the negative is not the stillness of the immanent movement; it is “the necessary other”….17

Haufniensis extrapolates from this logical movement of negation to the problem of evil in ethics. He writes: “Turning from logic to ethics, we find again the same indefatigable negative that is active in the entire Hegelian philosophy. Here one is astonished to discover that the negative is the evil….one can see how illogical the movements must be in logic, since the negative is evil, and how unethical they must be in ethics, since the evil is the negative.”18 The Concept of Anxiety proceeds with various analyses of evil and hereditary sin, whereby the subject of evil changes according to the “mood” of the discipline which attempts to analyze it. for example, when considered from the vantage point of aesthetics, the analysis “becomes either light-minded or melancholy, for the category in which sin lies is that of contradiction, and this is either comic or tragic. the mood is therefore altered, because the mood that corresponds to sin is earnestness.”19 this, therefore, alters the concept of sin, “because whether it become comic or tragic, it becomes in any case something that endures, or something nonessential that is annulled, whereas, according to its true

immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, trans. by norman Kemp smith, new york, st. martin’s press 1965, a50 / b74, pp. 92–5. 17 SKS 4, 321 / CA, 13. 18 ibid. 19 SKS 4, 322 / CA, 14–15. 16

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concept, sin is to be overcome.”20 such an aesthetic evasion of sin is criticized by Haufniensis through a secondary ethics after the tradition of aristotle, an “other” ethics, if you will. Haufniensis explains that aesthetics manifests itself in despair precisely because it attempts simply to annul sin and not to overcome it. This flat-lined form of negation, which does not produce the movement of overcoming, falls prey to the same pitfall as general logic: it does not deal adequately with the phenomenon, in this case, sensuousness and the subject of sin. it seeks only to negate it without any substantive grasping of the process of elimination and subsequent reaffirmation, the Hegelian Aufhebung (sublation) that also preserves what it initially set out to deny. from within this context of the logical framework in The Concept of Anxiety, otherness can be elaborated elsewhere in Kierkegaard’s authorship, beginning with The Concept of Irony. in the introduction to part one of The Concept of Irony, Kierkegaard declares: “if there is anything that must be praised in modern philosophical endeavor in its magnificent manifestation, it certainly is the power of genius with which it seizes and holds on to the phenomenon.”21 Kierkegaard here sets up a disjointed relationship between philosophy and its other, the phenomenon. the phenomenon acts as a placeholder throughout Kierkegaard’s body of writings for that which has been “otherized.” it is what lies under the philosophical microscope of Kierkegaard’s manifold investigations and literary creations, and it provides the necessary tension or contrast in order for Kierkegaard’s philosophy to develop. philosophy begins with the concept, in this text the concept of irony; philosophy thus provides the initial position of “the one”—being—to which the phenomenon is the other. at this starting point, philosophy is in the position of power, and the phenomenon is the subjugated. moreover, the phenomenon, as other, takes on the female gender. Kierkegaard writes: Now it is fitting for the phenomenon, which as such is always foeminini generis [of the feminine gender], to surrender to the stronger on account of its feminine nature….the observer [philosophy] ought to be an amorist; he must not be indifferent to any feature, any factor [of the phenomenon]. but on the other hand he ought to have a sense of his own predominance—but should use it only to help the phenomenon obtain its full disclosure.22

philosophy should fall in love with the phenomenon, if only “to help the phenomenon obtain its full disclosure.”23 but it will soon turn out—as any ironist well knows— that the subjugated which serves as the other becomes the more powerful in the relationship; the one does not—and cannot—exist without the other, and it is the other which gains power by demonstrating the initially vapid identity of the one. mere existence in time requires the interplay between the two, which includes a clash with eternity. this one–other dynamic through which philosophy meets its most forceful challenger, which previous philosophical systems have set out only to eliminate 20 21 22 23

SKS 4, 322 / CA, 15. SKS 1, 71 / CI, 9. ibid. ibid.

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and not to preserve in the same process, yields the force with which Kierkegaard’s notion of the existing individual is able to evolve. for one becomes an individual in Kierkegaard’s philosophy of existence only to the extent that one has been confronted by, and has recognized in turn, the actualizing individuality of an other. depending on which of the literary creations in Kierkegaard’s corpus is under consideration, what the other is, will change. through the emphasis on otherness Kierkegaard’s ironical constructions present a stringent critique of the previous philosophical tradition, here rendered empty and yet taken up into higher forms through Kierkegaard’s intricate constellations of existence possibilities. see also actuality/identity; atonement/reconciliation; being/becoming; Concrete/ abstract; Contingency/possibility; Contradiction; identity/difference; immanence/ transcendence; Logic; nature/natural science; objectivity/subjectivity; Qualitative Difference; Transfiguration; Women.

paganism avron Kulak

Paganism (Hedenskab—noun; hedensk—adjective) from the old danish hetenskab, hedhenskab, hethærnskap, meaning the condition of not belonging to Christianity, judaism, or islam; or pertaining to primitive, nonChristian people and their religion, idolatry, or mores. also pertaining to freethinking or atheism.1 by far the most frequent occurrence of the word Hedenskab and its variants is in the Concluding Unscientific Postscript, followed by Works of Love, The Sickness unto Death, The Concept of Anxiety, Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits, The Moment, and Stages on Life’s Way, though there are also significant references in Practice in Christianity, Christian Discourses and Either/Or, part two. to grasp the concept of paganism developed by Kierkegaard it is critical to comprehend the hermeneutical principles in light of which we are to assess three problematic elements in his authorship: first, the role of Socrates in his thinking; second, his claims regarding the human relationship to the divine; and, third, the selfreflexive structure of his authorship as it culminates in his attack upon Christendom. Yet, the difficulty in grasping Kierkegaard’s concept of paganism lies not in the problem that its various presentations—the terms and concepts in light of which it is expressed—change from text to text. indeed, the distinction that Kierkegaard draws between the ancient greek and biblical worlds remains absolutely consistent not only among his various pseudonyms but also between his pseudonymous and his acknowledged texts. Rather, the difficulty lies in the apparently duplex presentation given by Kierkegaard of socrates. in The Moment, for example, Kierkegaard appoints himself the task of showing his contemporaries in Christendom that, in claiming to be naturally born Christian, they in fact live in pagan categories. as he both distinguishes between and holds together paganism and Christendom, he comments that “in ‘Christendom’ it stands firm, as firm as the principle of contradiction outside Christendom”2—and thus as found in the thought of socrates, plato, and aristotle, not to mention the ancient Greek epic poets and tragedians—“it stands firm, this eternal principle that no doubt is able to shake: we are all Christians” by natural birth.3 the problem with which Ordbog over det danske Sprog, vols. 1–28, published by the society for danish Language and Literature, Copenhagen: gyldendal 1918–56, vol. 7, columns 1023–4. 2 SKS 13, 160 / M, 118. 3 ibid. 1

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Kierkegaard thus finds himself confronted is that, while the “people are not pagans,” they “are made blissfully happy in the delusion that they are Christians,”4 with the added difficulty that “not only are we not Christians, no, we are not even pagans, to whom the Christian doctrine could be proclaimed without hesitation.”5 Kierkegaard thus describes his task as being “of such a distinctive nature that i quite literally have no analogy to cite, nothing corresponding in eighteen hundred years of Christianity….the only analogy i have before me is socrates; my task is a Socratic task, to audit the definition of what it is to be a Christian—I do not call myself a Christian, but i can make it manifest that the others are that even less.”6 analogous to socrates, who understood himself to be the wisest man in greece because he at least knew that he knew nothing, and who, in performing what he called his service to the god, showed every politician and poet in greece to have been utterly ignorant of the good, Kierkegaard audits Christendom on the basis that he at least does not claim to be Christian but can show that all others are deluded in believing themselves to be so. in order to comprehend the meaning of this dual approach to the relationship between paganism and Christianity—on the one hand, the observation on the part of Kierkegaard that the principle of contradiction, and, therefore, socrates, are not consonant with Christianity, and, on the other hand, his claim that the task of socrates is the analogue of his own task—it is worth beginning with The Concept of Irony, which served as Kierkegaard’s doctoral dissertation and to which we shall return later. Kierkegaard there addresses the very structure of socratic dialogue when he writes that “the intention in asking questions can be twofold.”7 either, in the spirit of love of neighbor, “one can ask with the intention of receiving an answer containing the desired fullness” and, then, “the more one asks, the deeper and more significant becomes the answer; or,” in the spirit of socrates, “one can ask without any interest in the answer except to suck out the apparent content by means of the question and thereby to leave an emptiness behind.”8 the practice of socrates, he continues, was thus “essentially aimed at the knowing subject for the purpose of showing that, when all was said and done, they knew nothing whatever.”9 further, Kierkegaard insists, while it might seem “that when socrates went about in the service of the oracle in order to show people that they knew nothing, he could not possibly have known only that he himself knew nothing, because behind that he must indeed have known what knowledge is.”10 yet, Kierkegaard continues, the idea “that he was hiding a knowledge behind his ignorance was known to socrates as well, but he regarded it as a misunderstanding.”11 for what kept socrates from actually speculating about what appeared to be “the remotely intimated positivity” 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11

SKS 13, 149 / M, 107. SKS 13, 205 / M, 157. SKS 13, 404–5 / M, 340–1. SKS 1, 97 / CI, 36. ibid. SKS 1, 98 / CI, 37. SKS 1, 218 / CI, 170. SKS 1, 220 / CI, 172.

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behind his ignorance was his “divine call,” which consisted in his understanding himself to be required to show to all that wisdom is to be found in the divine only— that human wisdom is worthless.12 it is in light of his divine call, Kierkegaard continues, that socrates addressed himself to each person individually, “wrested everything from him, and sent him away empty handed.”13 what socratic ignorance thus ultimately consists in—what socrates ultimately was ignorant of—Kierkegaard writes in Works of Love, was the neighbor: in regard to the command that “[i]t is the neighbor, whom one shall love,” socrates “knew nothing at all about this. He did not know that the neighbor existed and that one shall love him….”14 Consistent with—indeed, implied in—the idea that the neighbor was inconceivable to socrates is that, as Kierkegaard indicates in The Sickness unto Death and The Concept of Anxiety, the categories of sin and freedom never emerge in the greek world. in The Sickness unto Death, anti-Climacus writes that “socrates does not actually arrive at the category of sin….if sin is ignorance, then sin really does not exist, for sin is indeed consciousness.…It is specifically the concept of sin, the teaching about sin, that most decisively differentiates Christianity qualitatively from paganism….”15 in The Concept of Anxiety, Vigilius Haufniensis writes that it is the concepts of guilt and sin that “posit precisely the single individual as the single individual.”16 that socrates is not precisely the single individual is, Haufniensis holds, due to the idea that it is only with the concept of sin that the knowledge of good and evil is posited, a knowledge that exists “only for freedom and in freedom” and, therefore, “never in abstracto but only in concreto.”17 because socrates conceived the good “from its external side (the useful, the finitely teleological),”18 his concept of freedom remained abstract and, like his concept of sin, “its emptiness becomes apparent.”19 the remarkable claim on the part of Kierkegaard that sin is consciousness, that sin and freedom—the knowledge of good and evil—constitute consciousness, is expressed in his equally remarkable argument that it is the command that one shall love that, in constituting the qualitative difference between paganism and Christianity, creates modernity by allowing us to overcome the fatal oppositions generated by the law of contradiction, including the opposition between the eternal and temporal. in Philosophical Fragments Climacus in fact shows that history is the uniting of the eternal and the temporal—the presence of the eternal in the temporal. yet for socrates, he writes, “the temporal point of departure is a nothing, because in the same moment i discover that i have known the truth from eternity without knowing it, in the same instant that moment is hidden in the eternal, assimilated into it in such a way that I, so to speak, still cannot find it even if I were to look for it.”20 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20

SKS 1, 220 / CI, 173. SKS 1, 221 / CI, 173. SKS 9, 367 / WL, 373. SKS 11, 202–3 / SUD, 89. SKS 4, 401 / CA, 98. SKS 4, 413n / CA, 111n. ibid. SKS 11, 201 / SUD, 88. SKS 4, 221 / PF, 13.

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as Climacus then goes on to comment in the Concluding Unscientific Postscript, “[t]hat time, that existence in time, becomes decisive for an eternal happiness is on the whole so paradoxical that paganism cannot think it.”21 yet, what existence in time—in history as the paradoxical unity of the temporal and eternal—means for Kierkegaard is that modern consciousness is constituted by what he calls in Works of Love the “royal law. and truly, my listener,” he writes, if you are capable of forming a conception of the state of the world before this word was spoken, or if you are trying to understand yourself and are paying attention to the lives and minds of those who, although they call themselves Christians, actually live within pagan conceptions, then in relation to this Christian imperative, as in relation to everything Christian, you will humbly confess with the wonder of faith that such a thing did not arise in any human being’s heart.22

it is with the claim that it is the idea of love as command that separates the ancient greek and biblical worlds, that it is love—the knowledge of good and evil, the concepts of sin, freedom, and neighbor—that provides us with the standard for assessing both modern consciousness and paganism, and that such a standard is divine as opposed to human, that the highest stakes involved in comprehending Kierkegaard’s conception of paganism ultimately reveal themselves. Kierkegaard shows that, insofar as it is love that allows us to understand both the ancient greeks and ourselves—that the ancient greeks, including socrates, had no self-understanding, that they lacked the principles in light of which to understand themselves—it is love that creates modern hermeneutics by allowing us to distinguish between three positions: first, the law of contradiction in paganism, in light of which opposites remain fatally opposed to one another; second, the biblical like for like, in light of which opposites build up; third, Christendom’s rationalization of the pagan law of contradiction as Christianity. in light of this tripartite distinction, Kierkegaard enables his readers to see that he himself provides the hermeneutical principles for thinking through the opposition between divine being and human being that he invokes here. for, given his appropriation of the opposition between the eternal and the temporal on the basis of love in Philosophical Fragments—he writes there that it is the god’s eternal love that is both the basis and the goal of his coming into temporal existence—it is clear that, if the claim on the part of Kierkegaard that the idea of love as command could have originated in no human heart is taken at face value, then the opposition that he draws between divine being and human being reflects precisely his conception of Christendom as rationalized paganism: it reflects the law of contradiction, the platonic doctrine of opposites, the socratic position that wisdom is to be found only in the divine and that human wisdom is worthless. it is in this sense that the concept of paganism developed by Kierkegaard provides a hermeneutical basis for reading his claims about the relationship between divine being and human being. the concept of paganism developed by Kierkegaard provides, in other words, the test of his claims: it allows us to see that Kierkegaard himself provides the hermeneutical

21 22

SKS 7, 334 / CUP1, 368. SKS 9, 32 / WL, 24.

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principles through which his claims are to be evaluated.23 to grasp Kierkegaard’s conception of paganism, then, is to recognize where, in any pair of terms set in relation to one another—in the work of any author or the mind of any reader—one side is falsely privileged over another rather than their differences being called upon to build each other up. to assess the analogy that Kierkegaard draws between himself and socrates, then, it is critical to recall the remarks that Kierkegaard makes in two texts found at opposite ends of his authorship. already anticipating his insight in Works of Love that socrates was ignorant of the neighbor, Kierkegaard makes the primary thesis of The Concept of Irony the claim that “the similarity between Christ and socrates consists essentially in their dissimilarity.”24 in his late work, The Point of View, Kierkegaard comments that, regarding the relationship between paganism and Christianity, “Qualitatively two altogether different magnitudes are involved here,”25 with the result that, while “formally i can very well call socrates my teacher—i have believed and believe in only one, the Lord jesus Christ.”26 that the analogy that Kierkegaard claims to exist between his own task and that of socrates requires us equally to recognize that between the two lies a qualitative difference—that we learn, with and from Kierkegaard, that there is nothing that he has learned, that there is nothing to learn, from socrates—is the problematic task that Kierkegaard sets for his readers. Kierkegaard asks us to see, in other words, that he upholds socrates as his analogy for the most ironic of reasons: like Kierkegaard, but unlike those who presume naturally to be born Christian, socrates, at least, does not claim to be Christian. yet, as Kierkegaard writes in Works of Love, “when one shall love the neighbor, then the task is, the moral task, which in turn is the origin of all tasks.”27 in thereby indicating that the socratic task was not, in truth, a task, Kierkegaard makes clear the status of his socratic analogy—that between the principle of contradiction and the command to love there is no analogy, that the task of auditing, of comprehending, not only Christianity but also paganism must be rooted not in socratic ignorance of, but in the Christian like for like with the neighbor. the distinction between divine and human being that Kierkegaard draws does not ultimately fall into Christendom’s Socratic categories. For, despite reflecting those categories (at least at the level of rhetoric), what ultimately matters is why Kierkegaard locates the origin of the single individual, the neighbor, the truly human, in divine being, as he does here in Works of Love and also, for example, in Philosophical Fragments. in the latter he insists that no human being could have authored the story of the god who enters time, a story that, in rendering all human beings equally contemporaneous with the truth, puts an end to all “human wrangling about what is mine and what is yours” (SKS 4, 242 / PF, 36). Kierkegaard’s interest, then, in distinguishing between divine being and human being is not to insist on the ignorance of the latter but to set forth a conception of origin, or authority, or narrative that assures that no human being can claim to be the origin of another, that no human being can claim to be original in opposition to, or without consideration of, the other—that neither self nor other can be prior unless both are prior. 24 SKS 1, 65 / CI, 6. 25 SKS 16, 36 / PV, 54–5. 26 SKS 16, 36 / PV, 55. 27 SKS 9, 58 / WL, 51. 23

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see also Christ; Christendom; Church; Communication/indirect Communication; ethics; god; irony; Love; pantheism; paradox; Qualitative difference; religious/ religiousness; sin; spirit.

pantheism Curtis L. thompson

Pantheism (Panteisme—noun) the danish panteisme, from the french panthéisme, was formed in the beginning of the eighteenth century from the English “pantheist,” coined from the Greek prefix παν- (all) and θεός (god); it refers to an outlook on life or teaching in which god is everything or everything is god, so that god and the universe are a unity or a whole, and it might involve the worship of nature.1 developed since Kierkegaard’s time has been the concept of panentheism, with the additional preposition of “en” or “in” changing the meaning to affirming that God is in all things or all things are in God. while it can be argued that Kierkegaard’s thought gives expression to panentheism,2 this article will confine itself to his use of the concept of pantheism. early journal entries Kierkegaard made in the late 1830s provide an initial sense of his view of pantheism. a very important statement, which should not be quickly dismissed, is an entry from june 1837. it reads: “that pantheism amounts to a moment in religion that is surmounted, is its foundation, seems now to be acknowledged, and thereby also the error in Schleiermacher’s definition of religion as remaining in pantheism, in that he makes that moment of extra-temporal fusion of the universal and the finite into religion.”3 this clearly expresses the view that pantheism must be transcended, and schleiermacher is criticized for not adequately moving beyond pantheism. However, the statement is also clearly making the claim that pantheism is religion’s foundation. pantheism is a moment of religion to be surmounted, but nevertheless it is the basis of religion. a few days later, Kierkegaard is summarizing “eine parallele zur religionsphilosophie,” by Karl rosenkranz, and he mentions “the incarnations in indian pantheism, all of which bear the stamp of contingency, as much in respect of their form as in their conclusion.”4 this differs tremendously from the monotheism of Christianity, in which the judgment is categorical and Ordbog over det danske Sprog, vols. 1–28, published by the society for danish Language and Literature, Copenhagen: gyldendal 1918–56, vol. 16, column 446. 2 see Curtis L. thompson, “from presupposing pantheism’s power to potentiating panentheism’s personality: seeking parallels between Kierkegaard’s and martensen’s theological anthropologies,”Journal of Religion, vol. 82, no. 2, 2002, pp. 225–51, where i look at the anthropology set forth in the early writings of martensen and point out parallel moves in Kierkegaard’s anthropology, especially as explicated in The Sickness unto Death. 3 SKS 17, 219, dd:9 / KJN 1, 211. 4 SKS 17, 221, dd:10 / KJN 1, 213. 1

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apodictic, “since it contains the disjunction of the divine and the human in concrete unity.”5 Christianity surmounts pantheism. In his early reflections on pantheism, Kierkegaard also uses the term in two discussions of the petit bourgeois. His associating of pantheism with a vague, dreamy, dozing, misty sort of thinking and mode of existence becomes clear in an entry from july 14, 1837.6 the same sort of vague quality of a general blessing invoked in the word Velbekom over a meal seems to be the reason the adjective “pantheistic” is used to describe it in another entry also made on july 14, 1837: “the petit bourgeois’ love of god makes its entry when the vegetative processes are in full activity, when hands are folded comfortably across the stomach and, from a head reclining on a soft armchair, sleep-drugged eyes are raised in the direction of the ceiling, toward higher things, cf. the pantheistic ‘Velbekom’s’ (may it agree with us).”7 on august 20, 1838, Kierkegaard penned words about pantheism’s destruction of the human personality because it results in the absorption of the individual in the whole with the attending loss of individuality.8 Christianity must move beyond pantheism because beyond its pantheistic poetry is needed morality’s personal accountability. thus Kierkegaard writes on july 1, 1839 about how Christianity is opposed to pantheism.9 another journal entry, from 1840, presents a tension between pantheism and theism, and yet both seem to be endorsed.10 ibid. SKS 17, 231–2, dd:30 / KJN 1, 222–3: “sometimes something happens that in every way corresponds on the spiritual level with that vegetative, digestive dropping-off into a feeling of pleasant recuperation. thus consciousness appears as an overshadowing moon that reaches from the proscenium to the backcloth. it’s as though one dozed off into the whole (a pantheistic element, but without leaving behind it a strength as in the religious version), into an oriental dreaming away into the infinite, where at the same time everything then appears a fiction—and one is attuned as in a grand poem; the whole world’s being, God’s being, my own being, are poetry, in which all the manifold, fearful disparities of life, indigestible for human thought, are reconciled in a misty, dreaming existence—ah! more’s the pity, i re-awake, the unhappy relativity in everything begins just then all the more, the endless questions about what i am, about my joys and what other people see in me, and in what i do, while maybe millions are doing exactly the same.” 7 SKS 17, 233, dd:32 / KJN 1, 224. 8 SKS 17, 259, dd:131 / KJN 1, 250: “according to the teaching of Christianity man is not to merge into god through a pantheistic fading away, or into the divine ocean through the blotting out of all individual characteristics, but in an intensified consciousness ‘man must render account for every careless word he has uttered,’ and even though grace blots out sin, the union with God still take place in the personality clarified through this whole process.” 9 SKS 18, 37–8, ee:100 / KJN 2, 33: “that Christianity is opposed to pantheism can also be seen from the caricature that accompanies it; the caricature of pantheism is clearly the volatilization of the personality brought about by sensuality, the poetic world that the individual projects, in which genuine conscious existence is given up and everything is poetry, in which the individual is at most a flower in a woven damask; the opposite of Christianity is hypocrisy, but this is clearly based on the reality of the moral concepts of personality, accountability.” 10 SKS 19, 185, not5:22 / KJN 3, 181: “it is the very meaning of omnipresence that god is not just present in all places and at all times, but also that he is totally present in his presence, present in his absoluteness in each individual, wholly in each and yet in all[;] he is 5 6

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Apart from his journals and notebooks, one does find scattered references to the concept of pantheism in Kierkegaard’s writings. two references to pantheism appear in Kierkegaard’s early polemical writings. in his From the Papers of One Still Living, originally intended to be published in 1838 in the second number of johan Ludvig Heiberg’s Perseus, Kierkegaard mentions pantheism. in the essay on “anderson as a novelist,” in a note to a critical discussion of the author’s incidental thoroughness, where anderson’s pedantic distinguishing among religious forms that are ascetic, Hellenistic, and that of partisans for young germany reminds Kierkegaard “of a court case in which the question was raised as to how things stood with the defendant regarding religion, on which occasion some village priests who had been sent for emptied out with great thoroughness everything they had learned at school about: deism, theism, atheism, pantheism.”11 Kierkegaard refers to the most celebrated pantheist in the western philosophical tradition, spinoza, in the unpublished The Battle between the Old and the New Soap-Cellars, a satirical play written in 1837 and intended to be performed within an academic setting in which students and faculty would recognize meanings of the play that are now obscure for us.12 mr. von jumping jack—a Hegelian philosopher—states, “spinoza now carried through this standpoint [of descartes who said cogito ergo sum and de omnibus dubitandum] purely objectively, so that all existence [Tilværelse] became undulations of the absolute.”13 it has been suggested that mr. von jumping jack, the character being quoted, who is “the caricature of a philosophizing esthete,” might well have been based on johan Ludvig Heiberg or Hans Lassen martensen.14 martensen had covered these themes in his “Lectures on the History of philosophy from Kant to Hegel” in the winter semester of 1838–39, and Kierkegaard had attended and taken notes on those lectures.15 in his dissertation, The Concept of Irony, Kierkegaard refers to the concept of pantheism. The first reference appears in Part One of that work on “The View Made possible,” in a section entitled “the mythical in the earlier platonic dialogues as a token of a more Copious speculation.” the discussion is centered on the distinction between the dialectical and the mythical in plato. in plato’s later dialogues, Kierkegaard suggests, these two notions have a rather friendly relation.16 the mythical “is the idea in a state of alienation, the idea’s externality—i.e., its immediate temporality and spatiality as such,”17 and the dialectical can give way through the imagination’s work to the mythical, which, “to a certain degree, is what Hegel calls not as though parceled out and therefore partially present in each and totally present himself successively, that is pantheism; he is totally in each individually and yet in all[;] that is theism, personality, individuality, but having borne this in mind the organic development will acquire its deeper and fuller validity, just as certainly as an army would not be the poorer because every soldier was a general in spirit.” 11 SKS 1, 49n / EPW, 94n. 12 EPW, xxxii. 13 SKS 17, 291, dd:208 / KJN 1, 283. 14 EPW, explanatory notes, 261, n 9. 15 Pap. ii C 25 / JP 5, 5353. 16 SKS 1, 154 / CI, 100. 17 SKS 1, 154 / CI, 101.

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pantheism of the imagination.”18 Kierkegaard at this point in his discussion includes a fascinating long discursive note on the distinction between the mythical and the poetic, with a development of the thought that “the poetic is a hypothetical statement in the subjunctive mood,” while “the mythical is a hypothetical statement in the indicative mood.”19 in The Concept of Irony, Kierkegaard also mentions pantheism a few times in the analysis he gives of K.w.f. solger’s view of irony. because of pantheism’s infatuation with god, it can sometimes lead to acosmism, or a view that denies the reality of the universe, seeing the world as ultimately illusory because the infinite absolute is the only reality. Kierkegaard charges solger with acosmism. He sees solger as having “gone completely astray in the negative,”20 and the discussion of him is complicated because a negation is only through the positive, which in turn can become a new negative, so it is difficult to sort out these two—the negative and the positive. adding further to the confusion is the fact that solger uses language that is “frequently more poetic than philosophical.”21 required here is knowledge of the laws of motion: “The negative has, namely, a double function—it infinitizes the finite and it finitizes the infinite,”22 but the reader needs to follow the direction solger’s thought is going, and without this sense of motion or movement utter confusion sets it. Solger, finally, “is unable to achieve the concession of any validity to the finite [or]…achieve concreteness for the infinite,”23 and the result is an “unreal actuality of contemplation, devotion, and pantheism.”24 thus the scholarly-scientific effort…is not carried through, and thus there is more of a pantheistic absorption than a speculative account of the abstract an sich of the infinite’s and the finite’s absolute identity. Pantheism can emerge in two ways—either as i accentuate man or as i accentuate god, by either anthropocentric or theocentric reflection. If I let the human race create God, then there is no conflict between God and man; if I let man disappear in God, then there is no conflict, either.25

solger does the latter: “he does not insist, as spinoza does, that god be regarded as substance, but this is because he does not wish to annul devotion’s identification of the divine and the human.”26 Confusion is also present in solger’s view of divine SKS 1, 154–5 / CI, 101. the full passage reads: “the dialectical clears the terrain of everything irrelevant and then attempts to clamber up to the idea, but since this fails, the imagination reacts. weary of the dialectical work, the imagination begins to dream, and from this comes the mythical. During this dreaming, the idea either floats by quickly in an endless succession or it stands still and expands until infinitely present in space. Thus the mythical is the enthusiasm of imagination in the service of speculation and, to a certain degree, is what Hegel calls pantheism of the imagination.” 19 SKS 1, 155 / CI, 101–2. 20 SKS 1, 341 / CI, 309. 21 SKS 1, 342 / CI, 310. 22 ibid. 23 SKS 1, 344 / CI, 312. 24 ibid. 25 SKS 1, 345 / CI, 313–14. 26 SKS 1, 345 / CI, 314. 18

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love that finds him making two provocative claims: that God “himself has entered into nothing so that we might be,” and that “god has entered into nothing in order that we might cease to be nothing.”27 The first claim seems to be referring to the divine self-limitation of creation; and the second claim seems to be referencing the atonement. Kierkegaard thinks solger has confused and confounded these notions of creation and atonement and, thus, “not even the pantheistic thought is strictly presented.”28 Kierkegaard’s notes on schelling’s berlin lectures make several references to pantheism; however, i am not including an account of those references in this article since these belong to the thought of schelling and not Kierkegaard. in his 1843 pseudonymous work Either/Or, a’s paper, “rotation of Crops,” introduces the concept of pantheism in discussing boredom. we read: “boredom is the demonic pantheism. it becomes evil itself if one continues in it as such: as soon as it is annulled, however, it is the true pantheism. but it is annulled only by amusing oneself—ergo, one ought to amuse oneself.”29 from the aesthetic point of view, the viewpoint of part one of Either/Or, which is caught up in life’s immediacy and has not entered the realm of ethical commitments and thereby not transcended the confines of the moment, boredom is a reality to be faced; and rotating crops—or mixing up one’s life so that variety brings spicy pleasantness one’s way—might be a way that the aesthete attempts to address the unpleasant experience of being bored. Continuing in the experience of boredom is evil for the aesthete because it is unpleasant in that one is not fully engaged in the pleasant, and so one, in the experience of boredom, is being nagged by the reality of an unfulfilled existence. boredom is the “demonic pantheism” because in boredom one has not allowed oneself to enter fully into the dreamy pantheistic state of unity with the whole. “demonic pantheism” has been drawn into the pantheistic state, but only partially, as a viewpoint entertained as a possibility. amusing oneself shakes off the boredom and the unpleasant awareness of one’s unsatisfactory, empty existence and brings one into the “true pantheism” of a dizzy absorption in the immediate that comes with the appropriate therapeutic self-amusement. this is why a writes: Pantheism ordinarily implies the qualification of fullness; with boredom it is the reverse: it is built upon emptiness, but for this very reason it is a pantheistic qualification. boredom rests upon the nothing that interlaces existence [Tilværelsen]; its dizziness is infinite, like that which comes from looking down into a bottomless abyss. That the eccentric diversion is based upon boredom is seen also in the fact that the diversion sounds without resonance, simply because in nothing there is not even enough to make an echo possible.30

from the ethical point of view, the viewpoint of part two of Either/Or as over against the aesthetic, boredom has a completely different standing and pantheism is not relevant in the same way. 27 28 29 30

SKS 1, 347 / CI, 316. ibid. SKS 2, 279 / EO1, 290. SKS 2, 280 / EO1, 291.

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A final reference to pantheism in Either/Or, part one, appears in “the seducer’s diary.” johannes the seducer characterizes the state of Cordelia’s soul as that of “pantheistic boldness,” which designates a reckless expectancy, which in a “dreaming and imploring” way seeks “the marvelous outside herself.”31 an 1845 journal entry has “pantheistic” in the margin32 beside a discussion differentiating a spiritual sense of being on the brink of collapse from an imminent collapse due to physical lust and sinfulness: “of all debauchery, this [former, spiritual type of] decadent brilliance…this wretched glitter of perdition—that the individual evaporates into the generation, confuses himself with rome and greece and asia— this fungus of self-importance,”33 “is the most revolting.”34 in the Concluding Unscientific Postscript of 1846, Kierkegaard’s pseudonym johannes Climacus makes a few references to the concept of pantheism. He treats this concept in relation to systems of thought: “every such system volatilizes the concept existence,” because as a system it must annul existence “in the eternal before the system concludes itself.”35 too often, those writing the system (including theological professors such as Hans Lassen martensen) contest pantheistic systems, in part by promising “a new system” and in part by emphasizing in “a separate paragraph” the concepts of “existence” and “actuality,” with no realization that “such a paragraph mocks the entire system” since these concepts “cannot be stated directly in a paragraph in a system.”36 a hundred pages later, Climacus refers to the pantheist’s relation to recollection in discussing the speculative thinker.37 A final Postscript reference to pantheism finds Johannes employing it in characterizing

SKS 2, 387–8 / EO1, 400. the passage reads: “a change has taken place and is taking place in her. if i were to designate the state of her soul at this moment, i would say that it is pantheistic boldness. the expression in her eyes betrays it at once. it is bold, almost reckless, in expectations, as if it asked for the extraordinary at every moment and was prepared to see it. Like the eye that gazes in the distance, this look sees beyond what immediately appears to it and sees the marvelous. it is bold, almost reckless, in its expectancy—but not in selfconfidence, and therefore it is rather dreaming and imploring, not proud and commanding. She is seeking the marvelous outside herself, and she will pray that it might make its appearance, as if it were not in her power to call it forth.” 32 SKS 18, 271, jj:392a / KJN 2, 250. 33 SKS 18, 271, jj:392 / KJN 2, 250. 34 ibid. 35 SKS 7, 117–18 / CUP1, 122. 36 SKS 7, 118 / CUP1, 122–3. 37 SKS 7, 207 / CUP1, 226–7: “the only consistency outside Christianity is that of pantheism, the taking of oneself out of existence back into the eternal through recollection, whereby all existence-decisions become only shadow play compared with what is eternally decided from behind. Like all simulated decision, the simulated decision of speculative thought is nonsense, because decision is the eternal protest against fictions. The pantheist is eternally reassured backward; the moment that is the moment of existence in time, the seventy years, is something vanishing. the speculative thinker, on the other hand, wants to be an existing person, but an existing person who is not subjective, not in passion, indeed, is existing sub specie aeterni—in short, he is absent-minded.” 31

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the peculiar shortcoming of the contemporary age.38 Contemporary immorality assumes the form of pantheistically losing oneself in the world-historical rather than becoming an individual. Works of Love, published by Kierkegaard in 1847 under his own name, includes a reference to the concept of pantheism while not using the word “pantheism.” He writes the provocative sentence: “With what infinite love nature or God in nature encompasses all the diverse things that have life and existence!”39 it is as though “nature” and “god in nature” are roughly equivalent; the statement has a potent pantheistic quality about it. in the same year, 1847, a journal entry states that without the category of “the single individual,” “pantheism is the unconditional victor.”40 that category “is and will continue to be the anchor that can hold against pantheistic confusion, is and will continue to be the weight that can be added, except that those who are to work with this category…must be more and more dialectical as the confusion becomes greater and greater.”41 the passage continues: “pantheism is an optical illusion, an atmospheric image formed by the fog of temporality, or a mirage formed by its reflection, which claims to be the eternal. But the fact is, this category cannot be taught; using it is an art, an ethical task and an art the practice of which is always dangerous and at times may claim its practitioner’s life.”42 the last references to consider appear in The Sickness unto Death. in treating the view that sin is posited, anti-Climacus mentions how orthodox dogmatics and orthodoxy “have rejected as pantheistic any definition of sin that made it out to be something merely negative—weakness, sensuousness, finitude, ignorance, etc.,” for then “Christianity is flabby and spineless.”43 speculative dogmatics (as set forth, for instance, by Hans Lassen martensen) confuses matters, because it wants to say that asserting that sin is merely a negation is pantheism, which is not good; but then it wrongly “thought it could comprehend this qualification that sin is a position.”44 However, the act of comprehending places itself above the reality being comprehended, so to comprehend the positing of sin is to negate that very positing. speculative dogmatics is symptomatic of the Christendom prevailing within denmark. in Christendom, “the qualitative difference between god and man

SKS 7, 324 / CUP1, 355: “the immorality of our age is perhaps not lust and pleasure and sensuality, but rather a pantheistic, debauched contempt for individual human beings. in the midst of all the jubilation over our age and the nineteenth century there sounds a secret contempt for being a human being—in the midst of the importance of the generation there is a despair over being a human being. everything, everything must be together, people want to delude themselves world-historically in the totality; no one wants to be an individual existing human being.” 39 SKS 9, 268 / WL, 269. 40 SKS 20, 281, nb3:77 / KJN 4, 281. 41 ibid. 42 ibid. for another statement on the “acoustic illusion” comment, see the 1848 journal entry in SKS 21, 95, nb7:37 / KJN 5, 98. 43 SKS 11, 209 / SUD, 96. 44 SKS 11, 209 / SUD, 97. 38

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is pantheistically abolished (first in a highbrow way through speculation, then in a lowbrow way in the highways and byways).”45 see also absolute; being/becoming; Conscience; Creation; governance/providence; immanence/transcendence; metaphysics; reason; skepticism/doubt.

45

SKS 11, 229 / SUD, 117.

paradox sean anthony turchin

Paradox (Paradox—noun) the danish word Paradox (greek, παράδοξον) refers to a statement or assertion that appears contrary to plain belief, something that moves beyond an ability to justify or prove. therefore, things that are said to be “paradoxical” exhibit the quality of something unusual, surprising, or exaggerated.1 Kierkegaard’s 1833 edition of molbech’s Danish Dictionary defines the concept “paradox” as something contradictory, something contrary to the most likely meaning or explanation.2 the concept of the paradox is found mainly in Fear and Trembling, Philosophical Fragments, the Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments, Works of Love, and Two Ethical-Religious Essays. in these works, “paradox” is used to signify that which appears contradictory to human understanding, such as the relation between the individual and the religious as well as the tenets of the Christian faith, specifically the doctrine of the Incarnation. On a smaller scale, this concept is used in works such as The Concept of Irony, Either/Or, The Sickness unto Death, and Practice in Christianity. with the exception of The Concept of Irony and Either/Or, the context of this concept is, again, largely religious in tone. However, regardless of the context, all of these works present the concept of paradox as that with which the understanding collides and which “disturbs man and his selfknowledge.”3 the ultimate unknown, however, which brings to consciousness the awareness of its inability “to discover something that thought itself cannot think,”4 is God, specifically in his revelation. as stated, “paradox” is also used in a more general sense of a contradiction outside of the context of the religious. in this sense, “paradox” is used to describe statements or propositions that appear contradictory.5 a paradoxical or contradictory statement is usually indicative of a paradox in thought. in The Concept of Irony, Kierkegaard gives an example of this in his discussion of socrates engaging thrasymachus’ “bold paradox” equating justice with injustice.6 in addition, “paradox” is also used Ordbog over det danske Sprog, vols. 1–28, published by the society for danish Language and Literature, Copenhagen: gyldendal 1918–56, vol. 16, column 1936. 2 Christian molbech, Dansk Ordbog. Indeholdende det Danske Sprogs Stammeord, vols. 1–2, Copenhagen: gyldendal 1833, vol. 2, p. 174. 3 SKS 4, 244 / PF, 39. 4 SKS 4, 243 / PF, 37. 5 SKS 26, 104, nb31:139 / JP 4, 4483. 6 SKS 1, 169 / CI, 116. 1

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in relation to describing the contradictions that arise when something is credited with an attribute it clearly does not possess.7 in Either/Or, the concept of paradox is used to describe a contradictory expression of one’s emotions or intentions—in this particular case, a false expression of one’s love for another in order to hide true love for someone else.8 furthermore, in Either/ Or, Kierkegaard describes deception with regard to love as an absolute paradox.9 that one can be deceived with regard to loving or being loved presents Kierkegaard with two possible ways in which love can react. The first reaction is one of not being concerned with being deceived, which Kierkegaard calls egotistical love. “because of its pride, egotistical love regards deception as impossible,”10 and there is no possibility for this love to be deceived by the paradox. the second form of love is a sympathetic love, which although aware that it was deceived, rests in the absoluteness of love and thus is unshakeable.11 regardless of the position love may take, for both types of love “a deception is a paradox that it cannot think, and yet one it eventually wants to think.”12 However, the paradox of deception is only present when love exists in reflection. If love is absolute in either form, that is, the egotistical or the sympathetic, the paradox is canceled insofar as, in the power of the absolute, the individual is beyond reflection and thus is unwilling to be concerned with the deception.13 But if reflection is present in either form of love, then the paradox becomes a factor to be dealt with and the question now becomes one of how to deal with it, egotistically or sympathetically. before looking into the uniformity and development of the concept of paradox within the Christian lexicon, it is important to understand, initially, what Kierkegaard means in regarding Christian truths as paradoxical. He takes his cue from Leibniz, who makes a distinction between that which is above reason and that which is against reason.14 this distinction relegates faith to that which is above reason. furthermore, for Leibniz, there is a causal chain linking a cause to its effect. However, and this is where Kierkegaard thinks the problem exists for a demonstration of Christianity, the truths of the Christian faith possess no such chain. its truths exist beyond what reason is able to examine. therefore, for Kierkegaard, these truths can only be expressed as a paradox.15 but the lack of causality between a Christian truth and its cause does not qualify it as irrational, only above the rational. Kierkegaard himself believes that from the perspective of eternity, these paradoxes do not exist.16 if the understanding could grasp that what is inexplicable to thought does not entail that it

7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

SKS 2, 60 / EO1, 53. SKS 2, 83 / EO1, 77; SKS 2, 286 / EO1, 298; SKS 2, 194–5 / EO1, 198–9. SKS 2, 176–7 / EO1, 179. ibid. ibid. ibid. ibid. SKS 19, 390, not13:23 / JP 3, 3073. ibid. SKS 7, 196–7 / CUP1, 214.

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is irrational, but rather a category beyond its reach, scientific endeavors would fare far better than in the past.17 first, as found in Philosophical Fragments, the understanding finds itself consumed with paradoxical passion as it is constantly colliding with an unknown.18 this unknown shows that the understanding is faced with an ultimate paradox of its own creation in wanting to discover something that it cannot think.19 and although this “unknown” could be anything in general that the understanding seeks in vain to know, in this specific context, the unknown is the god.20 but there is no point in seeking to demonstrate that god exists in order to release the understanding from its paradoxical passion. seeking to prove god’s existence betrays the presupposition that god exists, otherwise the desire to demonstrate it would never have been initiated.21 in short, “the whole process of demonstrating continually becomes…an expanded concluding development of what i conclude from having presupposed that the object of investigation exists.”22 and yet, in light of the futility of this demonstration, human understanding still desires to know the unknown, but to no avail. the unknown is a frontier at which the understanding continually arrives; it is the absolutely different which it always faces.23 but this distinction of the absolutely different is not a distinction arrived at outside of the understanding itself. rather, it is the understanding that “consequently thinks the difference in itself, which it thinks by itself. it cannot absolutely transcend itself and therefore thinks as above itself only the sublimity that it thinks by itself.”24 therefore, in that the understanding is unable to know the absolute difference of the unknown by virtue of its own powers, the unknown must make this difference known to the understanding.25 in making itself known, the god enhances the paradoxical passion of the understanding absolutely by means of absolute equality.26 although the word “revelation” is not used here explicitly, it appears that it is Kierkegaard’s intention to relate the paradoxical nature inherent within revelation. in the transition in which the unknown becomes known, there emerges the category of offense.27 More specifically, it is the coming into existence of the paradox that initiates offense.28 the paradox, by virtue of coming into existence, is deemed absurd

17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28

SKS 20, 89, nb:125 / JP 3, 3089. SKS 4, 244 / PF, 39. SKS 4, 242 / PF, 37. SKS 4, 244 / PF, 39. SKS 4, 245 / PF, 39. SKS 4, 245 / PF, 40. SKS 4, 249–50 / PF, 44. SKS 4, 250 / PF, 45. SKS 4, 251 / PF, 46. Cf. SKS 4, 251 / PF, 47. SKS 4, 252 / PF, 47. SKS 4, 255 / PF, 51. ibid.

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by the understanding, absolutely absurd.29 More specifically, “the absolute paradox would be that the son of god became man, came into the world.”30 insofar as philosophical speculation seeks to mediate, Kierkegaard thinks it is given its ultimate barrier in the incarnation.31 as spirit, god is ontologically distinct from humanity; there is an infinite qualitative difference between them.32 yet, Christianity teaches that god became a human being. as the god-man, Christ is the ultimate or absolute paradox, which defies rational examination. The paradox of the incarnation is that god revealed himself in a “particular human being, who looked like any other human being”33 and yet was god. the absoluteness of this paradox, then, is that the infinite qualitative difference between what is human and what is divine meets in the historical person of jesus Christ: “god is spirit. as spirit god relates paradoxically to appearance (phenomenon), but paradoxically he can also come so close to actuality that he stands right in the middle of it, right on the street in Jerusalem. [Thus] it is impossible for God to be identified directly.”34 it is this union of god and man that provides the ultimate incognito of god insofar as, appearing as an ordinary human being, he remains undetected by our understanding.35 nothing this side of eternity is able to make sense of this paradox, whether by historical investigation or speculation.36 the fact that god, in Christ, relates to appearance paradoxically suggests more than an ontological distinction. Kierkegaard implies that the Christian doctrine of sin has some part to play with regard to our ability to affirm the Incarnation only paradoxically.37 but the absoluteness of the paradox of the incarnation applies both to the form of revelation and to the concept itself. revelation denotes that god has come into existence as a human being. in short, it is an ontological transition from possibility to actuality. everything that comes into existence has made the transition from non-existence to existence.38 but is not god’s existence necessary? therefore, the implication of the incarnation is that if god comes into existence he is indeed not necessary, since his coming into existence would imply that he previously did not exist.39 this, too, is a paradox. the paradox arises because “by placing the eternal, essential truth together with existing…the eternal truth has come into existence in time.”40 However, it is not only the incarnation that is a paradox but also Christianity as a whole.41 its paradoxical nature exists in its dialectical teachings. for example, “god created this world of living beings, placed man in it, planted this 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41

SKS 4, 256 / PF, 52. ibid. Cf. SKS 12, 93 / PC, 82. SKS 19, 418, not13:53 / JP 3, 3074. SKS 11, 237 / SUD, 126. SKS 18, 158, jj:58 / JP 3, 3075. SKS 26, 221, nb32:132 / JP 3, 3099. SKS 18, 176, jj:111 / JP 3, 3077. SKS 12, 38, 44 / PC, 25, 30. SKS 26, 227, nb32:133 / JP 2, 1444. SKS 4, 273 / PF, 73. ibid. SKS 7, 192 / CUP1, 209. SKS 22, 412, nb14:134 / JP 3, 3218.

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enormous lust for life in him—and the meaning of life [for the Christian], the task of life—is to die, to die to the world.”42 such paradoxes of the Christian faith are found also in teachings such as “there is joy in sorrow,” “life in death,” and “wealth in earthly poverty.”43 another example of Christian paradox noted by Kierkegaard is the relation between Christianity and the world. He writes, “Christianity is a kingdom not of this world, yet it wants to have a place in this world—right here is the paradox and the collision; it wants to have a place, but again not as a kingdom of this world.”44 Continuing, the Christian doctrine of original sin as guilt is also a paradox. if a “paradox is formed by a composite of qualitatively heterogeneous categories,”45 then the paradox of inheriting guilt is therefore paradoxical. “to ‘inherit’ is a category of nature. ‘guilt’ is a category of spirit. How can it ever occur to anyone to put these two together, the understanding says—to say that something is inherited which by its very concept cannot be inherited.”46 yet another Christian doctrine containing a paradox is the atonement. Christianity first affirms the condition of sin in a way that is incomprehensible to human understanding. But then it affirms the elimination of the condition of sin in a way that is also incomprehensible to human understanding, that is, the forgiveness of sin.47 in fact, that a human being’s sin would even be a concern to god is a thought never entertained by speculative minds.48 therefore, as a paradox, the doctrine of the atonement can only be believed.49 moreover, within the context of the Christian faith, the concept of paradox is often used in relation to the concepts of the absurd, offense, and faith. for Kierkegaard, the paradox of the incarnation results in an offense to human understanding.50 this offense is “Christianity’s weapon against all speculation.”51 that human understanding is unable rationally to unite the concepts god and man results in the understanding becoming offended at its own weakness.52 in the most empirical and rational sense, the notion “that an individual human being is god, that is, claims to be god, is indeed the offense [in an eminent sense],”53 because, as Kierkegaard states, it “conflicts with all (human) reason.”54 only faith, not the understanding, is able to overcome the offense.55 only faith, whereby the individual enters into the god-relation, is able to come to terms with the hidden

42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55

SKS 25, 252–3, nb28:51 / JP 3, 3097. Cf. SKS 26, 300, nb33:53 / JP 2, 1447. SKS 26, 250, nb33:7 / JP 1, 614. SKS 23, 103, nb16:13 / JP 2, 1530. ibid. SKS 11, 212 / SUD, 100. SKS 11, 196 / SUD, 83. SKS 11, 210 / SUD, 98. SKS 12, 106 / PC, 97. Cf. SKS 11, 240 / SUD, 129. SKS 11, 197 / SUD, 83. SKS 11, 199 / SUD, 85. SKS 12, 40 / PC, 26. ibid. SKS 12, 109 / PC, 101.

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god in Christ.56 only faith overcomes the paradox and waves off the absurdity to human understanding.57 However, insofar as faith overcomes the paradox by virtue of believing what is contradictory to the senses, it too is paradoxical.58 in the essay entitled “the difference between a genius and an apostle,” Kierkegaard maintains that a paradox defines the existence of the apostle. Insofar as the apostle is one who is called by god to have divine authority, his existence constitutes what Kierkegaard calls the “paradoxical-religious.”59 this means that the apostle is paradoxically related to the eternal in time. unlike ordinary modes of existence, which are conditioned by immanence, the apostle moves in a wholly separate qualitative sphere.60 for this reason, the apostle cannot be considered a genius with regard to his message or thinking. His existence constitutes a paradox that can never be assimilated by thought.61 another example of how the paradox reveals itself in relation to an individual is seen in the story of abraham. Consider the paradox in the story of abraham, who is asked by God to sacrifice his son Isaac. Here, the paradox exists in the divine command to abraham to become higher than the universal, which requires a teleological suspension of the ethical.62 How does abraham begin to explain the paradox that god has asked him to act against the universal and kill his son?63 this is the paradox of faith, namely, that it requires the individual to exist in relation to the absolute, thereby transcending the universal.64 this paradox, like all true paradoxes, is beyond mediation.65 but one who expresses the universal and even sacrifices himself for it does not exemplify the paradox of faith. Abraham’s is a paradox of his very existence.66 in short, an existence shrouded in paradox is beyond our comprehension. In conclusion, the concept of the paradox signifies the tension created in human understanding when it is faced with something it cannot mediate by its own powers. in Kierkegaard, this concept is used to characterize the central object of Christian faith: the god-man, who represents an absolute paradox that can only be overcome by faith. see also absurd; Christ; faith; god; History; immanence/transcendence; Leap; offense; Qualitative difference; reason; revelation; sin; speculation/science/ scholarship; understanding/Comprehension.

56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66

SKS 12, 145 / PC, 143. SKS 4, 267 / PF, 65. ibid. SKS 11, 104 / BA, 181. SKS 11, 98 / BA, 174. SKS 11, 100 / BA, 176. SKS 4, 159 / FT, 66. SKS 4, 155 / FT, 62. SKS 4, 161 / FT, 69; SKS 4, 162 / FT, 70. SKS 4, 128 / FT, 33; SKS 4, 149–50 / FT, 55–6. SKS 4, 170 / FT, 79.

parody/satire mads sohl jessen

Parody (Parodi—noun; parodiere—verb); Satire (Satire—noun; satirisere—verb) from ancient greek παρῳδία, a vulgar or burlesque poem (the prefix παρα- means “beside,” “parallel to,” or, as here, “mock,” and ᾠδή means “song,” “ode”). its lexical meaning in danish is either that of a literary work caricaturing another work or it may refer to a person or something being mocked or distorted for humorous and/or ridiculing purpose.1 the concept of satire derives from french satire and Latin satira, a poem lambasting persons and vices.2 I. Parody Kierkegaard tends to use the concept in the temporal sense of something evolving over time in a negative direction or becoming a lesser or lower embodiment of what it used to be. on november 20, 1836, he wrote on a loose paper that “in my opinion, every development is only complete when its parody has been produced, it will turn out that politics is the parody of the development of the world.”3 Kierkegaard’s use of the concept of parody as pertaining to a necessary historical decline is common in his early writings. in a journal entry also from 1836 he refers to his theory of decline as a necessity with respect to the idiomatic saying that old age is a second childhood: “The parodic (as the final stage of development) also manifests itself in the way in which childhood repeats itself in old age: ‘to enter into one’s second childhood.’ ”4 Kierkegaard also finds proof of the necessary parodic conclusions of certain religious developments. for example, in his problematic opinion, also from 1836, that “judaism had developed into a parody of itself by the time Christianity arose: in the Law, with the pharisees—in the prophets, with the notion of an earthly messiah.”5 in a similar journal entry from 1838 Kierkegaard writes: “the monastic orders are a thing of the past with the jesuits, for here they reached their parody in a purely secular endeavor.”6 In Kierkegaard’s first polemical article published on February 18, Ordbog over det danske Sprog, vols. 1–28, published by the society for danish Language and Literature, Copenhagen: gyldendal 1918–56, vol. 15, column 511. 2 ibid., vol. 18, columns 815–17. 3 SKS 27, 87, papir 43 / JP 4, 4066. 4 SKS 18, 77, ff:15 / KJN 2, 71. 5 SKS 18, 77, ff:14 / KJN 2, 71. 6 SKS 17, 269, dd:169 / KJN 1, 260. 1

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1836 he compares the liberal journalists at the newspaper Copenhagen’s Post with the protestant reformation and calls them “a parody of the reforming endeavor.”7 one may argue that Kierkegaard’s early negative view of historical processes as necessarily parodic remains a decisive feature of his thinking throughout his writings. in The Concept of Irony Kierkegaard, at the very beginning of his discussion of aristophanes’ comical representation of socrates in The Clouds, again relates the concept of parody to the end of a given process: aristophanes’ view of socrates will provide just the necessary contrast to plato’s and precisely by means of this contrast will open the possibility of a new approach for our evaluation. indeed, it would be a great lack if we did not have the aristophanic appraisal of socrates; for just as every process usually ends with a parodying of itself, and such a parody is an assurance that this process has outlived its day, so the comic view is an element, in many ways a perpetually corrective element, in making a personality or an enterprise completely intelligible.8

though Kierkegaard highlights the universally relevant corrective aspect of comedy, he also implies that this aspect would be unthinkable without the force of satirical parody. something of real importance in understanding the thinking and personality of the socratic character is revealed in aristophanes’ parodic caricature. in Either/Or Kierkegaard uses the concept of parody several times to designate an aesthetic quality internal to a given work of art. for example in “the immediate erotic stages or the musical-erotic” Kierkegaard notices that “mozart has superbly expressed in music”9 don giovanni’s “caricaturing mockery [parodierende Spot]”10 of the Commendatore’s earnestness. In “First Love” Kierkegaard writes of a specific scene from the title drama: “the situation also forms a parody of the preceding one.”11 Kierkegaard had a keen sense of the parodic mode of aesthetic representation. in Fear and Trembling Kierkegaard uses the concept of parody as something opposed to religious authenticity: “a vacillator like that, however, is merely a parody of the knight of faith.”12 Kierkegaard’s pseudonym johannes Climacus in the Concluding Unscientific Postscript refers to a german review of his Philosophical Fragments. He criticizes the reviewer for misinterpreting the book: the report is didactic, purely and simply didactic; consequently the reader will receive the impression that the pamphlet is also didactic. as i see it, this is the most mistaken impression one can have of it. the contrast of form, the teasing resistance of the imaginary construction to the content, the inventive audacity (which even invents Christianity), the only attempt made to go further (that is, further than the so-called speculative constructing), the indefatigable activity of irony, the parody of speculative thought in the entire plan….—of all this the reader finds no hint in the report.13 7 8 9 10 11 12 13

SKS 14, 16 / EPW, 11. SKS 1, 179–80 / CI, 128. SKS 2, 126 / EO1, 124. ibid. SKS 2, 159 / EO1, 266. SKS 4, 207 / FT, 119. SKS 7, 249n / CUP1, 275n.

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one may take Kierkegaard’s use of the concept of parody here as an important clue to the understanding of the rhetoric of the pseudonymous works of 1843 to 1846. Kierkegaard’s digressions, sarcasms and ironies and his pervasive use of negative allusions to contemporary Hegelians and other theologians and philosophers of his time point to the frequently parodic nature of his own writing style. a major example of Kierkegaard as a literary parodist is Prefaces. to take an example, in 1838 in the second volume of his journal Perseus johan Ludvig Heiberg wrote about his plans for a logical system. Kierkegaard parodies these unfulfilled plans in the first preface in Prefaces: therefore, i vow: as soon as possible to realize a plan envisaged for thirty years, to publish a logical system, as soon as possible to fulfill my promise, made ten years ago, of an esthetic system; furthermore, I promise an ethical and dogmatic system, and finally the system. as soon as this has appeared, generations to come will not even need to learn to write, because there will be nothing more to write, but only to read—the system.14

One can find numerous similar examples in Kierkegaard’s authorship. Though Kierkegaard seldom refers to his own writings as parodic, he was endlessly versatile at writing parodies. in a remarkable journal entry from 1846 Kierkegaard writes about plato: the fact that several of plato’s dialogues end without result has a far deeper reason than i had earlier thought. for this is a reproduction of socrates’ maieutic skills, which makes the reader or listener self-active, and therefore end not in a result but with a sting. this is an excellent parody of the modern rote-learning method that says everything at once, and the quicker the better, which does not awaken the reader to any self-activity.15

Kierkegaard’s point of view on Plato may also be taken as a reflection of how Kierkegaard himself thought the open and offhand conclusions of his own pseudonymous writings work as a parody of modern (Hegelian) thinking. in the Concluding Unscientific Postscript Kierkegaard’s pseudonym says: “now we have almost reached the parody that to become a Christian is nothing, but it is difficult and a very busy task to understand it.”16 This figure of thought is a central part of Kierkegaard’s later polemics from 1847–55 against what he sees as the decline of Christian faith in denmark. whereas Kierkegaard with his intimate knowledge of aristophanes’ comedies and modern satirical writings certainly knew the techniques of literary parody and used it to produce his own parodies in the first period of his pseudonymous work from 1843–46, in the later part of his work he increasingly criticized the church as an institution for having become a parodic inversion of its authentic mission.

14 15 16

SKS 4, 478 / P, 14. SKS 18, 299, jj:482 / KJN 2, 276. SKS 7, 338 / CUP1, 371.

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II. Satire Kierkegaard mainly uses the concept of satire in four different ways. first, the concept denotes a literary genre or mode attacking and ridiculing persons or forms of behavior. second, Kierkegaard also refers to oral utterances of a mocking nature as satire. third, for Kierkegaard the concept may also refer to something that has gone astray or a person who has misunderstood the nature of his obligations. fourth, Kierkegaard in his later writings distinguishes sharply between ethical and unethical satire. Kierkegaard in fact contemplated writing his university dissertation on the topic of ancient Latin satire. on september 25, 1837 Kierkegaard writes in his journal: “now i know a suitable topic for a dissertation: on the concept of satire in the ancients, the mutual relationships between the various roman satirists.”17 arguably Kierkegaard later on decided to work on the greek concept of irony instead because that was more in vogue in contemporary aesthetic and Hegelian thinking. Kierkegaard’s first literary endeavors are satirical. It has never been established exactly which persons Kierkegaard intended to satirize in the unfinished drama The Conflict between the Old and the New Soap Cellar from 1837, but today most scholars would agree that it is aimed at the danish Hegelians. by contrast, there can be no doubt that Kierkegaard is indirectly attacking and satirizing the leading Hegelian theologian Hans martensen in Johannes Climacus, or De omnibus dubitandum est, which was also published posthumously. unfortunately, Kierkegaard did not write extensively on the roman satirists or the concept of satire in general. He certainly was a practicing satirist, especially in his early works, and he also had a considerable understanding of the various traditions of satire, but he never elaborated on the concept in any thorough manner. in Kierkegaard’s dissertation, The Concept of Irony, one may find the answer to why the concept of irony was of a higher value to him than the concept of satire: but irony also has a theoretical or contemplative side. if we regard irony as a minor element, then irony, of course, is the unerring eye for what is crooked, wrong, and vain in existence. regarded in this way, irony might seem to be identical with mockery, satire, persiflage, etc. There is, of course, a resemblance insofar as irony sees the vanity, but it diverges in making its observation, because it does not destroy the vanity.18

for Kierkegaard, at this point in his career, the concept of satire is more or less synonymous with persiflage and mockery. Satirists, according to Kierkegaard, wish to destroy their opponents, and as such their art form does not include the power of abstract or theoretical thinking. today we tend to regard aristophanes as both the father of comedy and satire as high literature. aristophanes fuses the two modes in his comedies, for example, in The Clouds, but Kierkegaard saw it differently in The Concept of Irony: “simply to apprehend the empirical actuality of socrates, to bring him on stage as he walked and stood in life, would have been beneath the dignity of aristophanes and would 17 18

SKS 17, 241, dd:58 / KJN 1, 232. SKS 1, 295 / CI, 257.

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have changed his comedy into a satirical poem.”19 Comedy is related to the concept of the ideal whereas satire is related to the concept of the empirical. Kierkegaard in 1842, like many of his contemporaries, views satire as an inferior literary genre compared to comedy. Kierkegaard also uses the concept of satire to refer to oral utterances of a mocking nature. for example, when addressing the aesthete, the ethical letter writer in part two of Either/Or refers to certain people as “the butt of your satire.”20 in “ ‘guilty?’/‘not guilty’?” from Stages on Life’s Way Kierkegaard again refers to satire as a concept meaning derisive remarks: “sarcasm, satire, and coolness do not show up to advantage at all under four eyes—if it is going to have any effect, some others must be present.”21 accordingly, there must be a group of people present for the satiric utterance to make an impact. Kierkegaard frequently designates a specific interpretation, a phrasing or the behavior of a person as satire. for example, in the Concluding Unscientific Postscript he uses the phrase “the most profound satire upon all Christianity”22 when referring to an interpretation of a passage from the new testament. in a more humorous vein Kierkegaard states in a journal entry from 1846: “to be the greatest philosopher in denmark borders on satire—something like being the greatest—let’s think—the greatest of all the traveling theater troupes one has seen—in odense.”23 in another journal entry from 1847 Kierkegaard’s animosity towards Hans martensen is clearly felt: “it must after all be frightful to be such a fool as martensen to preach Christianity to such listeners, a refined preacher for the refined and for the fools who follow along merely because it is so refined. What a satire!”24 Kierkegaard, in his later writings, frequently presents the preaching of the danish church as a satire of itself. at the end of the Concluding Unscientific Postscript Kierkegaard uses the concept of satire in relation to a complex existential discussion of the tragic. Kierkegaard formulates the difference between the tragic and the comic thus: “the tragic is suffering contradiction, and the comic is painless contradiction.”25 Kierkegaard argues that satire has affinities with tragedy in that satire “also causes pain, but this pain is teleologically dialectical and oriented toward healing.”26 this new view of satire as oriented toward healing may seem surprising given that Kierkegaard earlier in his writings associates satire with a destructive intention. Kierkegaard in the late 1840s, possibly as a consequence of himself being the victim of aggressive satire in the Corsair, develops a view of true satire as necessarily ethical. for example, in a journal entry from 1848, he refers to aristophanes’ comedies in terms of “ethical satire for the benefit of the good.”27 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27

SKS 1, 180 / CI, 129. SKS 3, 83 / EO2, 79. SKS 6, 275 / SLW, 296. SKS 7, 538 / CUP1, 592. SKS 20, 34, nb:32 / KJN 4, 32. SKS 20, 205, nb2:160 / KJN 4, 204. SKS 7, 465–6 / CUP1, 514. SKS 7, 467 / CUP1, 515. SKS 21, 170, nb8:57 / KJN 5, 177.

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Kierkegaard’s new view of the necessity of an ethical satire is formulated in A Literary Review of Two Ages: “satire in our day, if it is to be at all beneficial and not cause irreparable harm, must have the resource of a consistent and well-grounded ethical view, a sacrificial unselfishness, and a high-born nobility that renounce the moment; otherwise the medicine becomes infinitely and incomparably worse than the sickness.”28 Kierkegaard’s main complaint regarding the satire directed at him was that it was lacking completely in ethical standards. in On My Work as an Author from 1850 Kierkegaard refers to his pseudonymous writings as a godly satire: what was needed, among other things, was a godly satire. this i have represented, especially with the help of pseudonymous writers, who did not let me get off unscathed either. but lest any confusion, could occur, lest this satire could be confused with what all too readily wants to pass itself off as satire—the profane revolt of the most deeply sunken profane powers—then i, who have represented this godly satire, then i was the very one who hurled myself against and exposed myself to that mob-revolt’s profane satire.29

Kierkegaard retrospectively understands his pseudonymous authorship as godly satire, which, one may infer, is ethically true and therefore of benefit to the common good, whereas his opponents in the journals and newspapers represent profane satire. Kierkegaard’s negative view of contemporary newspaper satire is formulated succinctly in a journal entry from 1849: in the most ancient of times, judges and prophets watched over a country’s ethos. Later it was traditional for the clergy to do it. then because of worldliness, the church doubted—and the “newspapers”—and the public became ethical authorities! finally, the most degraded part of the daily press, under the name of satire, kept a watch over ethics! this is something like sending a young girl to a brothel—to safeguard her innocence.30

Kierkegaard’s distinction between godly (ethically true) and profane (ethically untrue) satire in his later writings is part of his overall plan to explain the religious nature of his authorship and justify the satire that he himself had used against other persons of his time. see also Comic/Comedy; Humor; irony; Vaudeville/farce.

28 29 30

SKS 8, 71–2 / LR, 74. SKS 13, 24–5 / PV, 17. SKS 22, 31, nb11:44 / KJN 6, 28.

passion/pathos jacobo zabalo

Passion/Pathos (Lidenskab—noun; Lidelse—noun; Pathos—noun; pathetisk— adjective) the greek term πάθος originally denotes physical or emotional suffering. the term also appears in aristotle’s Rhetoric as an oratorical technique used to persuade an audience by appealing to emotions such as anger, pity or fear. there are two different but related danish words that Kierkegaard employs to communicate the idea of pathos: the danish Lidelse, which means “suffering” and Lidenskab, which means “passion.”1 the idea of suffering, in the danish verb at lide, is related to the german leiden, a term that refers both to the act of suffering and the affliction itself. As will be shown, this ambiguity of pathos—impossible to elucidate through intellectual mediation—is perfectly coherent from the perspective of the Christian paradigm within which Kierkegaard works. in both cases, what pathos implies is a state according to which one is acted upon by a superior force. in a late journal entry, dated 1854, Kierkegaard criticizes the prevailing idea of Christianity in Christendom specifically on the grounds that it lacks passion: “what does not exist, however, is that kind of passion [Lidenskab] which is the formal condition of being able to receive the content of Christianity, unconditioned passion, the passion of the unconditioned.”2 what is missing is a personal, subjective passion, which, far from corrupting the individual’s praxis, allows him to be related to the truth, Christianly understood. passion, the less objective of all the conditions, is required to enter this unconditioned, absolute ground. actually it is the absence of the proper disposition, profoundly subjective for Kierkegaard, that makes Christianity’s spiritual content inaccessible, as he recurrently affirms in works like the Concluding Unscientific Postscript to the Philosophical Fragments. in one of the opening sections, he affirms that the essence of subjectivity is passion, and “as soon as subjectivity is taken away, and passion [Lidenskab] from subjectivity, and infinite interest from passion, there is no decision.”3 the way to conceive it properly lies in an attitude, not mere knowledge. passion is for Kierkegaard the medium, the affection of the soul that directs the individual to the spiritual goal: “faith is indeed Ordbog over det danske Sprog, vols. 1–28, published by the society for danish Language and Literature, Copenhagen: gyldendal 1918–56, vol. 12, columns 767–8 and 775–7 respectively. 2 SKS 25, 339, nb29:77 / JP 3, 3133. 3 SKS 7, 39 / CUP1, 33. 1

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the highest passion of subjectivity.”4 How to promote this attitude is precisely one of the problematic issues that Kierkegaard faced as an author. Kierkegaard progressively became more conscious of his own purpose in Christianity, acknowledging the need for an indirect communication of spirituality that could not be understood (and therefore communicated) in a direct manner: what our age needs is pathos (just as scurvy needs green vegetables); but, truly, the work of boring an artesian well cannot be more artful than all my dialectical reckoning of the comic, the pathos-filled and the passionate [det Comiske og Lidenskaber og det Pathetiske] in order to get, if possible, a beneficial pathos-filled breeze blowing. The tragedy of our age is reason and reflection.5

this unsatisfactory state of apathy is, according to Kierkegaard, inherent in the abstract comprehension most common in his time. “in these circumstances, since the world was so corrupted by never hearing an I, it was impossible to begin at once with one’s own I. so it became my task to create author-personalities and let them enter in the actuality of life in order to get men a bit accustomed to hearing a discourse in the first person.”6 in what can be understood as a new understanding of the aristotelian pathos, Kierkegaard realized the need to move the reader emotionally, in order to make him feel the passion inherent in the fact of being an individual—the fact of becoming a subjectivity in modern terms, endowed with a kind of inwardness alien to the greek paradigm. The strategy of pseudonyms, the literary praxis of a fictitious redoubling, was certainly inspired by the romantic aesthetics (in the works of authors like novalis, jean paul, or e.t.a. Hoffmann) that suggested a new approach to the very act of reading. against the objective reality of thought Kierkegaard constructed a literary device meant to involve the reader and promote subjectively his or her personality. the unsolved, dialectical tension created between characters and authors is meant to push the reader into the arena of hermeneutics, where a decision for the proper meaning of existence must be taken. in the second part of Either/Or, judge william affirms that “what is important in choosing is not so much to choose the right thing as the energy, the earnestness and the pathos with which one chooses. in the choosing the personality declares itself in its inner infinity and in turn the personality is thereby consolidated.”7 there is not a right thing to be done, but rather a peculiar, emotional disposition that does not presuppose a universal comprehension, in the Hegelian sense. even the aesthete, in his commentary on “the tragic in ancient drama,” agrees only partially with the Hegelian interpretation of compassion in aristotle, an interpretation that he completes by emphasizing the particular, inextricably subjective aspect of that “suffering” (Lidende)8 in each spectator that may empathize with the dramatization.

4 5 6 7 8

SKS 7, 124 / CUP1, 132. SKS 20, 119, nb:202 / JP 3, 3129. SKS 22, 136, nb11:223 / JP 6, 6440. SKS 3, 164 / EO2, 167. SKS 2, 147 / EO1, 147.

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subjectivity is not founded on content but on form. whether it be aesthetic passion or serious ethical decision, it is pathos that separates the individual subject from the common understanding and also characterizes the pseudonymous authors (as Kierkegaard states in the final section of the Concluding Unscientific Postscript, entitled “a first and Last explanation”).9 actually Kierkegaard’s claim for pathos transcends the pseudonymous context in which it is often formulated. His beloved socrates represents already in the early work, The Concept of Irony, an example of virtue connected with a particular suffering—the unequivocal guarantee of its authenticity, for Kierkegaard—that was assumed until the end. He recognized that the validity of what objectively constitutes reality is suspended by means of irony, a movement that involves pathos. that is why Kierkegaard called him “a true intellectual hero.”10 refusing to share his pathos, a demonic disposition that intimately belongs intrinsically to every single individual, he realizes simultaneously an escape to the apathy of philosophical thought. this particular seclusion, modulated indeterminably through irony, allows him a kind of transcendence that Kierkegaard would understand Christianly by the end of his life, as indicated in The Point of View for My Work as an Author: “i calmly stick to socrates. true, he was no Christian, that I know, although I also definitely remain convinced that he has become one.”11 socrates is comprehended as an intellectual hero but also—Kierkegaard stated in The Moment—as the “true martyr of intellectuality.”12 far from being contradictory, in both cases there is a victory of personality beyond the intelligible, universal categories of thought. Kierkegaard’s claims for personality (Personlighed) are based on the socratic archetype, which is re-read through Christ’s life and death on the cross. differing here in the highest degree from Hegelian philosophy, there is not an adequate concept to refer to what is absolutely and intrinsically characteristic of the existence of each subject. Christ represents for Kierkegaard the actual idea of the individual: one and alone, qualitatively different from the masses. Christ appears to be a human being, with an immanent life, but comes from eternity and directs himself to a spiritual transcendence; a being that suffers, that somehow is meant to suffer like men in order to evidence the unquantifiable benefit of faith’s personal movement, first experienced by Abraham. It is well known that Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling deals precisely with this issue. the faith of the patriarch can neither be understood nor shared by anyone else. No reflection can communicate this movement into eternity, a movement that takes place solely through passion: “every moment of infinity is carried out through passion, and no reflection can produce a movement…mediation is a chimera, which in Hegel is supposed to explain everything.”13 abraham alone is the one who hears, understands and therefore realizes yahweh’s will. but Kierkegaard’s johannes de silentio does not hesitate in mentioning socrates in the same footnote: “just to make the celebrated socratic distinction between what one understands and what one does not understand 9 10 11 12 13

SKS 7, 571 / CUP1, 627. SKS 24, 464, nb25:43 / JP 4, 4288. SKS 16, 36 / PV, 54. SKS 13, 405 / M, 341. SKS 4, 137 / FT, 42.

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requires passion,”14 a passion especially revealed in his ignorance. socrates’ crisis of knowledge is religiously understood through abraham’s leap, a suspension of every objective criterion. the patriarch remains absolutely passive before god. He does not react but merely follows the instructions for Isaac’s sacrifice. Kant had written about the passive reception of sense data as the subjective moment necessary for the configuration of an objective (though never completely absolute) knowledge. From Kierkegaard’s perspective, abraham is affected by a completely other phenomenon, incommensurable and not conceivable by regular, conceptual mediation. that is the reason for his silence before those others who commonly may understand him. His vocation is lived as a tremendous, subjective passion—an absolute paradox for reason that nevertheless elevates him “higher than the universal”15 as a single, isolated individual. the main idea of Fear and Trembling—most appropriately attributed to johannes de silentio due to his constitutive ineffability—is also present in Kierkegaard’s journals: “the paradox is the authentic pathos of the intellectual life, and just as only great souls are susceptible to passions, so are only great thinkers susceptible to what i call paradoxes, which are nothing other than grandiose thoughts, not yet fully developed.”16 there seems to be a state of mind, a particular consciousness that assumes the vortex of reason as a point of departure. Losing objective, universal references might thus be the first step towards recognizing the authentic position of the individual. an intelligence affected by paradox, just like a passionate soul, is needed for the individual that assumes the incomprehensible content of Christianity, namely, the incarnation and death of god after long, senseless suffering, a suffering accepted in spite of his human, comprehensible moment of doubt. the crisis on the cross, recalled by Kierkegaard in works like The Concept of Anxiety and rather frequently in his journals (“my god, my god why have you forsaken me?”),17 makes possible the identification with the abandoned and suffering Christ. The abyssal separation between “being a man and being by god”18 is suffered maximally, but as an absolute disruption it is precisely what enables grace. Unjustified as the condition might be in which the individual is found isolated and suffering, there is still hope: the possibility of a salvation that turns the desperate situation into its opposite. Suffering is thus justified, makes sense, once the intellectual search for a meaning is abandoned and the answer comes only from the realization of the passion of faith. paul of tarsus, augustine, and Luther, three main references for Kierkegaard, found different metaphors to speak about a suffering that also heals, a sickness that cures or a kind of weight that lightens. the thorn in the flesh19—in the words of the apostle—would inspire those Christian authors, including of course Kierkegaard, who employed this expression in his journals and wrote at least two of his works, The Concept of Anxiety and The Sickness unto Death, with the purpose of exploring 14 15 16 17 18 19

ibid. SKS 4, 149 / FT, 55. SKS 18, 104, ff:152 / KJN 2, 95. matthew 27:46. SKS 20, 413, nb5:99 / KJN 4, 414. 2 Corinthians 12:7.

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the experience of evil through the dialectical alchemy of suffering and sin, as a consoling explanation of human finitude and an overture to spiritual transcendence. the negativity of sickness—just like anxiety—has a positive meaning for the Lutheran spirituality that Kierkegaard wanted to promote, especially near the end of his life. though crisis is implied in the suffering, the individual apprehends the spiritual essence of Christ’s doctrine, as it is explained in Judge for Yourself!, a text written around 1851 but published only posthumously with the eloquent subtitle For Self-Examination Recommended to the Present Age. the idea of imitatio Christi, which appears here and there in Kierkegaard’s writings, is explicitly stated as a decisive issue: “here is where it is really decided whether or not one is willing to accept Christianity.”20 Kierkegaard’s diagnosis is the following: “to suffer for the doctrine—the imitation of Christ—this has been completely abolished,”21 whereas the preachers proclaim that “Christianity is the gentle comfort, a kind of insurance for eternity.”22 Kierkegaard confesses his utter agreement with Luther on this point. being a Christian means for him carrying a weight, a burden that may uplift spiritually; in other words, what is characteristic of imitation is “disease…the struggle of an anguished conscience, fear and trembling.”23 the positive negativity of a suffering meant to heal (if not during one’s lifetime, then after, according to the eschatological perspective) is expressed through the paradoxical effect upon his most intimate and beloved contemporaries: “Christ himself knew that he had to make these men as unhappy and miserable, humanly speaking, as human beings could be.”24 a fecund ambiguity lies in the passion that Kierkegaard felt and worked for during his lifetime. as an irrational and yet absolutely real movement of the self, this affection controls the individual and dominates him. the submission to this force, the recognition of the wound (i.e., the responsibility for its unequivocal reality through guilt, as explained in The Concept of Anxiety and referenced so many other times in his journals by the enigmatic expression “thorn in the flesh”) is precisely what guarantees the individual’s freedom. submission to a law, the law of a maximally particular and absolute affection, leaves the field of transcendence open for his participation. needless to say, speculative thought is completely banned from it. Kierkegaard’s individual is not subject to a rational, Kantian-like law but faces the entire otherness inside herself: an abyss that provokes the loss of all conditions, but that compensates with spiritual grace—equally ineffable although unambiguously, absolutely certain. The religious meaning of passion (pathos as a sacrifice, as a suffering voluntarily assumed according to the Christian example) is patent in Kierkegaard’s late production. but what about the other meaning of passion, connected to sensuousness and emotions? Kierkegaard must have been aware of it in his youth, being also affected by it—as his intimate writings reveal. some of his journals evidence a 20 21 22 23 24

SKS 16, 235 / JFY, 188. SKS 16, 236 / JFY, 189. SKS 16, 237 / JFY, 190. SKS 16, 247 / JFY, 201. SKS 16, 249 / JFY, 203.

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particular psychosomatic suffering that was also pleasant; that state of mixed joy and pain commonly referred as “love.” regine olsen was the cause of such feelings: as this letter is undated and consequently might have been written at any time, it also follows from this that it may be read at any time, and if any nocturnal doubt should assail you, you may read it even at night….i have never doubted for a moment, no— i write this out of the deepest conviction of my soul—indeed not even in the most obscure corner of the world shall i doubt that i am yours.25

we can follow the traces in his journals and in the letters they exchanged, and see how suddenly everything changes, as if literature had exclusively become the field for the re-creation of emotions; an ideal opportunity to sublimate the feelings and desires that might disturb and simultaneously be in the position to awaken the subjective, pathos-filled I in relation to the neighbor; that isolated individual, responsible for the meaning of his existence. Kierkegaard recalled a famous quotation by Chateaubriand both in an early journal entry and as a motto for Either/Or, part two, in which judge william replies to his aesthetic friend: “Les grandes passions sont solitaires, et les transporter au desert c’est les rendre à leur empire” (the great passions are hermits, and to transport them to the desert is to hand over to them their proper domain).26 this literary statement (that underlines the power of passion, especially fruitful from a position of isolation) represents the turning point of the alternative, the separation from the existential option narrated from the beginning of Either/Or, part one until its concluding text, “the seducer’s diary”—a text which is introduced by Leporello’s consideration of his master’s preferences, in the catalogue aria of Don Giovanni which is sung to donna elvira: “Sua passion predominante è la giovin’ principiante” (His predominant passion is the youthful beginner).27 above both characters, Victor eremita, the editor of the writings, quotes edward young: “is reason then alone baptized, are the passions pagans?”28 this question comprehends both perspectives, considering the phenomenon of being carried away by an intense emotion as well as the role left for reason. a clear answer is not offered. the alternative implicit in Either/Or is made even more complex by a third option, which completes dialectically both the intense experience of the aesthete and the judge’s respect for the law. this openly religious option, an alternative to the alternative, would be expressed in Fear and Trembling one year later. The pseudonymous redoubling would allow Kierkegaard to reflect upon an issue that affected him personally, an issue that was not completely alien to the other two options. from a biographical perspective, Kierkegaard’s passion for regine seems to have been somehow transformed into religious pathos; that suffering that could not be ethically shared in marriage or aesthetically apprehended. Kierkegaard had to leave her, having almost made of her his own literary creation: “i loved her much, she was light as a bird…she forgot, she did not know, that it was i who made her 25 26 27 28

SKS 28, 223, brev 135 / LD, 70, Letter 23. SKS 3, 9 / EO2, 1. SKS 2, 292 / EO1, 302. SKS 2, 9 / EO1, 1.

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light.”29 in another note from his 1841 journal—close in time to the aforementioned quotation—he states: “then it struck me that this would do her no good, that i might bring a thunderstorm upon her head.”30 the storm, felt as melancholy, was inside Kierkegaard, who never completely rid himself of it despite his faith. once the decision was taken, once romantic love was to be replaced by another kind of very personal passion, the suffering was a reality: “How strange, i had never really thought of being married, but that it would turn out like this and leave so deep a wound, i would never have believed.”31 more than a decade later, he would recall: “in frightful suffering [Lidelser] i became an author. year after year i was an author, suffered for the idea in addition to the inner sufferings [Lidelser] i endured.”32 a clue to this ambiguous issue may be found, nevertheless, in a journal entry in which he confesses: my only wish was to remain with her; but from the moment i felt that it had to go wrong, and unfortunately that moment came all too soon, i decided to make her think that i didn’t love her; and now here i am, hated by everyone for my faithlessness, the apparent cause of her unhappiness, and yet i am as faithful to her as ever….god grant that some good may still come to her simply from my suffering [Liden].33

what Kierkegaard was hoping to happen is precisely that substitution of personal passion for a universal principle of good. Kierkegaard sacrificed his own interest— his passion—and suffered for it, legitimating it precisely by a kind of annulment connected intimately to that other religious suffering—pathos—that should guarantee him a sustainable, absolute (though somehow ineffable) reality. Kierkegaard explained in the Concluding Unscientific Postscript that there is an aesthetic, an ethical, and a religious pathos; in other words, different ways of making the individual’s existence meaningful. if Kierkegaard were to choose, he most probably would emphasize the latter without, nonetheless, completely eliminating his very peculiar poet-existence or the seriousness of the ethical form in the idea of decision. in the three cases, but mainly from the religious perspective, the conceptual pair passion/pathos plays a decisive role. the passive submission, the assumption of a suffering that absolutely determines the individual also potentiates the absolute capacity of freedom, in an unequivocally active sense. Harmful as this affection might seem, pathos is required for a person to become an individual and live an authentic life. but is this still possible in Kierkegaard’s time? His insistence on the issue suggests doubt. A Literary Review of Two Ages, published in 1846 under the pretext of being a commentary on a contemporary novel, is actually a remarkable anthropological diagnosis of the times, in which Kierkegaard describes a generalized apathy, the absence of personality that it is symptomatically related to the lack of passion: “the single individual (however well-intentioned many of them are, however much 29 30 31 32 33

SKS 19, 217, not7:45 / KJN 3, 212. SKS 19, 231, not8:20 / KJN 3, 226. SKS 19, 230, not8:20 / KJN 3, 226. SKS 24, 529, nb25:114 / JP 6, 6801. SKS 19, 228, not8:13 / KJN 3, 224.

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energy they might have if they could ever come to use it) has not fomented enough passion [Lidenskab] in himself to tear out of the web of reflection.”34 Reflection is characteristic of this “age of anticipation”35 that avoids the need for the individual to take any responsibility for consequences. that “apathetic indolence [apathiske Indolents]”36 affects every aspect of existence: an age without passion—a term that appears more than a hundred times in this text—“has no assets of feeling in the erotic, no assets of enthusiasm and inwardness in politics and religion.”37 “there is no hero, no lover, no thinker, no knight of faith, no great humanitarian.”38 pathos (whether understood religiously, ethically or aesthetically) is lacking in the abstract, reflective subjectivity of the age: “the citizen does not relate himself in the relation but is a spectator computing the problem.”39 the emotional involvement that Kierkegaard misses, considering it a kind of authenticity-guarantee, may almost look mythical (similar to those romantic revivals of a lost world, a world that perhaps never actually existed), but nevertheless it reveals an actual, unsolved problem of the present: “in contrast to the age of revolution, which took action, the present age is an age of publicity, the age of miscellaneous announcements: nothing happens but still there is instant publicity.”40 Perhaps never more true than today, Kierkegaard’s pathos-filled claims for passion feed the hunger of an individual left alone in the midst of the noisy chatter in which, despairingly conscious, he is also involved. see also absurd; ambiguity; anxiety; demonic; evil; exception/universal; Love; Paradox; Sacrifice.

34 35 36 37 38 39 40

SKS 8, 67 / TA, 69. SKS 8, 69 / TA, 71. SKS 8, 71 / TA, 74. SKS 8, 72 / TA, 74. SKS 8, 72 / TA, 75. SKS 8, 76 / TA, 79. SKS 8, 68 / TA, 70.

pastor j. michael tilley

Pastor (Pastor—noun; Præst—noun) Pastor is derived from the Latin word pastor, which means “shepherd.” the term is associated with the term “priest” (Præst) in its greek origins, since Præst is derived through the Latin from the greek πρεσβύτερος, which means “elder,” and elders are regularly commanded to “shepherd” those under their charge.1 the lexical meaning of Præst in danish is an ordained minister who leads religious ceremonies and other church affairs.2 the term Pastor refers to a Præst, but the term is used primarily as a title in danish. neither term is used idiosyncratically by Kierkegaard, and English translations reflect this fact by rendering Præst in a variety of different ways including terms like “clergy,” “priest,” or “pastor.” Kierkegaard follows the danish custom and expresses Pastor solely as a title, just as bishop (Biskop) is used primarily as a title. this term is used repeatedly throughout Kierkegaard’s authorship as the title of ordained ministers who do not occupy a higher ecclesial office, for example, “Pastor Patermann”3 and “pastor grundtvig.”4 since this title has no conceptual role to play in Kierkegaard’s thought, i will leave his use of the term aside and subsequent references to clergy, pastor, or priest should be taken as references to the danish term Præst. since Præst is not a technical term for Kierkegaard, he maintains the standard danish use of it. nevertheless, it is used in a variety of different contexts—sometimes positively but often snidely or pejoratively. the term is virtually never used in Kierkegaard’s upbuilding discourses, and it occurs rarely prior to the Concluding Unscientific Postscript. the references to the concept in the Postscript are often expressed sarcastically. Climacus, for example, contrasts socrates’ unseemly appearance with what is said of the clergy that “he has a very advantageous appearance,” and so we understand the clergy in aesthetic categories whereas socrates is understood in ethico-religious terms.5 in contrast to his occasional snide comments about pastors, Kierkegaard regularly refers to his own personal desire to become a pastor in the country: “the wish to Cf. 1 peter 5:1–2. for Præst see Ordbog over det danske Sprog, vols. 1–28, published by the society for danish Language and Literature, Copenhagen: gyldendal 1918–56, vol. 17, columns 1–3. for Pastor see vol. 16, column 579. 3 SKS 1, 47n / EPW, 91n. 4 SKS 7, 49n / CUP1, 44n. 5 SKS 7, 225 / CUP1, 248–9. 1 2

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be a rural pastor has always appealed to me and been at the back of my mind.”6 Kierkegaard claims that he began considering ending his literary career and taking up a pastorate upon the completion of Either/Or, because he saw his literary task as complete. He also makes this claim about the early and middle authorship—that is, that after completing significant works he thought his activity as an author was done and he claims that he considered taking up a pastorate somewhere in jutland.7 In one journal entry, Kierkegaard associates his desire to take on this office as a way to do penance for his sin.8 However, when his financial situation deteriorated, Kierkegaard’s desire to become a country priest was primarily for economic reasons—“doing something about making a living.”9 Kierkegaard also discussed this desire with others—including bishop mynster10—and at one point mynster suggested to Kierkegaard that it was time he take up a pastorate somewhere outside of Copenhagen.11 Conceptually, Kierkegaard conceives of the pastor exclusively as a medium for the communication of god’s word to the people. as such, the pastor is necessary for the true expression of Christianity, but the pastor, as medium, can be corrupted in either of two ways—it can become a tyrannical authority or a worldly profession. in the former, the pastor takes on the authority and position of power rather than being a vessel who serves both god and others, which Kierkegaard associates with Catholicism. in the latter, the pastor becomes a shrewd, worldly person who does not present the gospel but looks out for his own welfare just like all the other people. the rigorous demand of Christianity is replaced with an attempt to sanctify ordinary worldly existence. rather than presenting god’s message to the people, the pastor offers worldly wisdom in its place. Kierkegaard associates this idea with the priesthood of all believers, a central doctrine of the reformation. thus, the pastor as the medium for the proclamation of the word of god must avoid the dual risks of assuming power and becoming worldly.12 since the pastor is understood exclusively as a medium for the proclamation of the word, the form of the medium, the way it is delivered, is vitally important. the pastor is not responsible for providing new content but for expressing the content in an appropriate manner. as such, it does not matter where the sermon is delivered— that is, simply because someone gives a talk in a church does not make the person a pastor. furthermore, the content cannot be presented in such a way that it allows the congregation to be spectators who receive it but do not participate in it. according to Climacus, “the decisive point is how the speaker and the listeners relate themselves to the discourse or are presumed to relate themselves to it. the speaker must not relate himself to his subject only through the imagination but must himself be that of

6 7 8 9 10 11 12

SKS 20, 81, nb:107 / JP 5, 5961. SKS 25, 257, nb28:54 / JP 6, 6843. SKS 18, 250, jj:339 / KJN 2, 230. SKS 25, 259, nb28:54 / JP 6, 6843. Pap. X–6 b 173 / JP 6, 6749. SKS 20, 52, nb:57 / JP 5, 5947. SKS 23, 397–9, nb20:14 / JP 3, 3153; SKS 26, 137–8, nb32:30 / JP 3, 3182.

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which he speaks or, striving toward it, must have the ‘how’ of his own experience.”13 this view of the pastor and the sermon, however, is not unique to the Postscript. anti-Climacus, for instance, maintains that the object of the sermon is not to present observations or to give a discourse about one’s observations on the Christian life; rather, the sermon delivers a message where the primary listener is god, and it also reveals god such that god is “present in a totally unique sense as it is being spoken about, and not as an object. instead, the speaker becomes its object; the speaker evokes a spirit who examines him as he is speaking.”14 god pays attention to both the truth of the content that is preached, but also the truth embodied in the preacher.15 anti-Climacus maintains that within established Christendom and the church triumphant, this understanding of the task of the preacher has been replaced with a preacher who is supposed to give general observations about the faith rather than to enact it in his practices: “this fundamental change in the sermon presentation” is responsible for the abolition of “Christianity,” and it is marked by Christ acquiring admirers rather than followers (Efterfølgere).16 in both the Postscript and Practice in Christianity, the pastor’s life and his personal expression of the Christian message are just as important as the content of what he says. in the case of the pastor, the “how” is fundamental for understanding the “what.” Kierkegaard’s concern for the way a person lives Christianly is crucial for understanding his critique of pastors in the attack literature, and it informs many of his earlier critiques. in an addition to a journal entry, Kierkegaard writes “what is a pastor? a pastor is one who is paid by the state to proclaim the doctrine of poverty. a pastor is one who is respected and honored and esteemed in society for proclaiming that we should not seek after worldly honor, esteem, and wealth.”17 but just as Kierkegaard gave up any hope of redeeming Christendom—that is, he gave up the idea that Christendom could be saved by admitting its distance from genuine Christianity and calling upon grace—so Kierkegaard’s attitude toward the clergy also shifts. although the characterization of the pastor is anything but positive in Practice in Christianity, he still leaves open the possibility of returning to the new testament model. using the preface to the second edition of Practice in Christianity as a guide, the key in the earlier work was for a pastor to admit the requirement recognizing that he is failing and has failed to live up to the new testament model of the pastor and thereby resort to grace.18 in the attack literature, however, Kierkegaard appears to have given up any hope of return, proclaiming that all should “beware of the pastors!”19 the livelihood acquired in service to the state (rather than Christ) results in pastors being unwilling to admit the Christian requirement. instead, “you can be completely sure that he with all his might will declaim the opposite, prevent you from thinking those thoughts so that you can be 13 14 15 16 17 18 19

SKS 7, 380n / CUP1, 418–19n. SKS 12, 228 / PC, 234. SKS 12, 229 / PC, 235. SKS 12, 230 / PC, 237. SKS 27, 467, Papir 391:1 / JP 3, 3139. SKS 14, 123 / M, 4. SKS 13, 248 / M, 197.

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kept in the condition he considers to be Christian: a good sheep for shearing, a harmless mediocrity, for whom eternity is closed.”20 through the attack literature but especially in The Moment, number 7, Kierkegaard’s references to the clergy increase dramatically. in this edition of The Moment, Kierkegaard sees repentance as practically impossible in danish Christendom. He calls the clergy poets who only relate to Christianity as a possibility, hypocrites,21 who are more interested in their own financial well-being than following the demands of Christianity22 and who, in fact, “do exactly the opposite of what the new testament” calls the Christian to do.23 the entire profession is corrupt to such an extent that “honesty can be expressed only by one’s terminating membership in the profession.”24 the parallel with the preface to the second edition of Practice in Christianity is unmistakable, and it is clear in the final attack literature that honesty and resorting to grace are not options for the clergy or the church. in one late journal entry, Kierkegaard goes so far as to say that the churches belong to satan and that the clergy are servants of satan rather than god.25 Kierkegaard’s attitude toward pastors, like his understanding of the relationship between Christendom and Christianity and his attitude toward the danish Church, develops from his earlier writings into a more caustic and critical characterization in the attack literature. instead of needing to admit the perils of Christendom for Christianity—a requirement of honesty and resorting to grace—the danish Church and the pastors have become complicit in the exchange of Christianity for Christendom. see also Christendom; Church; grace; martyrdom/persecution; state; witness.

20 21 22 23 24 25

ibid. SKS 13, 282 / M, 226. SKS 13, 285 / M, 227–8. SKS 13, 297 / M, 241. SKS 13, 311 / M, 255. Pap. Xi 3-b 197 / JP 3, 3188.

patience Corey benjamin tutewiler

Patience (Taalmod—noun; Taalmodighed—noun; taalmodig—adjective) the lexical meaning of Taalmod (from the old danish tolmodh) and Taalmodighed (from the old danish tholmodughet, tolmodighed) is patience, but it is associated with endurance as well.1 Kierkegaard’s most direct and comprehensive considerations of patience are in his early upbuilding discourses, where one can find it in “To Gain One’s Soul in patience,”2 “to preserve one’s soul in patience,”3 and “patience in expectancy”4— all of which were published under his own name between december 1843 and march 1844. otherwise, his considerations of patience are comparatively brief and contextualized within other themes, notably in Either/Or,5 Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits,6 and Works of Love.7 while Kierkegaard’s understanding of patience underwent minimal change throughout his authorship, over time his attention did shift from the patience of human beings to that of god.8 this article focuses primarily on the former, due to its greater prevalence, and concludes with a brief analysis of the latter. I. Introducing the Patience of Human Beings in “Love will Hide a multitude of sins,” Kierkegaard writes: “all observation is not just a receiving, a discovering, but also a bringing forth, and insofar as it is that, how the observer himself is constituted is indeed decisive.”9 for Kierkegaard, the relationship between the truth and the individual is not one of indifference, and for this reason, the truth is, in a sense, concerned with how the individual is constituted. Ordbog over det danske Sprog, vols. 1–28, published by the society for danish Language and Literature, Copenhagen: gyldendal 1918–56, vol. 23, columns 480–3. 2 SKS 5, 159–74 / EUD, 159–75. 3 SKS 5, 185–205 / EUD, 181–203. 4 SKS 5, 206–24 / EUD, 205–26. 5 SKS 3, 133–6 / EO2, 134–8. 6 SKS 8, 219–20 / UD, 118–19. 7 SKS 9, 222–4 / WL, 219–22. 8 in journal entries dating from the mid- to late 1840s, “patience” is almost always god’s patience. 9 SKS 5, 69 / EUD, 59. 1

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this is why an individual’s ability to recognize truth is always coterminous with his becoming the truth.10 as it relates to the human being, Kierkegaard understands patience as an essential aspect of a rightly constituted self. no mere feeling, thought, or act in itself, patience is the way of being for the individual disposed to recognize and welcome truth. Kierkegaard differentiates this understanding of patience in terms of how it is customarily understood—respectively, in its eternal and temporal (sometimes internal and external) senses.11 whereas in the temporal sense patience is a means for achieving some further end, in the eternal sense patience is both a means and an end, inseparably joining the “condition and the conditioned.”12 that is, Kierkegaard regards it not as a tool to be discarded once some goal is attained, since becoming a self requires patience without end. understood temporally, patience is regrettably unavoidable: “humanly speaking, it would be better if it were not needed.”13 in the eternal sense, on the contrary, patience is itself a good—the way of being for the individual who strives to become a self. II. Patience as Passive Kierkegaard describes patience as both passive and active. it is passive insofar as it relates to an individual who is passively postured to receive truth; it is active insofar as it relates to the same individual who, having become open to truth, is undergoing change for the good—or more precisely, becoming a self. first, “[p]atience is…just as passive as it is active.”14 impatience is generally conceived by Kierkegaard as a way of being that obstructs openness to truth.15 impatience is nihilistic; it is the “adored idol who makes everything into nothing.”16 Further, the adverse effect of impatience is not confined to the intellect; virtue is made impossible as well. impatience cannot be reconciled with “true inwardness.”17 if “blessedness is the highest good,” impatience stands between the individual and the acquisition of this good.18 Knowing that impatience impairs judgment, the patient individual suspects the veracity of his own rationality, his own familiar manner of reasoning. put differently, the patient one, instead of merely questioning externalities, puts the question to

Cf. SKS 21, 172, nb8:63 / JP 2, 2299: “the only fundamental basis for understanding is that one himself becomes what he understands and one understands only in proportion to becoming himself that which he understands.” 11 in this context the temporal is understood on its own terms, rather than being understood as synthesized with, or enriched by, the eternal. 12 SKS 5, 168 / EUD, 169. 13 SKS 5, 167 / EUD, 168. 14 SKS 5, 190, 199 / EUD, 187, 197 (my emphasis). 15 Cf. SKS 8, 132, 349–50 / UD, 17, 250–1; SKS 5, 198 / EUD, 196. 16 SKS 5, 198 / EUD, 196. 17 SKS 8, 132 / UD, 17. 18 SKS 10, 230 / CD, 222. 10

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himself.19 for the individual who has yet to realize the necessity of doing so, “the moment may come when it is manifest that he exerted his thought and his eloquence for nothing, when it is manifest that his words were a fraud, not to deceive others, far from it, but a fraud in which he himself was deceived.”20 in addition, patience understands that an individual’s desires are disordered by impatience. Consequently, patience “discovers the danger…[that] would be right there if a person was able to obtain something by wishing in this way [in his own selfish, impatient way].”21 patience, then, does not “jeeringly tell a person that no one can add a foot to his growth, as if he wanted to make him feel how small he is and how powerless.”22 rather, it fears that “the most sacred power in him, the will, would become a wish.”23 but since patience “is the only one that truly wishes a person well,”24 it rightfully restricts and guides him for his own good. without such guidance “life would be without meaning and without truth.”25 as passive, patience does not add “something to the soul,” but rather subtracts “something from it.”26 this is why the patient individual forswears all insubordinate attempts to possess himself. instead, he earnestly devotes himself to the “quiet but unflagging activity”27 of patience and “sacrifices it [his soul] by submitting it to god.”28 that is, “the patient one gives his consent by willing to submit to the suffering.”29 after the individual is de-centered in this way, he no longer attempts to wrest his soul away from an illegitimate possessor, but is wrested away from himself and subjected to the one who legitimately possesses his soul: this is “none other than the eternal being, than god himself.”30 This transformation demands sacrifice, but all is certainly not lost. In surrendering to god, “the soul comes to terms with…god in that it sufferingly accepts itself from him.”31 it is important to note that for Kierkegaard the nature of this suffering relationship is unique in that it provides the only way for the individual to be at once dependent and independent (in his dependence): “patience makes itself free in the unavoidable suffering.”32 due to the fact that god and created beings qualitatively differ from one another in being, “dependence on god is the only independence,

19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32

Cf. SKS 5, 160 / EUD, 160. SKS 5, 204 / EUD, 202–3. SKS 5, 193 / EUD, 190. SKS 5, 193 / EUD, 189–90. SKS 5, 194 / EUD, 191. SKS 5, 192 / EUD, 189; SKS 8, 220 / UD, 118–19. SKS 5, 193 / EUD, 190. SKS 5, 170 / EUD, 171. SKS 5, 168–9 / EUD, 170. SKS 5, 221 / EUD, 222. SKS 8, 220 / UD, 119. SKS 5, 165, 170 / EUD, 166, 171. SKS 5, 170 / EUD, 172. SKS 8, 220 / UD, 119.

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because god has no gravity.”33 one only gains and possesses true selfhood by suffering in relation to god, because He is the giver of selfhood.34 III. Patience as Active patience is also “just as active as it is passive.”35 as active, patience enables motion or movement for the individual. this motion is not to be understood spatially, however, because in that sense “one almost never moves from the spot.”36 rather, patience enables the movement of the inner being, a virtuous movement directed toward the good.37 there are two ways to describe this inner movement. first, patience provides the condition for one’s flight from despair. “patience,” Kierkegaard writes, “does not keep company with despair’s mockery.”38 it does not want an individual to become enmeshed in doubt and despair, since it is not the “distrust of life that patience teaches.”39 Specifically, patience assists an individual by guiding him toward the achievement of his true, constitutive equilibrium, overthrowing the despair of both possibility and necessity (as they are defined in The Sickness unto Death).40 second, one can describe this movement as the self’s advance toward the truly human; one’s soul is gained in patience. Kierkegaard often stresses that the movement enabled by patience is difficult to conceptualize, because it is paradoxical to the extent that it corresponds to the paradoxical constitution of the human soul.41 Expressing this difficulty, Kierkegaard asks, “What is there to live for if a person has to spend his whole life gaining the presupposition that on the deepest level is life’s presupposition—yes, what does this mean?”42 what does it mean to possess and gain “the same thing in the same moment?”43 the language of potentiality and actuality can come to the reader’s aid here, loosening the shackles of a univocal conceptualization. for instance, one “who comes into the world possesses nothing, but the one who comes into the world in the nakedness of his soul does nevertheless possess his soul [as potential], that is, as SKS 8, 280 / UD, 182. Cf. SKS 11, 129–30 / SUD, 13–14. 35 SKS 5, 190, 199 / EUD, 187, 197 (my emphasis). 36 SKS 5, 162 / EUD, 162. 37 Cf. SKS 5, 216 / EUD, 216. 38 SKS 5, 195 / EUD, 192. 39 ibid. 40 Cf. SKS 11, 150–7 / SUD, 35–42. see also SKS 5, 193 / EUD, 190: “it [patience] sees the danger in the way impatience infatuates the young person; it sees that impatience could take on a new form and sit grieving with the young person and wish that it had been possible, if only it had been possible.” 41 Cf. SKS 5, 165–6 / EUD, 166: “His soul is a self-contradiction between the external and the internal, the temporal and the eternal….if it were not in contradiction, it would be lost in the life of the world; if it were not self-contradiction, movement would be impossible.” 42 SKS 5, 161 / EUD, 161. 43 SKS 5, 165 / EUD, 166. 33 34

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something that is to be gained [as actual].”44 patience is perhaps best understood as a teleological concept.45 when the individual does not properly possess his soul, “the trouble is that one is outside oneself.”46 the motion an individual undergoes as he gains his soul in patience is then inward. He acquires “the conditions of his life.”47 this signifies a movement from privation to fullness, not a quantitative development. It is in this movement that one gains “life’s presupposition.”48 Kierkegaard understands patience as the enabling condition for the individual who undergoes such virtuous movement. one might take notice that the movement enabled by patience involves a change, not of outer, but inner conditions. in the inner, virtuous movement made possible by patience, nothing in the world is changed, but the individual himself is changed in such a way that everything in the world can be seen afresh. patience helps an individual to relate rightfully to himself and to the reality in which he is a participant.49 if impatience is the adored idol that makes everything into nothing, then one may certainly concede that patience provides the condition for nothing to be made into everything. IV. Patience and Expectancy while life can acquire a measure of meaningfulness for the human being in the present, there is still a greater sense of fulfillment that will not arrive until the fullness of time. for this reason, expectancy—which is very similar to hope—and patience should be understood in conjunction with one another: “expectancy itself… determines whether a person is patient.”50 it is important to understand how patience relates the continuous relationship between the partial fulfillment that can occur here and now and the greater sense of fulfillment that has yet to come. often enough, human beings are confronted with the thought that “life is uncertain,”51 and there may come a moment when it is difficult to see beyond this uncertainty. in patience, one can see beyond the futility of such doubt; it is not the “distrust of life that patience teaches.”52 in the midst of existential crisis, when one is tempted to say, “i have been given nothing; in the great design of things

SKS 5, 163 / EUD, 163–4. one might think of the transition that occurs when an individual goes from using a tool (say, a hammer) incorrectly to using the very same tool correctly. the hammer was always possessed in a limited sense, but this possession was no true possession. that is, one does not possess a hammer until one uses it as a hammer. 46 SKS 5, 169 / EUD, 171. 47 SKS 5, 160 / EUD, 160. 48 SKS 5, 161 / EUD, 161. 49 in particular, Kierkegaard emphasizes how this pertains to an individual’s relationship with temporality. Cf. SKS 3, 133–6 / EO2, 134–8; SKS 10, 107–16 / CD, 95–105. 50 SKS 5, 220 / EUD, 220. 51 SKS 5, 188 / EUD, 184. 52 SKS 5, 195 / EUD, 192. 44 45

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that provides for all, i was even more forgotten than the sparrow,”53 it is patience that “expects good fortune to smile once again.”54 that is, when the temptation to doubt the meaningfulness of life presents itself, the patient individual overcomes that temptation in expectancy. the patient one expects that life’s meaning will be reconciled with his view of life. But what about the fulfillment that “fails to come”55 here and now? although one’s life can certainly acquire a measure of meaningfulness presently, fulfillment is not completely realized in the present age. there is then, secondly, an eschatological fulfillment—one that is grounded in an essentially Christian perspective—that will arrive in the fullness of time. Kierkegaard describes what such an individual patiently awaits in the following manner: you are expecting the resurrection of the dead, of both the righteous and the unrighteous; you are expecting a blessed reunion with those whom death took away from you and with those whom life separated from you; you are expecting that your life will become transparent and clear to you, your estate in blessed understanding with your god and with yourself, undisturbed by the passion that, troubled, seeks to guess the riddles of providential dispensation. but of course the expectancy is not disappointed, because the time of its fulfillment has not yet arrived.56

V. God’s Patience and Patience with the Neighbor the patience of god must be differentiated from the patience of human beings, because god and human beings qualitatively differ from one another in being. as seen above, the patience of the self before god expresses a suffering relationship; the self becomes subordinate to, and dependent upon, god. on the contrary, god’s patience should be understood in light of his impassibility: “he does not change in mood—that, after all, is impatience.”57 the patience of god is analogous to that of a parent or schoolmaster accommodating a child.58 God’s is “infinite patience”59 with “a human being’s striving.”60 while patience is different for god from what it is for human beings, there is some similarity worthy of mention. first, for both god and human beings patience is the way each lovingly relates to the other.61 second, god’s patience with human beings serves as a model for how human beings should relate to one another. this can be seen in Works of Love, where Kierkegaard writes that love “is not arrogant in the opinion that it should create love in the other person, it is not irritable and impetuous, impatience, almost hopefully busy with what it must first tear down in 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61

SKS 5, 214 / EUD, 214. SKS 8, 22 / TA, 19. SKS 5, 213 / EUD, 213. SKS 5, 216 / EUD, 216. SKS 11, 35 / WA, 31. Cf. SKS 11, 35–6 / WA, 30–2. SKS 23, 17, nb15:15 / JP 3, 3444. SKS 22, 374, nb14:46 / JP 2, 1473. Cf. SKS 21, 119, nb7:83 / JP 4, 4451.

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order to build up again.”62 Kierkegaard insists that love, which is to be cultivated in the neighbor, is always latently present in the neighbor. as with god’s relationship with human beings, love is not cultivated forcefully; it is cultivated by patiently suffering with the neighbor.63 indeed, “love builds up by patience.”64 in conclusion, although patience manifests itself differently in different relationships, it can generally be understood as that which constitutes right relationships. in relation to god (or truth), human beings are at once de-centered (patience as passive) and mobilized (patience as active). they are subsequently conditioned to relate rightfully to all aspects of life. the immutable god, by contrast, is infinitely patient with the striving of human beings, which in turn models the relationships human beings are to have with one another. see also Courage; gratitude; inwardness/inward deepening; suffering; time/ temporality/eternality; will.

62 63 64

SKS 9, 224 / WL, 221–2. Cf. SKS 22, 426, nb14:144 / JP 4, 4552. SKS 9, 222 / WL, 219–20.

personality wolter Hartog

Personality (Personlighed—noun) the danish word personlighed stems from the old danish personelighet, which is cognate with the middle High german personlicheit. just like the english rendering “personality,” it is derived from the Late Latin word personalitas, which was crafted by the scholastics to denote the nature of the difference between the three persons of the trinity, namely, as a difference not in essence or in nature, but in personality.1 Personalitas, in turn, is derived from the Latin persona, and the greek πρόσωπον, both of which refer to the theatrical or social mask, role or character of an individual. personality, in the ordinary sense, thus can be said to mean: that which belongs to the persona, that is, the theatrical or social mask, role, character or simply the person of an individual. In addition, the word can refer more specifically to the state of being, or the ability to be a person, whether or not of greater distinction. Kierkegaard uses the concept of personality primarily to refer both to the concrete characteristics of a person and to the ability to be a person. first, the concept is closely connected to character (Charakte(e)r/Karakter), which, as Kierkegaard notes, is etymologically derived from the greek χαϱάσσω, meaning “engraved,”2 and which refers more to the outward characteristics of a person. second, Kierkegaard points to the presumed kinship with the Latin verb (per)sonare, “to sound (through),” based on the famous etymology of the roman grammarian gavius bassus, upon which Kierkegaard concludes that one could also call it transparency (Gjennemsigtighed).3 although the etymology is mistaken, Kierkegaard’s reference to it makes clear that the concept of personality is also closely connected to his notion of inwardness (Inderlighed), the inward relation of a person to himself, which is the condition for being a person and for the constitution of the personality as a whole. this explains why, in some instances, Kierkegaard uses personality as a synonym for the self or the singular individual (den Enkelte).4 in addition, Kierkegaard goes back to the initial use of the word personality, by using it to refer to the three personalities of the Holy trinity, and thereby also to the personal character of god and the relationship to Him, ulrich dierse and rudolph Lassahn, “persönlichkeit,” in Historisches Wörterbuch der Philosophie, vols. 1–13, ed. by joachim ritter and Karlfried gründer, darmstadt: wissenschaftliche buchgesellschaft 1971–2007, vol. 7, 1989, p. 345. 2 SKS 8, 75 / TA, 77. 3 SKS 26, 273, nb33:33a / JP 3, 3224. Cf. SKS 25, 433, nb30:57 / JP 1, 180. 4 e.g. SKS 11, 155 / SUD, 40; SKS 12, 91 / PC, 81. 1

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that is, faith. finally, he reconnects the word personality with its original derivation, that is, persona, by calling his pseudonyms, who can be compared to actors on a stage, “poetic personalities.”5 the concept of personality plays an important role in Kierkegaard’s thought, which can already be seen in the fact that the word, in all its declensions, occurs over 200 times in his published writings, and equally as often in his unpublished journals and papers. in the published writings, the word mainly occurs in his early work. main passages occur in From the Papers of One Still Living, The Concept of Irony and Either/Or, part two, in which the concept is primarily used in the ordinary sense. in his journals and notebooks, Kierkegaard uses the word, in addition to the ordinary use, to discuss the nature and personality of Christ. in his later writings, in particular in Practice in Christianity, For Self-Examination, and The Moment, Kierkegaard touches upon the central role of personality in faith. in this article, the following aspects of Kierkegaard’s use of the concept of personality will be discussed: (i) his conception of personality; (ii) his typology of (a) aesthetic, (b) ethical, and (c) religious personalities; (iii) his view on the personality of the author/thinker; and (iV) his use of poetic personalities (pseudonyms) in his own authorship. I. Conception although Kierkegaard uses the concept of personality sometimes to refer to the immediate, concrete characteristics of a person, already in his early writings it becomes clear that possessing particular qualities is not sufficient for having a genuine or actual personality. personality, according to Kierkegaard, is not something one already has, but it is something that should be acquired first. In particular in his review of andersen’s novel Only a Fiddler, entitled From the Papers of One Still Living, Kierkegaard stresses the importance for a human being in general, and for an author or a thinker in particular, to acquire and to develop personality. in order to acquire a personality, one should establish a certain unity within one’s life and between one’s life-experiences, by developing what Kierkegaard calls a life-view: a basic view of the world, which functions as a vantage point, from which all lifeexperiences can be interpreted, appropriated and integrated into one’s personality as a whole. this early conception of personality is further developed by the ethicist, judge william, in the second essay of Either/Or, part two, entitled “the balance between the esthetic and the ethical in the development of personality.” in this text, the ethicist confirms that personality is not something one already has, but rather a potency, which should be realized and developed first. However, in contrast to the early Kierkegaard, the ethicist does not focus so much on life experiences, but rather, on the specific qualities of the particular individual, which should be unified into a whole, on the basis of a life-view. according to the ethicist, one can only speak of an actual personality if all the concrete, outward characteristics of a specific individual 5

SKS 27, 428, papir 371:1 / JP 1, 656.

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are unified into a whole. It is this “maturing of one’s personality,” which matters more than “the cultivating of one’s mind,”6 the ethicist declares, and he even states that the “binding power of the personality” is “the most inward and holy in a human being.”7 II. Typology The way in which a personality is formed and unified is determined by the guiding life-view, which the ethicist defines as “a conception of the meaning of life and of its purpose.”8 accordingly, on the basis of the different life-views which Kierkegaard distinguishes, that is, the aesthetic, the ethical and the religious life-view, it is possible to establish a typology of different kinds of personalities. (a) Aesthetic Personality: the aesthetic life-view teaches that the purpose of life is to enjoy life. it represents the immediate quest to be engrossed in the mood of enjoyment in each and every moment. because the aim of the aesthetic life-view is to lose oneself, the ethicist states that the aesthetic personality does not have its center in itself, and, therefore, it is always “eccentric.”9 as a result, an aesthetic personality is always exposed to “enormous fluctuations.”10 depending on the way in which the aesthetic maxim to enjoy life is interpreted, it is possible to distinguish different ways in which an aesthetic personality is shaped and qualified. First, the maxim to enjoy life can be interpreted on the basis of the belief that physical health and beauty are the greatest goods in life. in this case, the individual will focus on developing and sustaining his or her immediate physical qualities. accordingly, the ethicist declares that, in this case, “the personality is immediately qualified, not mentally-spiritually but physically.”11 However, since beauty, just like health, “is a very frail good,”12 as the ethicist notes, this lifeview can hardly be maintained, as a result of which this kind of personality will eventually fall apart. second, the maxim to enjoy life can also be pursued through developing one’s talent in practical affairs, like business, mathematics, writing, art or philosophy. In this case, the personality as a whole is characterized by the specific talent that one has, and, hence, the ethicist states that “the personality is ordinarily defined as talent.”13 third, the aesthetic maxim to enjoy life can be interpreted as: “Live for your desire,” and accordingly, be carried out by the attempt to satisfy one’s desire(s).14 in this case, the personality will be primarily characterized by the specific desire(s) one seeks to fulfill. The desire one seeks to fulfill, however, can either be multiple, or it can be limited to one specific desire. With regard to the first 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14

SKS 3, 159 / EO2, 162. SKS 3, 158 / EO2, 160. SKS 3, 175 / EO2, 179. SKS 3, 220 / EO2, 230. ibid. SKS 3, 176 / EO2, 181. ibid. SKS 3, 178 / EO2, 183. ibid.

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case, the ethicist notes that one’s life, and thereby one’s personality, will inevitably split up “in a boundless multiplicity.”15 as an example of such a personality, the ethicist refers to the historical figure of Nero, but one could also refer to Don Juan from mozart’s opera, Don Giovanni, as depicted by the aesthete a in Either/Or, part one. He is an example of an immediate, sensuous seducer, who tries to satisfy his admittedly similar desires for a different woman in each and every moment. also in the attempt to fulfill the aesthetic maxim to enjoy life by trying to satisfy only one specific desire, however, the personality will eventually end up in multiplicity. This multiplicity is caused by the reflection into which the individual will inevitably become entangled as a result of the attempt to satisfy this one and only desire. this can be seen in the example of johannes the seducer in Either/Or, part one, a poetic creation by A himself of a young man who loses himself in reflection on his failed attempt to satisfy his desire for his one and only Cordelia, and who is accordingly characterized as a “reflective seducer.”16 the aesthete a himself, in turn, can be considered as one of Kierkegaard’s own “poetic personalities” and, according to the ethicist, as a more distinguished aesthetic personality, who shares something with all the personalities described. finally, all aesthetic life-views (and thus personalities) are characterized by (latent) despair and will eventually end up in (conscious) despair, which represents the last aesthetic life-view and the transitional stage to the ethical at the same time. Despair is defined by the ethicist as “personality’s doubt,”17 and as “an expression of the total personality.”18 in despair, one’s whole personality is called into question, including one’s finite qualities and the immediate attempts to shape them on the basis of the aesthetic life-view. although the ethicist holds that every aesthetic lifeview and personality is haunted by latent despair, it is only when one consciously gives into it, or when one chooses despair, that one’s life-view and personality are really qualified by it.19 as the ethicist summarizes: “this last life-view is despair itself. it is an esthetic life-view, because the personality remains in its immediacy; it is the final esthetic life-view, for up to a point it has absorbed the consciousness of the nothingness of such a life-view.”20 (b) Ethical Personality: an ethical personality is a personality whose concrete qualities are unified on the basis of the guiding ethical life-view, which dictates that the goal of life is to choose oneself, and thereby to acquire and to develop one’s personality as a whole. in the inevitable despair of the aesthetic life-view lies the possibility to become conscious of that over which one despairs, namely, one’s immediate and finite aesthetic self or personality, including its specific qualities or characteristics.21 The consciousness of oneself as “this specific individual with these capacities, these inclinations, these drives, these passions, influenced by this specific 15 16 17 18 19 20 21

ibid. SKS 2, 17 / EO1, 9. SKS 3, 203 / EO2, 211. SKS 3, 204 / EO2, 212. Cf. SKS 3, 203 / EO2, 211. SKS 3, 188 / EO2, 194. SKS 3, 213 / EO2, 222.

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social milieu, as this specific product of a specific environment,”22 also reveals the possibility to take responsibility for oneself, to take possession of oneself, that is, to choose oneself as this concrete and particular personality. from an ethical point of view, this self-choice is decisive for both the acquisition and the development of personality. according to the ethicist, it is the goal or telos for everyone to choose oneself, to take possession of oneself and thereby, to establish one’s personality firmly. Accordingly, the aim of the ethical life-view, to take possession of oneself, is precisely opposite to the aim of the aesthetic life-view to lose oneself. instead of being eccentric, like the personality of the aesthete, the ethical personality “has its center in itself.”23 when one does not choose oneself, like the aesthetic personality, one’s personality will be determined by contingent and arbitrary conditions within oneself, like one’s accidental physical condition, one’s innate talents or one’s blind and fluctuating desires. This is why the ethicist writes a bit enigmatically: “already prior to one’s choosing, the personality is interested in the choice, and if one puts off the choice, the personality or the obscure forces within it unconsciously chooses.”24 by contrast, when one does choose oneself, the ethicist writes, “the personality declares itself in its inner infinity and in turn the personality is thereby consolidated.”25 for this reason, the ethicist holds that even “the richest personality,” that is, the one who possesses the most exceptional qualities, “is nothing before he has chosen himself; and on the other hand even what might be called the poorest personality is everything when he has chosen himself.”26 (c) Religious Personality: Kierkegaard does not explicitly mention or distinguish the third type of a religious personality, mainly because in his later religious writings he no longer makes use of the concept of a life-view to distinguish different types of personality. nevertheless, it seems quite obvious that a religious personality, for Kierkegaard, is characterized, above all, by his faith, and in his later writings, Kierkegaard does indeed discuss the central role of personality in faith. Kierkegaard defines faith as “the relation of a personality to a personality.”27 this formula first emphasizes the personal character of God, who according to the Christian tradition should be considered as a personal being, consisting of three personalities. Kierkegaard addresses the personal character of god, especially in The Moment, in which he opposes an “official” approach to God with a personal approach to God, by emphasizing that “god is a personal being,” and “in the most eminent sense personality, sheer personality.”28 with regard to the three personalities of the trinity, he does not explicitly discuss the personality of the father and only once refers to the personality of the Holy spirit,29 but he mainly focuses on the personality of Christ, the son, especially in his notes on the work of contemporary theologians, 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29

SKS 3, 239 / EO2, 251. SKS 3, 220 / EO2, 230. SKS 3, 161 / EO2, 164. SKS 3, 164 / EO2, 167. SKS 3, 173 / EO2, 177. SKS 25, 433, nb30:57 / JP 1, 180. Cf. SKS 27, 616, papir 486 / JP 2, 1154. SKS 13, 221 / M, 173. SKS 7, 48 / CUP1, 42.

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like david friedrich strauss,30 Hans Lassen martensen,31 and also in his berlin notes on schelling.32 in highlighting the personality of Christ, Kierkegaard opposes the modern tendency to reduce Christ, the god-man, to the “speculative unity of god and man sub specie aeterni,”33 and to take his message as a set of objective doctrines, instead of understanding faith as a relation to a personal god, who has appeared as “an individual human being in a historically actual situation.”34 as antiClimacus writes in Practice in Christianity: “in our day everything is made abstract and everything personal is abolished: we take Christ’s teaching and abolish Christ. this is to abolish Christianity, for Christ is a person and is the teacher who is more important than the teaching.”35 Second, Kierkegaard’s definition of faith as “the relation of a personality to a personality,” implies also that one should relate personally, as this particular person with this particular personality, to god and to his word. Kierkegaard develops this point, especially in one of his Christian Discourses entitled “He was believed in the world,” in which he emphasizes that faith addresses everyone personally and therefore is also essentially “related to the personality.”36 in For Self-Examination, Kierkegaard argues that one should also approach the word of god in a personal manner, namely, by reading it subjectively, as if every word concerns oneself. in this way, he states, one “does not transform the word into something impersonal (the objective, an objective doctrine, etc.),” but instead, one brings one’s “personality into play.”37 Kierkegaard compares this way of reading the bible to looking into a mirror, in order to illustrate that “it takes a personality, an i, to look in the mirror.”38 it is only in this way, he states, “that, with god’s help, [one] will succeed in becoming a human being, a personality, rescued from being this dreadful nonentity into which we humans, created in the image of god, have been bewitched, an impersonal, an objective something.”39 III. The Personality of the Author/Thinker the concept of personality plays an important role not only in Kierkegaard’s ethicalreligious thought but also in his views on communication and writing. first, according to Kierkegaard it is necessary that an author or a thinker develop a personality. if an author or a thinker has not developed his or her own life-view and, accordingly, has not acquired a personality, this will become evident in his or her writing or thinking: it will lack inner coherence, and it will be arbitrary and purposeless. this is the case 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39

see SKS 18, 321–36, KK:2 / KJN 2, 292–313. see SKS 18, 377–83, KK:11 / KJN 2, 342–52. see SKS 19, 321–57, not11:15–35 / KJN, 3, 321–56. SKS 12, 128 / PC, 123. ibid. SKS 12, 129 / PC, 123–4 SKS 10, 245 / CD, 238. SKS 13, 63 / FSE, 35–6. SKS 13, 70 / FSE, 44. SKS 13, 69 / FSE, 43.

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with H.C. andersen’s writings, in particular his short novels, according to the early Kierkegaard. these novels lack an encompassing life-view, which can be seen in the fact that the descriptions of the characters and situations are inconsistent and do not appear to be appropriated by the author within a consistent life-view. accordingly, Kierkegaard concludes that andersen cannot be characterized as a personality, but rather as a “possibility of a personality…who, in order to become a personality, needs a strong life-development [Livs-Udvikling].”40 as a counter-example to andersen, Kierkegaard mentions the anonymous author of A Story of Everyday Life, which was written by thomasine gyllembourg.41 the latter is an example par excellence of an author who is able successfully to sketch a convincing life-view, which precisely because of its persuasiveness, must have had “its corresponding element in existence.”42 in other words, the writings of gyllembourg resemble an author who has developed a consistent life-view and personality herself, on the basis of which she is able to offer a profound illustration of concrete existence. also later, in his review of gyllembourg’s Two Ages, Kierkegaard praises gyllembourg’s ability to achieve, on the basis of her life-view, exceptional “transparency of event and personality” in her novel.43 IV. Poetic Personalities second, having developed one’s own personality enables one to offer a consistent sketch of both actual and poetic personalities. in The Concept of Irony, Kierkegaard evaluates three ancient authors, namely, Xenophon, plato, and aristophanes, on the basis of their ability to offer a consistent, literary sketch of the personality of socrates. this is necessary in order to deal properly with irony, because irony, just like subjective thinking,44 is always connected to a particular person in a particular situation. “an ironist,” Kierkegaard states, “is always singular,” and therefore, “falls under the rubric of personality.”45 the challenge then is to give a consistent account of socrates’ particular personality, and at the same time, to illustrate the universal meaning and function of irony as exemplified by this personality. According to Kierkegaard, Xenophon fails to do so, because he loses himself in arbitrary, empirical details, without paying attention to the meaning of socrates’ personality in general.46 plato, by contrast, considers socrates’ personality as an “immediate conveyer of the divine [idea],” and elevates his personality “into the supramundane regions of the idea,” without paying attention to the “empirical actuality” of his personality.47 according to Kierkegaard, only aristophanes is able to depict socrates’ actual personality, and at the same time, to highlight the ideality, that is, the general 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47

SKS 1, 26 / EPW, 70. SKS 1, 21–4 / EPW, 64–9. SKS 1, 21 / EPW, 65. SKS 8, 18 / TA, 15. SKS 1, 175 / CI, 123. SKS 1, 198 / CI, 147. SKS 1, 78–81 / CI, 16–19. SKS 1, 179–80 / CI, 128–9.

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meaning and function of irony. He does so by “bringing an actual personality on stage, yet in such a way that this one is indeed seen as a representative of the idea.”48 This brings us finally to Kierkegaard’s own use of what he calls “poetic personalities” in his strategy to communicate ethical and ethical-religious truth indirectly. in “the dialectic of ethical and ethical-religious Communication,” he writes: one of the tragedies of modern times is precisely this—to have abolished the “i,” the personal “i.” for this very reason, real ethical-religious communication is as if vanished from the world. for ethical-religious truth is related essentially to personality and can only be communicated by an i to an i. as soon as the communication becomes objective in this realm, the truth has become untruth. personality is what we need. therefore i regard it as my merit that, by bringing poetized personalities who say i to the center of life’s actuality (my pseudonyms), i have done what i can do to accustom contemporaries once more to hear an i, a personal i speak (not that fantastic pure i and its ventriloquism).49

because ethical-religious truth is dependent on the way in which a particular individual relates to it, it can never be communicated in an impersonal, objective way. this is why Kierkegaard created his pseudonyms, and his pseudonyms, in turn, the numerous fictional characters that appear in Kierkegaard’s pseudonymous writings, like johannes the seducer, the young man in Repetition and in Stages on Life’s Way, etc. they are all imaginary personalities, who relate subjectively to the ideas they exemplify, and thereby confront the reader with the implicit question of how he or she relates to these ideas. accordingly, these poetic personalities could well be considered as personas in the original sense of the word, that is, as actors on a stage, and as masks through which Kierkegaard is able to address his reader in a personal way. see also aesthetic/aesthetics; anonymity; Choice; Communication/indirect Communication; Concrete/abstract; ethics; faith; Holy spirit; individual; inwardness/ inward deepening; Life-View; pseudonymity; religious/religiousness; self.

48 49

SKS 1, 180 / CI, 129. SKS 27, 428, papir 371:1 / JP 1, 656.

philosophy/ philosophers william mcdonald

Philosophy/Philosophers (Philosophi(e)—noun; Philosoph—noun; philosophisk— adjective) Philosophi is derived from the greek φιλοσοφία, meaning love of wisdom.1 its lexical meanings in danish include: love of wisdom; the scholarly discipline that encompasses all knowledge; and rigorously grounded learning about human thinking and the quest to formulate a world-view. it can also refer to a layperson’s system of thought as the sum of his or her life-experience.2 a philosopher is one who pursues or cultivates philosophical learning.3 the concept of philosophy pervades Kierkegaard’s corpus, with the notable exception of the edifying discourses and Works of Love, which contain not a single use of the word Philosophi or any of its grammatical variants. in fact the word is rarely used in the “second authorship” (after the “Corsair affair”), though it is used throughout Kierkegaard’s journals, papers, and notebooks from the earliest to the latest and throughout his letters. the pseudonym most associated with use of the term is johannes Climacus, particularly as the author of the Concluding Unscientific Postscript, which has the most occurrences of the term in any published work, and as the title character in Johannes Climacus, or De omnibus dubitandum est, which has the highest number of occurrences of the term in an unpublished work outside of the journals, papers and notebooks. the second most frequent occurrence of the term in the published works is in The Concept of Irony, followed by Either/Or, then The Book on Adler, Prefaces, The Concept of Anxiety, Philosophical Fragments, and Stages on Life’s Way. in addition to the use of the word Philosophi and its variants, Kierkegaard’s corpus also contains many references to particular philosophers, including thales,4

Ordbog over det danske Sprog, vols. 1–28, published by the society for danish Language and Literature, Copenhagen: gyldendal 1918–56, vol. 4, columns 961–3. note the modern orthography is filosofi, filosof, and filosofisk. 2 ibid. 3 ibid., columns 960–1. 4 e.g. SKS 6, 116 / SLW, 123. 1

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Heraclitus,5 empedocles,6 zeno,7 socrates,8 plato,9 aristotle,10 sextus empiricus,11 augustine,12 duns scotus,13 william of occam,14 descartes,15 Locke,16 Leibniz,17 Hume,18 Lessing,19 Kant,20 fichte,21 Hegel,22 schelling,23 schopenhauer,24 and Kierkegaard’s danish contemporaries poul martin møller,25 rasmus nielsen,26 and frederik Christian sibbern.27 the corpus also contains references to schools of philosophy, such as the eleatics,28 the stoics,29 the sceptics,30 the epicureans,31 the Cynics,32 scholasticism,33 rationalism,34 empiricism,35 idealism,36 and romanticism.37 most frequently among philosophical schools, however, he refers to the Hegelians.38 this far from exhausts the list of particular philosophers and philosophical schools Kierkegaard discusses, but it indicates the scope of his interest in the topic. He also borrows philosophical concepts for key roles in his work.

5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38

e.g. SKS 4, 25 / R, 148. e.g. SKS 18, 292, jj:455 / JP 4, 3896. e.g. SKS 7, 258 / CUP1, 283. e.g. SKS 1, 54 / EPW, 99. e.g. SKS 1, 286 / CI, 247. e.g. SKS 2, 139 / EO1, 139. e.g. SKS 4, 244 / PF, 38. e.g. SKS 17, 32, aa:14 / JP 1, 29. e.g. SKS 19, 401, not13:36 / KJN 3, 397. e.g. ibid. e.g. SKS 4, 101 / FT, 5. e.g. SKS 19, 132, not4:7 / KJN 3, 132. e.g. SKS 4, 9 / R, 131. e.g. SKS 19, 325, not11:17 / KJN 3, 323. e.g. SKS 7, 92ff. / CUP1, 93ff. e.g. SKS 1, 308 / CI, 272. e.g. ibid. e.g. SKS 1, 20 / EPW, 64. e.g. SKS 4, 363n / CA, 59n. e.g. SKS 25, 390, nb30:13 / JP 2, 1621. e.g. SKS 4, 311 / CA, 5. e.g. SKS 13, 407 / M, 343. e.g. SKS 17, 271, dd:179 / JP 1, 194. e.g. SKS 4, 9 / R, 132. e.g. SKS 1, 32 / EPW, 76. e.g. SKS 4, 281–2 / PF, 82–3. e.g. SKS 1, 229 / CI, 182. e.g. ibid. e.g. SKS 19, 325, not11:17 / KJN 3, 323. e.g. ibid. e.g. ibid. e.g. SKS 18, 326, KK:2 / KJN 2, 298. e.g. SKS 1, 312n / CI, 275n. e.g. SKS 1, 335 / CI, 302.

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I. Philosophy, Reflection, Subjectivity, and Freedom Kierkegaard spent a lot of effort thinking through ideas from the history of philosophy. although he characterized himself ultimately as a religious poet, he conceived that his task “was to cast Christianity into reflection.”39 Reflection is the category par excellence of philosophy, while “poetry is a hypothetical statement in the subjunctive mood.”40 part of Kierkegaard’s task as a religious poet, then, was to represent philosophical reflection in the mode of possibility. in his dissertation, The Concept of Irony, Kierkegaard represents the sophists as agents who awaken reflection and shake “the foundations of everything.”41 The negative side of Sophistry is that it then “lulls…[reflection] to sleep again with reasons.”42 Socrates is also an agent of reflection, but his philosophical irony “contains within itself an infinity; he is negative because for him the infinity is not a disclosure but a boundary.”43 Unlike the Sophists, he does not lull reflection to sleep again, but “always keeps open the wound of negativity.”44 socrates fails to be a “genuine subjective existing thinker,”45 because such a thinker “is always just as negative as he is positive and vice versa,”46 whereas socrates is purely negative. nevertheless, socrates functions as midwife at the birth of subjectivity by liberating greece from the “positivity” of the sophists, “that was just as vapid in theory as it was ruinous in practice.”47 Reflection is a crucial stage in the development of freedom—and therefore of spirit. in The Concept of Anxiety, in a quasi-Hegelian narrative about the dialectic of spirit, Vigilius Haufniensis posits that human beings start in a state of immediacy or innocence, from which they are alienated when they become self-conscious. this process starts with the dawning awareness of sexual difference.48 the youth becomes bashfully self-conscious in the presence of the opposite sex, but only through a vague sense of anxiety—“a sympathetic antipathy and an antipathetic sympathy.”49 this is the age, and condition, of many of socrates’ interlocutors, who are on the brink of awakening to self-consciousness. Self-consciousness is not confined to the self-reflexive awareness that arises from anxiety about sexual difference; it can also be aroused with respect to socially conditioned beliefs and mores. socrates found the Athenian youth unreflectively immersed in the belief systems of their families and community. He exercised his philosophical method of ἔλεγχος to detach the youth from “the given” (especially with respect to moral concepts) and to force them to reflect on their own immediate states of consciousness. By showing up the 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49

Cf. SKS 22, 298, nb13:37 / JP 6, 6511. SKS 1, 155n / CI, 101n. SKS 1, 249–50 / CI, 204–5. ibid. SKS 1, 253 / CI, 209. SKS 7, 84 / CUP1, 85. ibid. ibid. SKS 1, 253 / CI, 209. Cf. SKS 4, 354 / CA, 48–9. SKS 4, 348 / CA, 42.

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contradictions among the propositions they willingly and sincerely committed to in the conversation, socrates bewildered his interlocutors and left them in a state of ἀπορία. this is the beginning of subjective self-consciousness, because it forces reflection by the individual on his own beliefs. Socrates thereby acts as midwife at the birth of subjectivity.50 this is parallel to Kierkegaard’s self-appointed function to snap his contemporaries out of their immediate immersion in Christendom. He wanted to awaken them from their dreaming state and force them to be reflexively self-aware about the beliefs, values, and attitudes they took for granted as part of the immediately given environment of nineteenth-century denmark. ironic, philosophical critique was part of that process. Building the capacity for reflexive self-understanding is also part of the process of gaining freedom, for only when we can reflect on our own actions and beliefs can we suspend habit and choose actively. yet Kierkegaard found that what passed for philosophy in his own day had much in common with ancient greek sophistry, including the conviction that “the thinker seems able to demonstrate everything.”51 moreover, the german romantics’ appropriation of irony is a sophistic dead end, rather than a revival of socratic irony.52 the constant refrain of the danish Hegelians to have “gone beyond” Hegel53 is reminiscent of the sophists’ capacity always to carry on the argument.54 the real problem here is too much sophistication, and Kierkegaard’s socratic task was to wound speculative philosophy from behind by moving “from the interesting to the simple”55—indirectly, by means of irony, philosophical critique, parody, satire, and humor. Kierkegaard’s aim was, first, to return modern philosophy to the wisdom of the greeks: “to understand oneself in existence was the Greek principle.”56 this requires that one become a subjective thinker: “instead of having the task of understanding the concrete abstractly, as abstract thinking has, the subjective thinker has the opposite task of understanding the abstract concretely.”57 modern philosophy has been on a trajectory to try to think everything objectively and abstractly and has therefore lost touch with the existential roots of greek wisdom. nevertheless, Kierkegaard uses philosophical methodology to investigate the intriguing case of adolph adler, the danish pastor who claimed to have had a revelation from god. He systematically lays out adler’s claims, analyzes key concepts such as genius, apostle, and authority, draws out the implications of adler’s claims for contemporary Christians and develops a set of criteria against which Cf. SKS 1, 238 / CI, 191. see also plato, Theaetetus, 149 a-b and 150 b-d, where socrates says that he is a midwife who aids in the birth of the soul. note that here socrates says his “patients are men, not women.” 51 SKS 1, 250 / CI, 205. 52 Cf. “irony after fichte”: SKS 1, 308–52 / CI, 272–323. 53 e.g. SKS 4, 517–18 / P, 57. 54 Like the characters “right Logic” and “wrong Logic” in aristophanes’ Clouds. Cf. francis mcpherson, The Clouds of Aristophanes: The Greek Text with a Translation into Corresponding Metres, London: pickering 1852, pp. 77ff. 55 SKS 16, 73 / PV, 94. 56 SKS 7, 322 / CUP1, 352. 57 ibid. 50

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adler’s claims can be assessed. He demonstrates that adler’s claims fail to meet the criteria and therefore should not be counted as revelations. Kierkegaard thereby demonstrates the continuing relevance of philosophy, but he models his philosophy more on the existential wisdom of the ancient greeks than on the impersonal, systematic idealism of his contemporaries.58 II. Philosophical Models and Foils Kierkegaard often uses the work of other philosophers as models for the structure of his own work. “in vino veritas,” in Stages on Life’s Way, is modeled on plato’s Symposium, not only in the setting of a banquet where a group of men discourse on the nature of erotic love, but down to a one-to-one correspondence between characters.59 Either/Or, part one is arguably modeled on friedrich schleiermacher’s Vertraute Briefe über die Lucinde.60 The whole of the “first authorship” from The Concept of Irony to the Concluding Unscientific Postscript can be read as an elaborate parody of Hegel’s Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences. it starts with The Concept of Irony as a “preface” to the authorship, which is not acknowledged as part of the authorship. it contains at its mid-point the quirky little work Prefaces, which plays with the problem of prefaces introduced by the preface to Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, and culminates with johannes Climacus, named after the monk of mount sinai and author of Scala Paradisi, pulling away the ladder to paradise by revoking everything he has said.61 Kierkegaard draws extensively on philosophical concepts from his predecessors. aristotle’s explanation of essential change as the actualization of possibility, for example, is the basis for Kierkegaard’s account of freedom.62 He contrasts his concept of repetition with the greek notion of “recollection,”63 and contrasts plato’s notion of knowledge as recollection (ἀνάμνησις) with the possibility that eternal

for an analysis of Kierkegaard’s criteria in examining the case of adler, see C. stephen evans, “Kierkegaard on religious authority: the problem of the Criterion,” Faith and Philosophy, vol. 17, no 1, 2000, pp. 48–67. evans argues both that Kierkegaard develops and applies rational criteria in this case, but also raises questions about some enlightenment views about what is rational. 59 for details of this correspondence, see william mcdonald, “Love in Kierkegaard’s Symposia,” Minerva: An Internet Journal of Philosophy, vol. 7, 2003, pp. 60–93. for a slightly different view, see ulrika Carlsson, “Love as a problem of Knowledge in Kierkegaard’s Either/Or and plato’s Symposium,” Inquiry, vol. 53, no. 1, 2010, pp. 41–67. 60 Cf. richard Crouter, Friedrich Schleiermacher: Between Enlightenment and Romanticism, new york: Cambridge university press 2005, pp. 110–17. 61 for a detailed elaboration of this parody, see william mcdonald, “retracing the Circular ruins of Hegel’s Encyclopedia,” in Concluding Unscientific Postscript to “Philosophical Fragments,” ed. by robert L. perkins, macon, georgia: mercer university press 1998 (International Kierkegaard Commentary, vol. 12), pp. 227–46. 62 SKS 4, 273–5 / PF, 73–5. 63 SKS 4, 9 / R, 131. 58

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truth might come into existence in the moment.64 this is set within the context of “the socratic question whether virtue can be taught.”65 one pattern in this use of models and concepts is that Kierkegaard draws on the ancient greeks to show how modern philosophy has lost its way. another pattern is in his use of socrates as a foil for Christ. while the wise old man of greece attained everything possible within human immanence, using philosophical reason, Christianity taps into the transcendent and brings something new to the world, which can only be an object of faith. Kant is a clear-sighted modern philosopher who tries to understand religion within the limits of reason and who takes up a position opposite Kierkegaard’s, for example in relation to the akedah—abraham’s binding of isaac.66 III. The Limits of Philosophy The capacity to detach from our immediately given states by critical reflection is developed dialectically, with new acts of self-reflection needed at each stage of development. among the virtues of philosophical thought are its capacities for critical reflection and dialectical progression. However, these very capacities lead philosophy to seek its own limits: “[t]he paradox is the passion of thought…[and] the ultimate potentiation of any passion is to will its own downfall, and so it is the ultimate passion of the understanding.”67 Kierkegaard uses philosophical reason to expose the limits of philosophical thought. in his unpublished manuscript Johannes Climacus, or De omnibus dubitandum est, he examines the oft-repeated slogan that modern philosophy begins with doubt68 and that it has overcome doubt. Climacus, in his effort to “philosophize with the aid of traditional ideas,”69 “considered the conduct of the greek skeptics far more consistent than the modern overcoming of doubt. they were well aware that doubt is based on interest, and therefore with perfect consistency they thought that they could cancel doubt by transforming interest into apathy.”70 Climacus understands doubt as “dichotomous.”71 the terms of its dichotomies are categories of reflection, and he defines reflection as “the possibility of the relation [between the two terms of the dichotomy].” Climacus asserts: Reflection is disinterested. Consciousness, however, is the relation and thereby is interest, a duality that is perfectly and with pregnant double meaning expressed in the word “interest” (interesse [being between]). therefore, all disinterested knowledge (mathematics, esthetics, metaphysics) is only the presupposition of doubt….thus it would be a misunderstanding for someone to think that doubt can be overcome SKS 4, 218–26 / PF, 9–18. SKS 4, 218 / PF, 9. 66 Cf. immanuel Kant, Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone, trans. by theodore m. greene and Hoyt H. Hudson, new york: Harper & row 1960, p. 175. 67 SKS 4, 242–3 / PF, 37. 68 SKS 15, 27ff. / JC, 134ff. 69 SKS 15, 24 / JC, 127. 70 SKS 15, 57 / JC, 170. 71 SKS 15, 56 / JC, 169. 64 65

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by so-called objective thinking. doubt is a higher form than any objective thinking, for it presupposes the latter but has something more, a third, which is interest or consciousness.72

Herein lies a fundamental error of modern philosophy and a limit of all systematic, objective philosophy. descartes tried to overcome doubt methodologically, in order to secure foundations for scientific knowledge—but he did so using meditation. Subsequent modern philosophers tried to refine his method; however, in the process they overlooked the fact that the method does not stand alone, but stands in relation to consciousness. an individual philosopher, not a system of philosophy, doubts. moreover, just as the greek skeptics perceived, doubt is overcome “in freedom, by an act of will,”73 not by the disinterested, systematic application of an objective method. in Fear and Trembling, johannes de silentio explores the limits of systematic, objective philosophy with respect to its understanding of ethics. for de silentio, “[t]he ethical as such is the universal.”74 in Kantian ethics the categorical imperative requires that one act only on that maxim one can will to be a universal law, whereas for Hegel ethics is based on a community’s customary norms (Sittlichkeit). in either case, moral acts are intelligible to public reason and are in that sense “universal.” de silentio, however, would have the reader consider the akedah as an exception to the universal ethics propounded by philosophy. both judaism and Christianity regard abraham as the paradigm of religious faith; on de silentio’s reading, this is because he was willing to suspend universal ethics for the sake of obedience to divine command.75 “faith is namely this paradox that the single individual is higher than the universal.”76 insofar as the modern reader has the capacity to view abraham as the father of faith rather than as a would-be murderer, he or she must be able to see beyond the limits of systematic philosophy’s claim to universality. the religious faith at the heart of the akedah is a challenge to the universality of philosophy. johannes Climacus, in the Concluding Unscientific Postscript, pushes this challenge further when he takes up the question of “Lessing’s ditch.”77 that is, he pursues Lessing’s assertion “that contingent historical truths can never become a demonstration of eternal truths of reason, also that the transition whereby one will build an eternal truth on historical reports is a leap.”78 this contradicts the aspirations of Hegelian philosophy to demonstrate that contingent historical truths are the result of dialectical necessity. whereas Hegelian philosophy is immanent, Christianity posits a transcendent god, thereby opening a qualitative difference between the human and the divine. the mistake of Hegelian philosophy is that it believes the qualitative difference can be mediated by dialectical reason. 72 73 74 75 76 77 78

SKS 15, 57 / JC, 170. SKS 4, 281 / PF, 82. SKS 4, 148 / FT, 54. Cf. SKS 4, 148–59 / FT, 54–67. SKS 4, 149 / FT, 55. SKS 7, 97 / CUP1, 98. SKS 7, 92 / CUP1, 93 (emphasis original).

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Christianity makes the claim, scandalous to philosophical reason, that the eternal, transcendent god was incarnated in human form at a particular point in history. that is, god as the absolute, eternal truth came into being. yet according to Climacus “everything that comes into existence demonstrates that it is not necessary, for the only thing that cannot come into existence is the necessary, because the necessary is.”79 Climacus further asserts: “everything that has come into existence is eo ipso historical.”80 yet, according to Christianity, god is both outside history (being eternal, necessary and transcendent) and was incarnated in history in the person of jesus Christ. Christian doctrine thereby poses an offense to reason by this paradoxical claim. we can therefore infer that philosophical reason is characterized by a commitment to logical consistency. Christian doctrine also offends reason by making the claim that the almighty god was incarnated in the form of a lowly servant, who went largely unrecognized and allowed himself to be persecuted. we can infer from this that philosophical reason is normative, in rejecting the clash between these values as absurd. moreover, Christian faith consists in an individual’s absolute relation to the absolute, which contradicts the commitment of philosophical reason to universal intelligibility and justifiability as the highest principle of ethics. Climacus further offends modern philosophical and scientific reason when he asserts: “all coming into existence occurs in freedom, not by way of necessity. nothing coming into existence comes into existence by way of a ground, but everything by way of a cause. Every cause ends in a freely acting cause.”81 this commits Climacus to the idea that there are no necessary causes, and perhaps to the idea that ultimately god, as the only freely acting cause (at least with respect to the material world), causes everything. this Humean skepticism about necessary connections in causation also contradicts Hume’s skepticism about miracles. it opens the possibility that god intervenes in history and shapes it to a purpose, rather than thinking of history unfolding dialectically or evolving on the basis of contingencies. This “supernaturalism” is at odds with modern philosophical and scientific reason, which looks increasingly to naturalistic explanations for everything. IV. Philosophy as a Comic Form of Madness Climacus accuses contemporary philosophy of madness, because he thinks it has lost touch with reality. speculative idealism has lost touch with reality by forgetting the existence and the subjectivity of the individual existing thinker. this forgetfulness renders the philosopher comic. when “inwardness is absent, parroting lunacy sets in.”82 “if one happens to meet a mentally deranged person of that sort, whose illness is simply that he has no mind, one…does not know whether one dares to believe that

79 80 81 82

SKS 4, 274 / PF, 74. SKS 4, 275 / PF, 75. ibid. (my emphasis). SKS 7, 179 / CUP1, 195.

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it is a human being with whom one is speaking.”83 this type of philosopher lacks subjective consciousness. He talks as if he is a function of a system of ideas, yet his behavior belies his philosophical talk. Kierkegaard thought this was the case with Hegel, who, had he “written his whole logic and had written in the preface that it was only a thought-experiment…undoubtedly would have been the greatest thinker who has ever lived. as it is he is comic.”84 this is because he forgot to relate himself as an existing individual to his thought-experiment and confused thinking with being. Another form of madness, for Kierkegaard, is to suffer from a fixed idea. don Quixote is the paradigmatic case of this sort of lunacy,85 but theoreticians and dialecticians can also be “virtuoso[s] on one string.”86 One such fixed idea in speculative idealism is that “thinking and being are one.”87 but this amounts to a “dangerous skepticism”88 and is no guide to existence. in trying to see everything sub specie aeterni, “the guidance of pure thinking is like having to travel in denmark with a small map of europe on which denmark is no larger than a steel pen-point.”89 it offers no guidance about how one should live or what subjective stance to take towards the objects of pure thinking. V. Philosophy as a Distinct Discipline Kierkegaard contrasts philosophy and its sub-disciplines (metaphysics, ethics, epistemology, logic, dialectic)90 with several other disciplines, thereby giving it conceptual shape. in The Concept of Anxiety, for example, Vigilius Haufniensis contrasts ethics with dogmatics.91 He also contrasts the psychological, metaphysical and dogmatic treatments of the concept of sin.92 these are distinguished by the different moods with which they treat it: “if sin is dealt with in metaphysics, the mood becomes that of dialectical uniformity and disinterestedness…if sin is dealt with in psychology, the mood becomes that of persistent observation, like the fearlessness of a secret agent.”93 sin is the proper object of dogmatics, whose appropriate mood is seriousness.94 we can infer from this that philosophy, too, has its proper objects. in The Concept of Irony, Kierkegaard distinguishes between history and philosophy and claims that 83 SKS 7, 180 / CUP1, 196. Kierkegaard here anticipates the modern philosophical concept of the “zombie.” 84 SKS 18, 224, jj:265 / JP 2, 1605. 85 SKS 7, 179 / CUP1, 195. 86 SKS 2, 250 / EO1, 257. 87 SKS 7, 281 / CUP1, 309. 88 SKS 7, 282 / CUP1, 310. 89 SKS 7, 283 / CUP1, 310–11. 90 Cf. SKS 4, 25 / R, 149 (metaphysics, ethics); SKS 1, 231n / CI, 184n (epistemology); SKS 4, 319–21 / CA, 12–14 (logic); SKS 1, 176 / CI, 124 (dialectic). 91 SKS 4, 319 / CA, 12. 92 SKS 4, 321–2 / CA, 14–15. 93 SKS 4, 322 / CA, 15. 94 SKS 4, 322 / CA, 14–15.

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whereas history takes particular phenomena as its proper objects, philosophy should “not let itself be infatuated by the charms of the particular.”95 instead, philosophy should “see the truth of the concept in and with the phenomenological.”96 it also has its proper methods—for example, it can only demonstrate basic principles indirectly97— and its proper medium: “philosophy…is only for thought…mythology…is only for imagination…historical knowledge…is for memory.”98 furthermore, insofar as it communicates information rather than ethical-religious capacities, philosophy needs to utilize direct communication rather than indirect communication.99 Kierkegaard also distinguishes philosophical from poetic uses of language, when, for example, he contrasts solger’s expression “that god in revealing himself sacrifices himself”100 with “the metaphysical meaning in modern scholarship of the phrase ‘god is reconciling himself with the world.’ ”101 nevertheless, both philosophy and poetry may be subsumed under the aesthetic stage of life, because they both deal primarily with ideal possibilities rather than with actuality or action. Logic, as such, deals with necessity, when it demonstrates tautologies or arguments a priori, but then it is being used as an instrument of reason. speculation is philosophy’s motor of possibility, when it harnesses imagination to reason. this has been the undoing of Romantic philosophy, because it fails to take sufficient account of actuality, while speculative philosophy falsely projects necessity onto historical becoming. Kierkegaard is more apt to talk about “socratic philosophy,”102 “platonic philosophy,”103 “greek philosophy,”104 “Hegelian philosophy,”105 “modern philosophy,”106 or “the latest philosophy,”107 than philosophy per se. idealist philosophy, which Kierkegaard often equates with modern philosophy or the latest philosophy, gives particular prominence to “the concept.”108 yet this is precisely the greatest limitation of philosophy for understanding the life of the existing individual: every individual life is incommensurable for conceptualization; the highest therefore cannot be to live as a philosopher—in what is this incommensurability resolved?— in action—that in which all men are one is passion. therefore everything religious is passion, hope, faith, and love.—greatness is to have one’s life in that which is essential

SKS 1, 72–3 / CI, 10–11. SKS 1, 73 / CI, 11. 97 SKS 18, 225, jj:266 / JP 3, 2341. 98 SKS 4, 305 / PF, 109. 99 Cf. Pap. Viii–2 b 79 / JP 2, 648: “the dialectic of ethical and ethical-religious Communication.” 100 SKS 1, 342 / CI, 310. 101 ibid. 102 e.g. SKS 1, 269 / CI, 226. 103 e.g. SKS 1, 93 / CI, 31. 104 e.g. SKS 4, 56 / R, 186. 105 e.g. SKS 2, 61 / EO1, 53. 106 e.g. SKS 1, 194 / CI, 143. 107 e.g. SKS 12, 202 / PC, 202 (note that den nyeste Philosophi is translated here as “modern philosophy”). 108 Cf. SKS 1, 281–2 / CI, 241–2. 95 96

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for all and therein to have a difference of degree.—to be a philosopher is a distinction just as much as to be a poet.109

see also being/becoming; Communication/indirect Communication; Concrete/ abstract; Consciousness; dialectic; freedom; immanence/transcendence; immediacy/ Reflection; Logic; Mediation/Sublation; Metaphysics; Necessity; Objectivity/ subjectivity; offense; paradox; Qualitative difference; reason; romanticism; skepticism/doubt; speculation/science/scholarship; teleological suspension of the ethical; understanding/Comprehension.

109

SKS 27, 269, papir 277:2 / JP 1, 896.

poetry Laura Liva and K. brian söderquist

Poetry (Poesi—noun) from the greek ποίησις, derived from the verb ποιέω, which means “to create” or “to make.”1 see also the danish verb digte, derived from the Latin dictare (“compose,” or “write”), meaning “create,” “narrate,” “make up,” and related to the danish noun digter, meaning “poet” or “author.” in danish, poesi connotes not only poems in verse form but literary creation of all kinds, just as a digter is not merely a writer of verse, but an author of literary art more generally.2 Kierkegaard’s understanding of this constellation of concepts is developed in his analyses of the german romantics in his dissertation, The Concept of Irony. these concepts then reappear in the early pseudonymous works such as Either/ Or, Repetition, and Stages on Life’s Way. these ideas play a less prominent role in the latter part of his authorship, though the figure of the poet makes important appearances in later works like The Sickness unto Death. Kierkegaard’s discussions of poetry often highlight the tension between the imaginative “poetic” thinking employed when creating an ideal fictional world, and the imagination necessary for interpreting the real world in which the poet actually lives and acts. this concern is central to the second part of his dissertation at the university of Copenhagen, The Concept of Irony, where Kierkegaard argues that German Romantic literature has blurred the lines that separate fiction from lived experience. authors like friedrich schlegel and Ludwig tieck are said to have assumed that the power of imagination at work in the creation of fiction is not essentially different from the epistemological role of the imagination described by german idealists like Kant and fichte.3 As Kierkegaard sees it, they have conflated the activity of authoring a fictional work with the imaginative activity of interpreting oneself and the world. Kierkegaard thinks this theoretical misunderstanding ends up obscuring some of the distinctions between the self understood as if it were a character in a fictional setting and the self as an existing subject in an actual setting. because the romantic poets move seamlessly from the mode of creating art to the mode of interpreting reality, they have failed to see that an actual self will always be limited in ways that Ordbog over det danske Sprog, vols. 1–28, published by the society for danish Language and Literature, Copenhagen: gyldendal 1918–56, vol. 16, columns 1084–5. 2 ibid., vol. 3, columns 727–30. 3 SKS 1, 311 / CI, 274. 1

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fictional selves are not. Finite, given elements of actuality—things like one’s body and location, one’s personal history, the given linguistic and cultural environment, one’s intersubjective relationships, and one’s own mortality—are not sufficiently recognized by the romantic consciousness as factual limitations to one’s freedom of self interpretation. the romantic poet has neglected the resistance offered by one dialectical pole of human existence—the finite side that we share with everything in the natural world—while celebrating his or her own power to transcend the finite via imagination. in short, Kierkegaard is critical of a literary tradition that, as he sees it, tries to escape facticity. He writes that the romantic poet “negates the given actuality” he has inherited,4 and assumes an “absolute power” to declare it invalid.5 and because he is uninterested in recognizing factual restrictions, including the given values that assign immediate worth and meaning to the world, “his environment must be formed to fit him; that is, he not only creates [digter, “narrates,” “makes up”] himself, but he creates [digter] the surrounding world as well.”6 what intrigues Kierkegaard about the romantics’ understanding of self-creation is the fact that they have been bold enough to celebrate the obvious similarities between the activity of authoring a fictional work—complete with characters, dramatic situations, plots, and resolutions—and the activity of interpreting oneself and the world. one of Kierkegaard’s aims in The Concept of Irony is to make clear why it is ultimately untenable to try to control one’s self-interpretation in the same way one controls a fictional text, even if the project seems attractive to the reflective, imaginative soul. the problem, as he sees it, with the romantic project is not the fact that it celebrates autobiography as a mode of understanding the self, but rather that it cultivates an awareness that one can continually reinterpret that autobiography: the romantics know that they can start over again with a new story, and they know it as they tell a story: “if it [romantic irony] posited something, it knew it had the authority to annul it, knew it at the very same moment it posited it. it knew that in general it had the absolute power to bind and to unbind.”7 instead of feeling obligated to the consequences of the past, the poetic consciousness knows it has “the power to start all over again if it so pleases, nothing that happened before is binding…it enjoys a divine freedom that knows no bonds, no chains.”8 the individual’s understanding of his or her present situation is affected by this insight. even a script unfolding right now, in the present, can be viewed as hypothetical. Life itself becomes staged, and events happening in present tense are viewed through the lenses of an observer. Kierkegaard writes that as the romantic poet “composes himself [digter sig selv] and his environment with the greatest possible poetic [poetiske] license,”9 his life becomes

4 5 6 7 8 9

SKS 1, 311 / CI, 275. SKS 1, 312 / CI, 275–6. SKS 1, 318 / CI, 283 (Kierkegaard’s emphasis, translation modified). SKS 1, 312 / CI, 275–6. SKS 1, 315 / CI, 279. SKS 1, 319 / CI, 284 (translation modified).

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a drama, and what absorbs him is the ingenious complication of this drama. He himself is a spectator, even while he is the one acting….He is inspired by sacrificial virtue just as a spectator is inspired by it in a theater; he is a severe critic who knows very well when this virtue becomes insipid and inauthentic.10

as Kierkegaard sees it, the downfall of this poetic consciousness is its own awareness that the story can be staged differently. the setting and characters become possibility rather than actuality. and for Kierkegaard, this hypothetical self is tantamount to no self at all, i.e., it is nothing: the poet “has played through a multitude of destinies, usually in the form of possibility, has fictively identified himself with these destinies, before it ends in nothingness.”11 it is important to note, however, that in The Concept of Irony Kierkegaard does not argue that a poetic awareness is a problem in and of itself. to the contrary, he claims each individual human being has a responsibility to guide his or her own selfdevelopment just as an author guides a character through dramatic tensions toward a resolution. the individual is indeed responsible for creating a narrative about himself or herself, but it is within inherited boundaries. Kierkegaard writes that the individual sensitive to actuality listens silently and quietly to the voice of what is unique in individuality, watches over its movements in order to dispose over it and let the whole individual develop harmoniously into a pliable, complete form…[he] becomes [god’s] co-worker, so to speak, in completing the good work god himself has begun….it is therefore a matter of great urgency to become conscious of the originality in him, and this originality is the boundary within which he creates, within which he is artistically free.12

the person who is sensitive to his facticity or “originality” recognizes that he is not his own creator; he must indeed assist in telling a story about the self, but his role is that of a co-author, so to speak. the given context, the dramatic situation, is already provided, and it is within this situation that the composition of self must take place. while the romantic poet “creates himself,” the authentic individual “allows himself to be created.”13 the scholarly discussion of the poet in The Concept of Irony continues in a different form in the pseudonymous works that directly follow. Here the themes are treated from the inside, so to speak, that is, from the perspective of literary characters who struggle with the disparity between their own factual circumstances and their ability to transcend those circumstances via imagination. especially troubled are the pseudonyms who explicitly define themselves as poets.14 they are not happy romantics, pleased with the success of their poetic projects but are, for the most part, SKS 1, 319 / CI, 283–4 (translation modified). SKS 1, 317 / CI, 281–2 (translation modified). 12 SKS 1, 316 / CI, 280–1 (translation modified). 13 SKS 1, 316 / CI, 280 (translation modified). 14 the most obvious examples are authors like a and johannes in Either/Or, part one, Constantin in Repetition, johannes de silentio in Fear and Trembling, and wilhelm afham and Quidam in Stages on Life’s Way. The author of it all, Kierkegaard himself, might fit here too. 10 11

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troubled, jaded, and disappointed by the thoughts that plague their artistic minds; they are especially aware of the tension between what is going on outside them, in actuality, and inside, in the sphere of artistic imagination. they end up admitting that their stories about themselves are really “nothing,” or, as wilhelm afham laments, “almost less than nothing.”15 the pain of misunderstanding is announced in the “diapsalmata” that open Either/Or. in aphorism after aphorism, the author a sorrows over his inability to bring his imagined world—his hopes for the future and his recollections of the past—into line with his present situatedness. An awareness of his own fictionalizing capacities tears him away from his context: “my life is a poet-existence…i can describe hope so vividly that every hoping individual will recognize my description as his own; and yet it is a forgery, for even as i am describing it i am thinking of recollection.”16 in other essays by a, a similar tension is revealed. in a short speech to a society for those already dead, he explains that the unhappiest of all people are those who are unable to bring their imagined futures or poetically recollected pasts into continuity with the more prosaic present.17 the tension between the outer and the inner eventually leads these authors to a hyper-awareness of the masks they wear in different situations. the selves they create, observe, and present to their audiences cover up the hidden pain of selflessness: what is a poet? an unhappy man who conceals profound anguish in his heart but whose lips are so formed that as sighs and cries pass over them they sound like a beautiful music. it is with him as with the poor wretches in phalaris’s bronze bull, who were slowly tortured over a slow fire; their screams could not reach the tyrant’s ears to terrify him; to him they sounded like sweet music!18

Johannes, author of “The Seducer’s Diary,” who seems to be the most satisfied of all Kierkegaard’s poetic pseudonyms, even shows signs of the tension. seemingly recognizing that his interpretation of himself is at odds with the reality in which he finds himself, he admits at the conclusion of the diary that he is merely a “myth” about himself.19 though the poet is well aware that he experiences pain, judge william, a’s alterego in Either/Or, sees its source perhaps even more clearly than the poet himself. the poet’s imagined self is a betrayal of his real embodiment, william writes, and with that, a betrayal of the self that must ultimately reside in a concrete setting.20 instead, the poet cultivates possible selves. He is adept at wearing masks and is nothing but those masks. william writes that for a, “life is a masquerade” and that “every SKS 6, 84 / SLW, 86. see also, for example, SKS 22, 46–8, nb11:79 / KJN 6, 42–4. SKS 2, 45 / EO1, 36. see also, for example, SKS 2, 51 / EO1, 42. in Stages on Life’s Way, author wilhelm afham is likewise distraught over his inclination to transform lived experience into fictionalized recollections that he no longer recognizes as his own. See SKS 6, 15–26 / SLW, 7–19. 17 SKS 2, 211–23 / EO1, 217–30. 18 SKS 2, 27 / EO1, 19. 19 SKS 2, 431 / EO1, 444. 20 SKS 3, 157 / EO2, 159.

15

16

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disclosure is always a deception.”21 and with this dispersion or “disintegration” of self, a has lost “what is the most inward and holy in a person, the binding power of the personality.”22 He has hindered his ability to “open himself.” this is the greatest problem of all, william thinks, because “the person who can scarcely open himself cannot love, and the person who cannot love is the unhappiest of all.”23 in the Concluding Unscientific Postscript pseudonym johannes Climacus makes similar observations about the pain tied to resisting one’s existential placement. a’s writings show “an existence-possibility that cannot attain existence,”24 he writes. the poet’s life is defined by the deep melancholia that results from his wounded ability to disclose himself: he deceptively “hides behind desire, intellect, and corruption, but his deception and hiding place are at one and the same time both a strength and a weakness: his strength is imagination, his impotence is an inability to seize hold of existence.”25 in the latter part of Kierkegaard’s authorship the tone of his work changes. but even in a work like The Sickness unto Death from 1849, it seems Kierkegaard’s poet makes an appearance at center stage, still struggling with an interpretation of self. the same old problems reappear: when one controls self-interpretation, the result is a lack of continuity, an awareness of the possibility of starting over, an inclination to watch the self playing a role. Anti-Climacus writes that the goal for the defiant soul is to “create itself,”26 to determine what it will be—his concrete self “is defined by necessity and limits, is this quite definite thing, with these aptitudes, predispositions, etc. in this concrete set of circumstances, etc. but…he wants to undertake to refashion the whole thing.”27 He does not want to “don his own self, does not want to see his project in his given self, he wants…to construct it himself.”28 Anti-Climacus’ defiant poet is introspective enough to want to be a self and is self-centered enough to “enjoy” his own consciousness of self. This reflective character knows that he can shape his own self-identity, but as anti-Climacus sees it, this construction of self comes at a price: the author of this self is haunted by the possibility of starting all over again with a new interpretation:

ibid. SKS 3, 158 / EO2, 160. 23 ibid. Kierkegaard’s journals are replete with examples of his own tendency to wear masks. in one early entry, for example, he writes: “i am a janus bifrons: with one face i laugh, with the other i weep” (SKS 18, 94, ff:93 / KJN 2, 86). see also, for example, SKS 17, 233 dd:33 / KJN 1, 225. 24 SKS 7, 229 / CUP1, 253. 25 SKS 7, 229–30 / CUP1, 253, translation modified. In his journals, Kierkegaard also frequently identifies himself with the poet who is unable to take hold of his own existence. see, for example, SKS 17, 242, dd:62 / KJN 1, 233; SKS 20, 83–4, nb:108 / KJN 4, 82–3; SKS 20, 362–5, nb4:159 / KJN 4, 362–4; SKS 21, 45–6, nb6:62 / KJN 5, 44–5; SKS 21, 340–1, nb10:169 / KJN 5, 351–2. 26 SKS 11, 182 / SUD, 68. 27 Ibid. (translation modified). 28 Ibid. (translation modified). 21 22

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anti-Climacus’ poetic character is also said to enjoy self-creation; he wants to maintain control over himself. The defiant poet “exerts the loosening as much as the binding power; it can, at any moment, start quite arbitrarily all over again….the self is its own master, absolutely (as one says) its own master; and exactly this is the despair, but also what it regards as its pleasure and joy.”30 The Sickness unto Death also includes a discussion of a kind of poet not treated in great detail earlier in the authorship, namely a religious poet. though his subject matter is quite different from that of the romantic poet, they share the same fundamental problem: the disparity between thought and action, between possibility and reality. in fact, the crucial difference—that the religious poet works with a concept of god—is precisely what makes him the eminent example of a poet in despair, for only he is fully aware of the deepest implications of his commitment to art. refusing to relinquish control of himself, he “allows himself to falsify god just a little.”31 That is, he cynically relishes his natural flaws so much that he creates an image of god that allows him to live a tragically unhappy life; he avoids the thought of a benevolent divine power that could grant him a meaningful life, even in the difficult factual circumstances in which he finds himself. The religious poet holds firmly to his own conception of God, and even more importantly, to his own tragic self-conception. Like every poet-existence, this religious poet would rather be author of an ideal existence that he controls—even if it means accepting the pain of never knowing himself—than live a happier concrete existence that he cannot fully control: he is guilty of committing “the sin of writing rather than being.”32 see also actuality; aesthetic/aesthetics; authorship; Contingency/possibility; Creation; genius; imagination; irony; Language; Life-View; Lyric; novel; romanticism; theater/ drama; writing.

29 30 31 32

SKS 11, 183 / SUD, 69–70 (translation modified). SKS 11, 183 / SUD, 69 (translation modified). SKS 11, 192 / SUD, 78 (translation modified). SKS 11, 191 / SUD, 77 (translation modified).

politics Leo stan

Politics (Politik—noun) from the greek πολιτική (sc. τέχνη), the danish word Politik refers principally to the study of governance and the state (greek, πόλις).1 Kierkegaard cultivated an ambiguous attitude towards the state and the established order. Concerning politics, his views seem a little clearer, albeit predominantly censorious. they stem from his (correct) anxiety that the political could become a lethal weapon in religious or spiritual matters. More specifically, politics could imperil religious self-becoming by distracting the self from the ultimate tasks of salvation and reconciliation with god; and by prioritizing social concerns solvable solely within an alienating institutional framework and via pragmatic compromises. although Kierkegaard’s opinions become increasingly dismissive vis-à-vis politics per se, he does not seem to advocate either a radical insouciance or an active opposition to the political dimension of human coexistence. rather, his conceivably anomic assaults envision a particular historical period—namely, the post-1848 europe—and point to certain catastrophic effects but only from a soteriological viewpoint. in contrast to religion—which is the realm where one actively relates to divine transcendence—politics is relegated by Kierkegaard to the finite realm of worldly affairs. fundamental in this sense is the dualistic perspective within which Kierkegaard projects God’s relation to the mundane. Kierkegaard specifies that the absolute and this world “are so inimical that the slightest leaning to one side is regarded from the other side as the unconditional opposite.”2 this is particularly true of social interaction, in regard to which Kierkegaard states that “the association with god is unconditionally unsociable [uselskabelig].”3 in a similar vein, the endeavor to relate adequately to god and the struggle for national or communal goals, no matter how selfless, are, for Kierkegaard, two different things.4 while the world constantly misperceives, misunderstands, and even perverts religious commandments, the Christian religion deems every expression of attachment to such ideals as comfort, security, and material abundance as a form of apostasy. after all, “love of god is Ordbog over det danske Sprog, vols. 1–28, published by the society for danish Language and Literature, Copenhagen: gyldendal 1918–56, vol. 16, columns 1116–17. 2 SKS 11, 38 / WA, 34. 3 SKS 11, 27 / WA, 22. 4 SKS 9, 123 / WL, 120. 1

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hatred of the world and love of the world hatred of god.”5 It is against this salvific and antagonistic background that Kierkegaard’s fierce criticisms of the political should be read. His unambiguous indictments, if not carefully contextualized, can easily mislead the reader. one should not forget either that Kierkegaard’s attack is intimately related to a historical era that was determined by social, political, and economic emancipation, democratization, and the financial ascendance of the bourgeoisie. therefore, Kierkegaard is seriously worried that the politics of his time have become the new lingua franca in human affairs to the exclusion of everything else, particularly religion. “in denmark,” he writes, “and no doubt in just about all europe, everything is politics. politics is all that occupies people, politics is all that people understand; and it is the case not only with the prominent political leaders but it is the case with actually every or at least almost every person in our age that he very sagaciously understands how a cause is served politically.”6 the danger here is that, besides political interaction, the individual should also be engaged in a difficult, life-long, and edifying process of religious realization. and religiously speaking, the individual should keep in mind that one’s dealings with god are absolutely different from one’s rapport with the body politic. in other words, the religious person must not forget that “god in heaven is…totally lacking in sagacity, especially high statecraft.”7 to wit, god “has no intimation of what the secret of statecraft is, how much faster it goes when one gives up such tomfoolery and then earnestly gets busy so that there are millions of Christians in a jiffy with the help of teachers who are not Christians.”8 the next aspect a believer should beware of is that the political deploys a purely immanent and essentially ephemeral authority. “insofar as it is a matter of authority in the political, civic, social, domestic, and disciplinary realms,” Kierkegaard notes, “authority is still only a transitory factor, something vanishing that…disappears inasmuch as temporality and earthly life itself are a transitory factor that vanishes with all its differences.”9 Kierkegaard’s explanation is again purely spiritual. the divine authority overpowers the political forces simply because god is able to obliterate all mundane hierarchies. thus, in an early edifying discourse Kierkegaard acknowledges that “god does not respect the [worldly] status of persons.”10 Later in Works of Love we read that Christianity “allows all the [worldly] dissimilarities to stand but teaches the equality of eternity,”11 namely, that “everyone is to lift himself up above earthly dissimilarity.”12 it is within the same religious frame of mind that Kierkegaard also takes issue with the relevance of democratic political processes. He argues that existentially SKS 8, 300 / UD, 205. Pap. Xi–2 a 413 / M, supplement, 536–7. 7 SKS 13, 168 / M, 126. 8 ibid. 9 SKS 11, 103 / WA, 99. 10 SKS 5, 143 / EUD, 141. 11 SKS 9, 78 / WL, 72. 12 ibid. see also SKS 7, 372–3 / CUP1, 409–10; SKS 14, 174–5 / M, 43–4; SKS 22, 62, nb11:109 / JP 2, 1389. 5 6

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speaking, acquiring genuine inner strength can never be mediated by political parties or any other secular representative body; it is rather the exploit of one’s solitary inner struggles, assisted, of course, by the Lord.13 in fact, no one should unconditionally rely on accomplishments achieved through the confrontation of political movements. that happens because the individual “who forms a party and alliance or is a member of a party, of an alliance,”14 instead of being exclusively guided by god, “steers on his own, and all his achievement, even if it were the transforming of a world, is an illusion.”15 moreover, politics stimulates only some aspects of personality, whereas religious existence summons human existence in its entirety.16 but politics is also prone to apostatic hubris. this possibility can be discerned first in its dependence on secular, abstract, and universal categories. That said, “[if] we were able with unconditioned truth to judge every human being according to a universally given criterion, then the god-relationship would be essentially abolished, then everything would be oriented exteriorly and find its completion paganly in political or social life.”17 unlike the animal world, wherein the species is ontologically prior to the particular instantiation of it, in the human universe “each individual is the essentially different or distinctive,”18 and so the singular precedes the general. Most importantly, politics threatens religious fulfillment by virtue of its affinity with the numerical and the crowd. In this sense, Kierkegaard stipulates that the reason why political “service and religious service relate to each other altogether inversely,”19 is that “politically everything turns on getting numbers of people on one’s side.”20 Consequently, from a political standpoint, “one has nothing to do with god…the point of departure is from below, from that which is lower than the established order, since even the most mediocre ‘established order’ is still preferable and superior to the flabbiest of everything flabby—the crowd.”21 therefore, in conjunction with the crowd the political apparatus acquires truly totalitarian features. by witnessing against it, the religious person risks being marginalized, persecuted, or even killed. still, in the battle against any monstrous collective the believer proves more heroic and praiseworthy than any political icon.22 but politics can be hubristic in a third sense. Contrary to some critics who regard him as an irrationalist, Kierkegaard did value rationality in political matters and decisions. that is precisely why he deplored the “retrogression to the irrational”23 engendered by modernity. in modern times, Kierkegaard realizes, politics has become a brutal encounter between political cliques backed up by amorphous, hydra-like crowds. “with the cessation of the rational state,” Kierkegaard writes in 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23

Pap. Xi–2 a 413 / M, supplement, 540. SKS 9, 91 / WL, 86. ibid. Pap. Xi–3 b 105 / M, supplement, 521. SKS 9, 232 / WL, 230. SKS 9, 231 / WL, 230. Pap. Xi–2 a 413 / M, supplement, 537. ibid. Pap. iX b 24 / WA, supplement, 229. Pap. iX b 24 / WA, supplement, 230–1. Pap. iX b 24 / WA, supplement, 231.

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the momentous political year 1848, “statecraft becomes a game. everything revolves around getting shoes on the crowd, and then getting it one one’s side, voting, making noise, carrying torches, and armed, regardless, altogether regardless, of whether it understands anything or not.”24 needless to add that in this context, “[truth] and the like, god in heaven, etc., death, judgment, and much more, politics regards in about the same way as one finds it boring to play cards for nothing.”25 Controversially enough for contemporary sensibilities, Kierkegaard declares that neither revolutions nor any reformatory movement ever fully or efficiently address the fundamental problems of human existence, namely, despair, anxiety, and evil. thus, the expectation that the overturning of a government might help the individual to improve his or her rapport with the transcendent is a deplorable self-deception. “Christianity has not wanted to topple governments from the throne in order to place itself on the throne.”26 most importantly, revolutionary incentives beget an even greater evil, namely, “the tyranny of the equal,”27 which is an “evil spirit… which does not reside in any individual person and is not any individual person but covertly sneaks around and seeks its prey, insinuates itself into the relation among individuals…[and] essentially wants to do away with every individual’s relation to god.”28 it is probably for a closely related reason that on april 23, 1855 Kierkegaard unwaveringly confesses the following: “i not only am not a politician but…i hate politics.”29 almost two months later he additionally admits that he “must serve the religious cause religiously and above all shun politics and political considerations.”30 He goes even further and warns that Christianity, not only “scorns political sagacity,”31 but is also intrinsically opposed to “such abstract categories as country, state, nation, kingdom.”32 whereas Kierkegaard is a thinker of religious, subjective and intersubjective relations, politics—based as it is on impersonal institutions and entities—cannot penetrate to the most intimate and unfathomable substratum of our personal existence. it is no wonder, then, that in his late, anti-ecclesiastical period Kierkegaard came to admit that “nothing is so repugnant to god, no heresy, no sin… as what is official,”33 that the very idea of institutionalization poses a direct threat to the essentially personal spirit of religion. Kierkegaard’s Christianity is underpinned by an understanding of the absolute as personhood, while any relation to it is and remains of an interpersonal nature. By contrast, officialdom is all about abstract ibid. see also Pap. Xi–2 a 413 / M, supplement, 537. Pap. iX b 24 / WA, supplement, 230. see also SKS 13, 314 / M, 259 where politicians are considered savvy tricksters. 26 SKS 9, 137 / WL, 135. 27 SKS 8, 418 / UD, 327. 28 ibid. for the equation of politics as such with evil see SKS 24, 247–8, nb23:81 / JP 4, 4206. 29 SKS 14, 201 / M, 60. 30 Pap. Xi–2 a 413 / M, supplement, 540. this journal entry is dated june 9, 1855, less than five months before Kierkegaard’s death. 31 Pap. Xi–3 b 182 / M, supplement, 567. 32 SKS 15, 295 / BA, 142. 33 SKS 13, 221 / M, 172. 24 25

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functions, principles, formulas, and platitudes. in this precise sense, the political tools can be used pusillanimously to stay away from an earnest, direct encounter with the divine and god’s heteronomous judgment.34 with that in mind, modern individuals in particular find themselves caught between the Scylla of finite powers and the Charybdis of a self-sacrificing redemption.35 to conclude, despite his late, unequivocally negative judgments, what Kierkegaard condemns is mostly the generalization and absolutization of politics.36 the key factors he identifies in this process are the tremendously rapid spread of democracy,37 the nefarious interference of the state in religious matters via its utilitarian alliance with the danish Lutheran Church, and most importantly, the social-existential turmoil created by the chaotic clash between political movements which are fuelled by such collective, dehumanizing, and amorphous monsters as the crowd, the public, and the majority. granted his appreciation for the necessity of a rational politics, Kierkegaard clearly embraced the classic Christian division between the spirit and the world, two ontological realms which have a specific function and significance in human life and which often collide due to their opposing values, goals, and world-views. However, the overall picture is somewhat ambiguous. Kierkegaard’s relation to the political oscillates between interested observation and cavalier detachment, albeit ceaselessly wary of the potential abuses of a militant and self-deifying collectivism. see also Crowd/public; Leveling; society; state.

Pap. iX b 24 / WA, supplement, 229–30. SKS 20, 254, nb3:17 / JP 1, 183. 36 SKS 11, 67 / WA, 61; Pap. iX b 24 / WA, supplement, 231; Pap. Xi-2 a 413 / M, supplement, 536–41. 37 Pap. iX b 8 / BA, supplement, 314–15; Pap. Xi-3 b 120 / M, supplement, 537. for another instance of Kierkegaard’s political conservatism see SKS 13, 122 / M, 77. 34 35

prayer derek r. nelson

Prayer (Bøn—noun; at bede—verb) from the old norse “bœn,” old english “ben,” related to german “beten,” the lexical meaning of the danish term includes both religious and non-religious usages. non-religious usages highlight especially the “request” character of interpersonal address. one asks for something of another by means of a prayer. religious usage includes such requests directed to god, but also can denote the linguistic element of contemplation and an experience of intense reverence or awe.1 Kierkegaard’s celebrated inwardness both led to and was enriched by a devout and intense personal prayer life. this lifelong practice informed the way Kierkegaard conceived of prayer, its role in the Christian life, and its theological explication. prayers themselves are spread relatively uniformly throughout Kierkegaard’s writings. many of the discourses begin with or contain prayers, especially the upbuilding discourses of 1843–44, many of which begin with a prayer, the content of which is often related to the discourse. the same pattern holds for his Discourses at the Communion on Fridays. His notebooks and journals are full of prayers, some of which were written out so that later they could be included in published form in a treatise or book. other prayers he read at public or personal occasions, worship services, and the like. a helpful and roughly representative collection of 100 of Kierkegaard’s notable prayers has been assembled by perry Lefevre.2 its taxonomy follows the addressee of the prayers: father, son, or Holy spirit. the concept of prayer is not systematically addressed in any of Kierkegaard’s writings, but the longest treatment of it comes from one of the discourses from 1844, entitled “one who prays aright struggles in prayer and is Victorious, in that god is Victorious.”3 Here Kierkegaard highlights the benefit of struggling mightily to put into speech the needs and feelings of the one praying. such effort toward articulation casts off penultimate concerns and frivolous wishes and focuses attention on the main issues present in the life of the Christian. Kierkegaard here conceives of prayer very much along the lines of conscious verbal communication; as we shall see below, his thinking on this point changed greatly over the course of his life. Ordbog over det danske Sprog, vols. 1–28, published by the society for danish Language and Literature, Copenhagen: gyldendal 1918–56, vol. 3, column 70. 2 The Prayers of Kierkegaard, ed. by perry Lefevre, Chicago: university of Chicago press 1956. 3 SKS 5, 361–81 / EUD, 377–401. 1

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the concept of prayer also receives attention in the Concluding Unscientific Postscript, where prayer functions as a test case for the difficulty of pure subjectivity. in prayer the one who prays must maintain the distinction between self and god in order to be sure that the object of one’s prayer really is god, but then must also maintain the “dialectics” between self and god. Kierkegaard takes comfort from the fact that not even such an experienced person as Luther was able to pray even once without having his inwardness disturbed by at least one distracting thought.4 married couples need years of daily interaction to come to know each other well enough to communicate effortlessly and with clearness of mind; how much harder to communicate with god, who is no “mere externality,” yet whose “vengeance is terrible.”5 Kierkegaard’s conception of prayer can be categorized in the following ways: (i) prayer as an element of life, (ii) prayer as communication, (iii) prayer as awareness, and (iV) prayer as silence. I. Prayer as an Element of Life Kierkegaard thought that personal prayer was a habit that must be cultivated by each individual Christian. He speaks very rarely of the public character of prayer at worship services or other communal occasions. He compares prayer to breathing; the one is as important to spiritual life as the other is to physical life. death would surely follow immediately on the heels of its absence.6 even without knowing what to say or how to pray, Kierkegaard could write “the best help in all action is—to pray; that is true genius; then one never goes wrong.”7 since prayer is commanded by god, its presence as a routine practice in the life of the Christian is a form of obedience. this came more as a relief than a burden to Kierkegaard. He writes, for example, “god must be sick and tired of listening to one’s nonsense and disgusted with one’s sins. but one must not give in to this. one must struggle against this, thank god that he has commanded to pray to him, because otherwise one could scarcely come through troubles.”8 Like obedience to other divine commands, the obedience of prayer requires the exercise of freedom on the part of the one who prays. received traditional forms of prayer gave one an initial idea how one might address god, and what one should pray for, but each person must find his own voice through the habit of prayer. prayer revitalized faith, in Kierkegaard’s experience, and thus he conceived of it in ways similar to other devotional practices, such as confession and the reading of scriptures. prayer was the result of faith, certainly, but the result would also strengthen its cause.9 those who pray should take heart that the consequences of praying “wrongly” are not dire; not to have one’s request granted is not a sign of 4 5 6 7 8 9

SKS 7, 151 / CUP1, 145. SKS 7, 150 / CUP1, 144. SKS 21, 181, nb8:87 / JP 3, 2943. SKS 20, 15, nb:7 / JP 5, 5887. SKS 21, 105, nb7:59 / JP 2, 2008. SKS 24, 58, nb21:89 / JP 3, 3456.

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god’s disfavor, but rather a sign of having not submitted fully to the changeless will of god. of crucial concern is praying in the right spirit—in humility and openness. the one who prays asks for a blessing, not so much on the request made in prayer, but on the praying itself, so that it might be or become the right kind of praying. II. Prayer as Communication especially at the early stages of Kierkegaard’s writings, he conceived of prayer in verbal terms, that is, in terms of communication from the one who prayed to god. the process of prayer is a coming to consciousness of what are often latent, unconscious desires and needs. articulating such desires and needs helps one to become more aware of their subjective states. so communication is direct in the sense that it is one speaking to oneself and to god. since one is communicating with oneself in prayer, prayer can develop wisdom. for example, when alluding to bishops martensen and mynster, as well as other noted academic theologians of the nineteenth century, Kierkegaard is eager to distinguish between wisdom (his preferred model) and mere knowledge. prayer is also indirect communication. Kierkegaard conceives of the one who prays on behalf of others as communicating to those others. a negative example of this could be the pharisee who prays, “Lord, i thank you that you did not make me like these other men—robbers, evildoers, adulterers…” (Luke 18:11). god is not the only one addressed here; also the men around the pharisee overhear that they are being called robbers, etc. thus, prayer can be a form of apophatic discourse in the sense that it seeks to convey indirectly what cannot, or should not, be directly said. many of Kierkegaard’s prayers function to communicate to their hearers, on whose behalf Kierkegaard prayed, that they are sinners, that they are unworthy, that they have obligations, and so on. prayer as communication is also a form of penitence. in becoming aware of god one simultaneously becomes more aware of one’s own limitations and sins. this is not comparable to a gourmand starving himself so that food then eaten might taste better. rather, penitent prayer is a god-centered act that focuses, and does not in itself punish, the one who prays. III. Prayer as Awareness it is incomplete to think of prayer only in terms of communication, however, because of the sui generis nature of god. since the intended object of prayer is god, words inevitably fail. they fail so severely, in fact, that Kierkegaard calls the whole enterprise of prayer “comical.” He writes, “praying is thus the highest pathos of the infinite, and yet it is comic, precisely because in its inwardness, praying is incommensurate with every external expression….”10 paradoxically, the comically impossible is nonetheless a commanded daily task.

10

SKS 7, 89 / CUP1, 90. “external expression” here means “verbal expression.”

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in prayer the one who prays becomes aware of god. the long journey of inwardness leads not only to oneself, but also to god. a particularly moving prayer of Kierkegaard’s demonstrates this: well do we know that all seeking has its promise….but we know also that all seeking has its pain, and also the seeking which seeks you. we know also that to seek does not mean that a man must go out into the wide world, for the more noble that which he seeks, the closer it lies to him, and if he seeks you, o Lord, you are the closest of all to him. but this is why he has not found thee yet. teach him to wait…and even if he loses everything which is not worth winning, if he still waits for you, he still has not lost.11

simply becoming aware of god in prayer does not lead to serenity. indeed, there will, in real prayer, be conflict as the self encounters God. Nonetheless, the heightened awareness of sinful self and gracious and just god is the hallmark of genuine prayer. IV. Prayer as Silence a crucial insight for understanding how Kierkegaard saw not just his own personal prayer life but also his general views on prayer and how they changed, comes from a journal entry from 1853.12 Here he describes the development behind what it was he thought he was doing as he—or any Christian, for that matter—prayed. He had earlier thought that prayer was a way of securing the blessings of god for oneself. this is why prayer itself was such a gift; it was a means for receiving other gifts. after the pseudonymous authorship was completed, and after the bitter Corsair battle had begun, Kierkegaard saw the Christian life instead in terms of suffering. to be loved by god is to suffer. to love god is to suffer. especially in an environment hostile to the truth of the gospel, one who is genuinely a Christian will experience deep pain. Consequently, Kierkegaard began to conceive of prayer as a form of submission. The sheer difficulty of remaining counter-culturally Christian in blasé Christendom invites struggle in one’s public life, but quiet contemplation, even silence, in personal prayer. prayer is a quiet handing over of all things to god “because it is still not really clear to me how i should pray.”13 prayer as silence comes from the realization that since prayer is gift, it cannot really be an action like other voluntary actions. it is a receiving action, or as it were, a passive action. it comes at the end of struggle, as one submits, only to be renewed to struggle again. prayer must be silence because no prayer, however artfully spoken or passionately intoned, can effect a change in god or in the Christian’s experience of a fallen world. the best known words from Kierkegaard on prayer articulate this sense of submission. “prayer does not change god, but it changes the one who prays.”14 since god does not change through prayer, but the one who prays can, then one’s speaking and listening in prayer has effects on oneself. what happens is both 11 12 13 14

Pap. Vi b 160 / JP 3, 3400. SKS 25, 181, nb27:71 / JP 6, 6837. ibid. SKS 8, 137 / UD, 22.

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diminishment and enhancement. though unable to ask god to help him suffer more, Kierkegaard does ask god to make one weak, because when one is weak, one is able all the more to attribute what one does or has to god. this brings us full circle to prayer as a habit of the Christian life; it is a spiritual exercise that forms and continually re-forms the self from its sinful incurvature to authentic inwardness. thus prayer tends, asymptotically, to silence. for Kierkegaard, faithful prayer supplies access to what he calls “the true archimedean point,”15 the sure foundation of divine love that enables the believer to face an uncertain future with courage and daring. this does not mean that the one who prays has every wish fulfilled. But prayer connects the Christian to the only power that can sustain him through the valley of suffering and onward to his final, blessed, destiny. see also Confession; Conscience; god; grace; inwardness; scriptures.

15

SKS 19, 200, not6:24 / JP 5, 5468.

present age gabriel guedes rossatti

The Present Age (Nutiden—noun) from the german Jetztzeit, literally “now-time” or “the-time-that-is-now” (nu, meaning “now” and Tid “time”).1 the word Nutiden received its established rendition in english as “the present age” (and not “the present time” or even more simply “the present,” all of which are equally valid) from alexander dru.2 molbech, by the 1830s had already not only accepted the expression as a noun, but had more particlarly rendered Nutiden as “the time between the past and the future, the present time,” giving as examples of its use, moreover, the following suggestive formulations: “the present form. the dissolution of the present.—the spirit of the present [Nutidsaand], the spirit of the present time [or its] mode of thought.”3 the most frequent occurrence of the word Nutiden is in the work A Literary Review of Two Ages, followed by one mention in each volume of Either/Or, as well as two in The Point of View for My Work as an Author and, lastly, one in The Book on Adler, although in the latter it is only indicated as part of the title of a chapter rather than scrutinized as a category. (it should also be stressed that both The Point of View for My Work as an Author and The Book on Adler were published posthumously.) moreover, it is extremely rare in Kierkegaard’s works that a concept predominates so much in a single work, as Nutiden does in A Literary Review, while it almost disappears from other works and even from the notebooks, journals, and papers. in other words, it seems as if Kierkegaard utterly exhausted what he had to say about it in a rather compressed number of pages of A Literary Review (in which the word appears at least 23 times). but before i proceed to an analysis of what Kierkegaard meant by Nutiden, a couple of clarifications have to be made regarding the status of such a polysemantic term. first and above all, Nutiden is not properly speaking a concept, but rather, like the term “modernity” towards which it points, an interpretative temporal designation Ordbog over det danske Sprog, vols. 1–28, published by the society for danish Language and Literature, Copenhagen: gyldendal 1918–56, vol. 14, columns 1422–4. 2 see Kierkegaard, The Present Age, trans. by alexander dru, London, new york, and toronto: oxford university press 1940. apart from translating Kierkegaard, dru actually edited A Literary Review of Two Ages, publishing the excerpt on “the present age” as if it were an autonomous essay. 3 Christian molbech, Dansk Ordbog indeholdende det danske Sprogs Stammeord, vols. 1–2, Copenhagen: gyldendal 1855, vol. 2, p. 91. 1

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forever in search of its own meaning.4 indeed, the very expression from which it is derived, the german expression Jetztzeit, was conceived by its creator, the writer jean paul (1763–1825), as a way of designating the problematic or paradoxical fact that, as he put it, “time bursts within time, as a rainbow [bursts] from falling drops”; consequently, Jetztzeit was already expressly conceived by its creator as an “unmeasurable now-time [Jetzt-Zeit] of a million different Zeit-Geister.”5 in this sense then, the expression Jetztzeit, like both its danish counterpart (and literal translation) Nutiden,6 as well as its later french equivalent modernité—through which, by the way, it would finally gain both its fully mature rendition as well as the status of a central notion regarding the self-comprehension of western societies towards the last quarter of the nineteenth century7—is fundamentally a neologism of temporal or epochal significance which seeks to grasp the accelerated change of historical experience as the latter came to take shape after both the industrial and french revolutions.8 it also seeks conceptually to convey a sense of the “displacement of the center of gravity of time”9 in that it shifted from the past to the future. it should be stressed that Kierkegaard himself implicitly acknowledged the necessarily ambivalent status of such an expression through his use, even in A Literary Review, of other epochal expressions such as “our time” (vor Tid),10 “the modern time” (den moderne Tid),11 as well as the more synthetic “the modern

see “modernité,” in Les Notions Philosophiques, tomes 1–2, ed. by sylvain auroux, paris: presses universitaires de france 1990, tome 2, p. 1655. 5 jean paul quoted in Historisches Wörterbuch der Philosophie, vols. 1–13, ed. by joachim ritter and Karlfried gründer, darmstadt: wissenschaftliche buchgesellschaft 1971– 2007, vol. 4, i–K, p. 648 (in the article “jetztzeit”). 6 it should be mentioned that Kierkegaard very likely “received” this expression from poul martin møller, who employs it in various essays produced in the middle to the late 1830s (cf. poul martin møller, “om begrebet ironie,” in his Filosofiske Essays og Strøtanker, ed. by børge madsen, Copenhagen: gyldendalske boghandel 1965, p. 106). 7 nowadays it seems to be more or less agreed upon that it was most likely balzac (1799–1850) and not Chateaubriand (1768–1848) who was, if not exactly the inventor of the expression “modernity,” then at least its diffusing agent. Chateaubriand may have written it before the former in his Mémoires d’outre-tombe (written between 1809 and 1841 and posthumously published in 1849–50), but balzac had published it in 1823 in his novel entitled La Dernière Fée (see Claude pichois, “notice. Le peintre de la vie moderne,” in Charles baudelaire, Œuvres Complètes, vols. 1–2, ed. by Claude pichois, paris: gallimard 1975–76, vol. 2, pp. 1418–19). in any event, it is generally agreed that it was baudelaire (1821–67) who sealed its fortune through his emphasis on it, particularly in his work entitled Le Peintre de la vie moderne (The Painter of Modern Life), published in three installments in late 1863. on Chateaubriand as the inventor of the term “modernity” see Historisches Wörterbuch der Philosophie, tome 6, mo–o, p. 60. 8 see reinhart Koselleck, “Neuzeit: remarks on the semantics of modern Concepts of movement,” in his Futures Past: On the Semantics of Historical Time, trans. by Keith tribe, new york and Chichester: Columbia university press 2004, pp. 222–54. 9 Krzysztof pomian, L’ordre du temps, paris: gallimard 1984, p. 291. 10 see, for instance, SKS 8, 67 / TA, 70. 11 see, for instance, SKS 8, 81 / TA, 84. 4

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era” (det Moderne).12 all of these expressions, precisely as counter-expressions of “antiquity” (Oldtiden),13 function fundamentally as markers of the difficulty of trying to apprehend the various manifestations of the very latest time, period or moment, since Kierkegaard’s intention behind the expression Nutiden was precisely to grasp it in a conceptual manner.14 from a historical-conceptual point of view,15 then, i think it is entirely legitimate to approximate, if not to equate, “the present age” with “modernity,” and as such i shall use both terms interchangeably.16 precisely from such a point of view one can say that, in regard to the former expression, what strikes one concerning its use by Kierkegaard is its apparent homogeneity. for if there are, on the one hand, no drastic changes of meaning in its usage, then, on the other hand, one may notice a very subtle shift of comprehension on Kierkegaard’s part in regard to the radicality or utter novelty of “the present age.” in other words, while on its surface one may recognize a progressive and uniform deepening of see, for instance, SKS 8, 88 / TA, 92. Kierkegaard, moreover, not only employed in other works temporal expressions composed around the noun “new” (in danish ny), such as den nyere Tid (generally translated as “the modern period”; see, for instance, SKS 2, 143 / EO1, 143), den nyere Philosophi (see, for instance, SKS 4, 9 / R, 131, translated as “modern philosophy”), den nyere Udvikling (see, for instance, SKS 1, 17 / EPW, 61, translated as “the… newer development”), but he also followed Hegel in his understanding of the “new” either as the major category of “modernity” (see g.w.f. Hegel, Phänomenolgie des Geistes, ed. by wolfgang bonsiepen und reinhard Heede, Hamburg: felix meiner 1980, pp. 14–15) or as a category in its own right (see, for instance, SKS 1, 300 / CI, 262). other than that, Kierkegaard also sporadically employed the verb “to modernize,” as in SKS 16, 143 / PV, 131. 13 see, for instance, SKS 8, 88 / TA, 92. 14 for as baudelaire put it in his classical definition, “Modernity is the transitory, the fugitive, the contingent, one half of art, whose other half is the eternal and the immutable” (baudelaire, “Le peintre de la vie moderne,” Œuvres Complètes, vol. 2, p. 695). indeed, a most interesting as well as plastic example of this conceptual chase was given by the french writer jules Vallès (1832–85), who, in an article entitled “yesterday-tomorrow,” ironically reckoned that “the actuality! the actuality! one has to run after it, where it is to be found! one is its prisoner, [or] less than that, one is its servant. one has to lie in wait, all the time, at day, at night; one would do well by having a bell at its door like the apothecaries or the sick important ones. it has to do, in this steeple-chase after the news, with arriving in the first place!” (Jules Vallès, “Hier-Demain” in Œuvres, vols. 1–2, ed. by roger bellet, paris: gallimard 1975, vol. 1, pp. 917–18). 15 regarding this approach, see reinhart Koselleck, “Begriffsgeschichte and social History” in his Futures Past: On the Semantics of Historical Time, pp. 75–92. 16 this means i agree with pattison, for whom “[t]his ‘present age’ (Nutiden: the nowtime, the time-that-now-is) [is] also known as modernity” (george pattison, Kierkegaard, Religion and the Nineteenth-Century Crisis of Culture, Cambridge: Cambridge university press 2002, p. 21), and disagree with plekon, among others, who reckon that “[t]oo often it is forgotten that the “present age” (Nutiden) of which Kierkegaard writes is not all of modernity, not in essence the twentieth century with its wars and political transformations but the very small world of golden age denmark’s Copenhagen” (michael plekon, “towards apocalypse: Kierkegaard’s two ages in golden age denmark,” in Two Ages, ed. by robert L. perkins, macon, georgia: mercer university press 1984 (International Kierkegaard Commentary, vol. 14), p. 24. see also bruce H. Kirmmse, Kierkegaard in Golden Age Denmark, bloomington and indianapolis: indiana university press 1990, pp. 266–7. 12

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its meanings and implications (since it bears so many different processes in its kernel),17 on a more profound level his analysis also seems to contain the seeds of a different understanding, namely, one which points to the idea of a radical shift. that is, Kierkegaard seems to have slightly altered his conception of the very radicality of “modernity” while retaining, at the same time, the very concept through which he analyzed such a shift. it remains to be seen how this came about. The very first mention of Nutiden in the published works of Kierkegaard occurs, not by accident, in a work which is structured around the temporal designations out of which both the expressions Nutiden and modernité coalesced, that is, the more general “Quarrel between the ancients and the moderns,” which, in turn, has its roots in the renaissance.18 Kierkegaard’s pseudonymous essay entitled “the tragic in Ancient Drama Reflected in The Tragic in Modern Drama”19 is in fact constructed from the systematic confrontation between the concepts of “ancient” and “modern” tragedy, so much that his discussion starts off from the apparent “break”20 between both phenomena. while the expression or category Nutiden is engaged there in an innocuous way,21 the “break” is also discarded at this point, since the very idea of the human condition links these “two ages,” for, as Kierkegaard puts it, “no matter how much the world has changed, the idea of the tragic is still essentially unchanged, just as weeping still continues to be equally natural to humankind.”22 in Either/Or, part two, the term Nutiden, translated this time as “present,” is no more problematized than it was in Either/Or, part one.23 nevertheless, it is again much more the background of its engagement which is of interest to us, for judge william mentions in passing “modern [den nyere] philosophy’s pet theory that the principle of contradiction is canceled.”24 the thesis that the principle of contradiction is canceled would be effectively accepted, albeit unwillingly, later on by Kierkegaard,25 but for the time being the notion of a “total break” with the past is, once again, discarded.26

for a brief overview of some of these processes, see robert b. pippin, Modernism as a Philosophical Problem: On the Dissatisfactions of European High Culture, malden, massachusetts and oxford: blackwell 1999, p. 4. 18 see, among others, Levent yilmaz, Le Temps Moderne: Variations sur les Anciens et les contemporains, paris: gallimard 2004. 19 see SKS 2, 137–62 / EO1, 137–64. 20 SKS 2, 140 / EO1, 139. 21 see SKS 2, 144 / EO1, 145. 22 SKS 2, 139 / EO1, 139. 23 see SKS 3, 167 / EO2, 171. 24 SKS 3, 166 / EO2, 170. 25 in the Concluding Unscientific Postscript one still finds Kierkegaard struggling with the thesis according to which “[t]he absoluteness of the principle of contradiction is said to be an illusion that disappears under the scrutiny of thinking. Correct, but then in turn the abstraction of thinking is a phantasy that disappears before the actuality of existence, because the annulment of the principle of contradiction, if it is going to be something and not be a literary whim in the imagination of a fanciful being, means for an existing person that he himself has ceased to exist” (SKS 7, 317 / CUP1, 347). 26 see SKS 3, 167 / EO2, 171. 17

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and “[t]hen p.L. møller loomed up”27—the phrase belongs to meïr goldschmidt (1819–87), but one could put it in Kierkegaard’s mouth, and add “and the present age with him.” for, as is well known, it was after the so-called “Corsair affair”28 that the category of the present age really gained its definite problematization in the work of Kierkegaard. by being exposed to the ridicule of the masses by the Corsair in the first months of 1846, Kierkegaard came to grasp the hidden or opaque29 relationship between the mass media (in this case journalism) and the “public,” not to mention the process ignited by such a relationship and which Kierkegaard himself would call “leveling.” in other words, it was the conceptual grasping of this mass social relation that served as Kierkegaard’s point of entry into the center of the project of modernity. it should be stressed, though, that if the so-called “Corsair affair” effectively served as a catalyst in terms of spurring Kierkegaard to a thorough review of his age, it is nonetheless also true that it was thomasine gyllembourg’s (1791–1860) novel entitled Two Ages30 that furnished Kierkegaard with some of its most important categories for his critical review of it, even if they are not worked out as such in the novel. for the truth of the matter is that the novel was also structured according to the centuries old “Quarrel between the ancients and the moderns,” and as such it must have been the very epochal dichotomy presented in the novel that incited Kierkegaard to present his own reading of both the novel and of his age.31 this means, then, that Kierkegaard’s own reading of “the present age” is established from a systematic comparison between “the age of revolution” (Revolutions-Tide)32 and “the present age” (Nutiden),33 described in its most synthetic formulation as “a sensible, reflecting age, devoid of passion, flaring up in superficial, short-lived enthusiasm and prudentially relaxing in indolence.”34 and yet, curiously enough, one could claim that these are not, in the end, the defining features of “the present age” as Kierkegaard understood it. Kierkegaard’s analysis of this term can be said to operate on two different levels, namely, one that from meïr goldschmidt’s autobiography, Livs Erindringer og Resultater, vols. 1–2, Copenhagen: gyldendal 1877, vol. 1, p. 297, quoted in COR, supplement, 141. 28 since the story of the skirmish between Kierkegaard and the Corsair newspaper, in which peder Ludvig møller (1814–65) worked as one of its anonymous editors alongside goldschmidt, is well known i will not occupy myself with it here. for its details see, among others, Howard V. and edna H. Hong, “Historical introduction,” in COR, vii–xxxiii. 29 on the “opaqueness” of “modernity,” see both marcel gauchet, L’Avènement de la Démocratie I: La révolution moderne, paris: gallimard 2007, pp. 21–2, p. 184, as well as paul Connerton, How Modernity Forgets, Cambridge: Cambridge university press 2009, pp. 40ff. 30 see thomasine gyllembourg, To Tidsaldre, ed. by johan Ludvig Heiberg, Copenhagen: C.a. reitzel 1845. it should be mentioned that at that time the novel appeared anonymously. 31 it must not be forgotten though, that many works previously written and published by Kierkegaard himself, such as From the Papers of One Still Living, The Concept of Irony and the above-mentioned essay “The Tragic in Ancient Drama Reflected in The Tragic in Modern drama,” had been structured on a similar pattern. 32 see SKS 8, 59–66 / TA, 61–8. 33 see SKS 8, 66–105 / TA, 68–110. 34 SKS 8, 66 / TA, 68 (original emphasis). 27

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might effectively be called philosophical—being one of a proper worldly importance, comparable to other conceptions of “modernity” in a more abstract sense such as developed by other major nineteenth-century thinkers—while the other is of a more sociological nature, on account of its more immediate and, in this sense, parochial, import; the expression “the present age” would better represent the latter than would “modernity.” In any event, concerning the philosophical level one could claim, firstly, that “the present age” presupposes a radical break with the past, something Kierkegaard himself indicates time and again in A Literary Review.35 He also emphasizes this in a more forceful manner in a private note from 1850 in which he discusses the “worldshift” (Verdens-Bevægelsen) that had taken place in his contemporary world.36 secondly, this notion of a “world-shift” seems to be based precisely on the fact that “[t]he present age…has nullified the principle of contradiction.”37 this means that Kierkegaard sensed, in the very foundations of “modernity,” a broader set of transformations, for he came to understand that precisely the abolition of such a principle enabled “movement,” which in A Literary Review is treated as “leveling.”38 indeed, Kierkegaard describes the latter as an abstract dynamic process,39 which was (and still is) piercing through the various structures, institutions, corporations, cultural practices, values and beliefs that shape or constitute modern life. thirdly, Kierkegaard had clearly understood that, as one scholar puts it, “[t]he key feature of the modern world…is movement,”40 and as such it is no coincidence that in The Book on Adler (begun in 1846, the year of the “Corsair affair”) his pseudonym petrus minor repeatedly speaks both of his age as “an age of movement”41 and of his contemporaries as “the men of movement.”42 finally, Kierkegaard’s “modernity” is entirely based on processes that create “abstractions” such as the “public,” and as such its most fundamental image is that of the “abstract void and vacuum,”43 which see SKS 8, 68 / TA, 71; SKS 8, 83 / TA, 87; SKS 8, 87–8 / TA, 91–2. see SKS 24, 82, nb21:132 / JP 2, 1792. in Armed Neutrality Kierkegaard would write about “the far, far distant past [længst forsvundne Tider], in times more simple than these” and in which “the new [det Nye], the new nonsense that is now in vogue” did not exist (SKS 16, 144 / PV, 131). 37 SKS 8, 92 / TA, 97 (original emphasis). 38 see SKS 8, 80ff. / TA, 84ff. 39 SKS 8, 80 / TA, 84: “envy in the process of establishing itself takes the form of leveling….” 40 Larry duffy, Le Grand Transit Moderne: Mobility, Modernity and French Naturalist Fiction, amsterdam and new york: rodopi 2005, p. 14. see also Kresten nordentoft, Hvad siger Brand-Majoren? Kierkegaards Opgør med sin Samtid, Copenhagen: g.e.C. gad 1973, pp. 46–7. 41 SKS 15, 119 / BA, 143. 42 SKS 15, 132 / BA, 157. 43 SKS 8, 88 / TA, 93; see also SKS 8, 80–3 / TA, 84–7; SKS 8, 92–3 / TA, 97–8. one important passage in this sense i take to be very problematic, once Kierkegaard mentions that “[a] passionate, tumultuous age wants to overthrow everything, set aside everything. an age that is revolutionary but also reflecting and devoid of passion changes the expression of power into a dialectical tour de force: it lets everything remain but subtly drains the meaning out of it…” (SKS 8, 74 / TA, 77, original emphasis). the problem here is the fact that, on the one 35 36

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indeed haunt his analysis in A Literary Review. these indeed seem to me to be the profoundest features of “modernity” as Kierkegaard understood it. now on the sociological, that is, on the more prosaic and conceptualizable level, Kierkegaard’s “modernity” is also composed of more concrete phenomena: effects or reifications of those more opaque or hidden processes or features of “modernity.” In other words, as the more parochial “golden age” version of “the present age” then,44 its prominent features would comprise the excess of “reflection”45 and consequently the “lack of passion,”46 as well as other “reifications”—though Kierkegaard may still call them “abstractions”—such as “the public,”47 “the press,”48 “money,”49 “superficiality,”50 “anonymity,”51 and “chatter,”52 among others. Kierkegaard would never again problematize or spell out his conception of Nutiden either in his later works or in his private notes as he had done in A Literary Review. nevertheless, it seems to function as a major presupposition throughout The Book on Adler, which, as previously stated, was started by Kierkegaard the very same year he wrote and published A Literary Review (1846). in fact, Nutiden is engaged in The Book on Adler as a fundamental concept—precisely in the sense of structuring—or as its frame, for while the body of the work seems to be silent about it, one chapter title displays it.53 this, in turn, signals the fact that The Book on Adler hand, “revolution” and, on the other, both “(excessive) reflection” and “lack of passion,” once excluding terms and as such elements of differentiation between the “two ages,” suddenly seem to lose such characteristics and, consequently, one cannot be sure what period Kierkegaard has in mind with regard to this last sentence. 44 another way of putting it is to say that this is the Heibergian side of Kierkegaard’s notion of “the present age,” for, as different scholars have pointed out, some of johan Ludvig Heiberg’s (1791–1860) essays were instrumental in terms of providing some of the major concepts used by Kierkegaard in his review (in this sense see Kresten nordentoft, Hvad siger Brand-Majoren? Kierkegaards Opgør med sin Samtid, p. 39, note 10). 45 On the duplicity of “reflection” see particularly SKS 8, 91–2 / TA, 96; SKS 8, 105 / TA, 110–11. 46 this is not to say that Kierkegaard, as a cross between an anthropologist and a sociologist, actually witnessed or somehow measured a feature such as “lack of passion” (which, by the way, is no concept in its own right) in his contemporaries. in other words, determining which side such and such phenomena belong to, either to the side of “modernity” or to the side of “the present age,” is no easy feat. in sum, this is much more an exercise in didacticism than anything else. 47 see SKS 8, 86ff. / TA, 90ff. 48 see ibid. 49 see SKS 8, 72–3 / TA, 74–5. 50 see SKS 8, 97 / TA, 102. 51 see SKS 8, 98 / TA, 103. 52 see SKS 8, 92ff. / TA, 97ff. 53 the truth of the matter is that the english translation confusingly gives the rendition “the present age” to the danish expression den hele moderne Udvikling (“the whole modern development”) as part of one of its chapter titles (see SKS 15, 156 / BA, 36), making it appear that there are two chapter titles displaying the expression Nutiden while in reality there is only one which effectively displays it, namely, the title of chapter iV of both the danish and english editions: see SKS 15, 248 / BA, 91.

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is entirely structured upon it, and as such the complex known as “the present age” provides the support for Kierkegaard’s analysis of the troubled psyche of the danish pastor adolph peter adler (1817–69). the last appearances of Nutiden occur in The Point of View for My Work as an Author, where the expression is used in a rather objectified manner in two different footnotes. that is, here the expression is engaged solely as a way of representing or of referring to the work entitled A Literary Review. in fact, in one of them Kierkegaard explicates the “totally religious background in [his] understanding of ‘the present age,’ ”54 while the other is actually a side-commentary on the importance of the category “the single individual,” particularly against the background according to which, as Kierkegaard put it, “it was an age of disintegration.”55 right after the last sentence he adds a footnote, which reads: “for an interpretation of the present age, see, for example, A Literary Review by s. K., Copenhagen 1846, the last section.”56 as seen, Kierkegaard in this passage unequivocally linked “the present age” to the “dissolution” of the entire old world-order (or “antiquity”), which in turn allows one to affirm that he had grasped perfectly the monumental shift which was to lead to what one could term “the age of the pure future.”57 to summarize, in lieu of the fully formed notion of “modernity,” which would only establish itself in a more general way towards the last quarter of the nineteenth century, Kierkegaard developed his interpretation of this complex of phenomena through the expression “the present age.” In this sense, one can safely affirm that there is a Kierkegaardian understanding of “modernity” as a multi-layered combination of different processes, phenomena and values, which has been transforming—if not more exactly revolutionizing—both the face of the world and our experience of it for the last couple of centuries. see also anonymity; Chatter; Christendom; Crisis; Crowd/public; envy; immediacy/ Reflection; Leveling; Passion/Pathos; Politics; Press/Journalism; Revolution; Society; spiritlessness;Vortex; worldliness/secularism.

SKS 16, 17n / PV, 31n. SKS 16, 99 / PV, 119. 56 SKS 16, 99n / PV, 119n. 57 the expression “pure future” was coined by marcel gauchet in his Le desenchantement du monde, paris: gallimard 1985, p. 361. 54 55

press/journalism david Lappano

Press (Presse—noun), Journalism (Journalistik—noun) the danish word Presse is derived from the french presse, referring to news media and journalism, particularly newspapers, and from the german Presse (from the Latin pressa), which refers to the action of pressing and the technology of pressing typeset pieces with ink onto paper.1 the term Journalistik refers to the occupation concerning the dissemination of news in articles and newspapers, from the french journal.2 the daily press commands Kierkegaard’s critical attention because it powerfully contributes to a new form of social relation that he identifies with his present age: the development of mass society. He frequently speaks interchangeably about the press and “the public,” generalizing the characteristics of both, using similar aphoristic language to describe them, and therefore making it difficult to discern whether comments about the press are applicable to “the public,” and vice versa. what is clear, for Kierkegaard, is that the press and the public cooperate to diminish the category of the individual and the ethical-religious existence that requires individual subjectivity. the press is accused of contributing to the abstraction of social relationships, the production of spectacle and publicity, and the disintegration of religiousness. I. Personal Encounters with the Press Kierkegaard’s interaction with the press flares up at three distinct periods of his authorship, roughly coinciding with the beginning, middle, and end of his writing life. first, and prior to his published authorship, Kierkegaard gave a speech at the student association in 1835 attacking the free press movement in the liberal newspapers, and in 1836 he authored a series of articles in Kjøbenhavns flyvende Post attacking the liberal newspapers featuring the journalist orla Lehmann.3 Kierkegaard enters an existing debate about the press as a response to comments made by a prominent activist who insists that danish journalism has been an active Ordbog over det danske Sprog, vols. 1–28, published by the society for danish Language and Literature, Copenhagen: gyldendal 1918–56, vol. 16, columns 1265–72. 2 ibid., vol. 9, column 885. 3 see “Historical introduction” to Early Polemical Writings (EPW, vii–xxxvi). 1

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political force.4 against this, Kierkegaard claims that the press is aesthetic in nature and therefore only contributes to matters of taste, opinion, and the presentation of selected events. Kierkegaard states that Kjøbenhavnsposten “plays around with esthetics,” that “the news section contains esthetic and cultural news, anecdotes, and other literary confection. thus the paper is not political.”5 according to Kierkegaard, the danish newspapers only begin to make political pronouncements concerning press freedom as a reverberation of the political situation in france, or once the danish government presents an ordinance. Kierkegaard’s judgment is that the press constitutes a reactive force, while the government is the “primus motor.”6 using language that would become characteristic of his later writing, Kierkegaard states, “so the relation between the government and journalistic literature on the whole can be described as follows: the government was active-passive (or affected through an activity); journalism was passive-active (or acting through a passivity).”7 second, in 1845–46 Kierkegaard was involved in a highly public and highly acrimonious battle with the popular magazine, the Corsair. after pseudonymously goading the Corsair to satirize him (under the pseudonym frater taciturnus) Kierkegaard became the target of the Corsair’s ridicule. Kierkegaard’s works are dismissed as “thick” books of sophistry, and the Corsair published a series of caricatures depicting Kierkegaard as crazy, hunched, thin-legged, with uneven trousers, as imagining himself at the center of universe, and even ridiculing his broken engagement. this event had a lasting impression on Kierkegaard, and he came to feel socially isolated: day after day to be the object of everybody’s conversation and attention….every kitchen boy feels justified in almost insulting me in accordance with The Corsair’s orders….the slightest thing i do, if it is merely to pay a visit, is twisted and distorted into lies and told everywhere; if The Corsair finds out, it is printed and read by everybody, the man I visit is embarrassed, gets almost angry with me, for which he cannot be blamed.8

this event provided fodder for Kierkegaard’s critical assessment of culture after 1846. also in that year Kierkegaard wrote and published his A Literary Review of Two Ages, a polemical culture-critique that aims much of its vitriol at “the press.” third, Kierkegaard returns to the newspapers in 1854–55, followed by his own independently published pamphlet, The Moment, as the sole medium through which he waged his attack on the danish state Church. by publishing through the daily press, Kierkegaard claims he is able to bring Christianity out of the churches and into the streets where it belongs; he believes it affords him the non-partisan 4 johannes ostermann’s published address to the student association valorizes a liberal newspaper by suggesting that when it came on the scene “the injured person saw in the press a means of winning back his lost rights, and the wrongdoer began to fear the power lying in the general consciousness of the people.” johannes ostermann, “our Latest journalistic Literature,” in EPW, supplement, 190. 5 SKS 27, 195 / EPW, 42. 6 SKS 27, 196 / EPW, 44. 7 SKS 27, 198 / EPW, 46. 8 SKS 20, 18, nb:7 / JP 5, 5887.

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freedom to present his position; and he believes that the serial format best suits his communication.9 These episodes of engagement reflect an ambivalence toward the press and the newly emerging formations of the modern public. although Kierkegaard mentions the press and journalism at numerous points throughout his authorship, these intensive episodes, which take place at almost precisely decade intervals, are offered here as primary examples of his attitude toward, and his understanding of, the press and journalism. Chronologically, Kierkegaard’s comments about the press are first focused on a few specific liberal newspapers, then his criticism expands to include the journalism of all daily newspapers, and this critique of the press is extended to a critique of mass society in A Literary Review of Two Ages, and a critique of Christendom in The Moment. II. The Press as an Example of Existential Crisis The press is a social abstraction. the press is accused of encouraging an abstract social unity, “the public,” brought on by the spirit of leveling and envy.10 although he acknowledges that “the basic tendency of our modern age has been toward leveling” through various social transformations, “none of them was leveling because none was sufficiently abstract but had a concretion of actuality.”11 thus, Kierkegaard distinguishes the historical tendency toward equality between distinct parties (what he calls “approximate leveling”) from the leveling that the press promotes. the (approximate) leveling striven for by particular professions, classes, or groups of people, remains “within the concretions of individuality,”12 and therefore it is not open to the charge of spiritlessness that Kierkegaard reserves for the press. the abstraction of leveling that Kierkegaard accuses the press of is a process of removing subjective commitments by relating en masse.13 equality in the present age is regarded by Kierkegaard as a purely mathematical concept.14 this leveling “is a principle that forms no personal, intimate relation to any particular individual, but only the relation of abstraction, which is the same for all.”15 the result is that “the abstraction that individuals paralogistically form alienates individuals instead of helping them.”16 However, Kierkegaard does not go so far as to suggest that the press causes modern leveling. He acknowledges that certain conditions are in place, within which the press operates as it does. Kierkegaard writes, “only when there is no strong communal life…will the press create this abstraction ‘the public,’ ”17 and “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 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17

Pap. Xi–3 b 120 / JP 6, 6957. SKS 8, 86 / TA, 90. ibid. ibid. SKS 8, 61 / TA, 63. SKS 8, 81 / TA, 85. SKS 8, 84 / TA, 88. SKS 8, 87 / TA, 91. ibid.

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individual only in an abstract sense) gives rise to the abstraction’s phantom, ‘the public,’ which is the real leveler.”18 the press and the public are presented as dialectically related abstractions (the public is the what of modern identity and the press is the how), yet within that relationship the press is the communicating aspect. therefore, Kierkegaard presents the press as a negative example of communication and a negative example of relating to others. The press encourages anonymity. one reason why Kierkegaard calls the press an abstraction is due to the anonymity of journalistic communication. in his journals Kierkegaard comments on legal battles in france and attitudes expressed in denmark which argue that journalism requires the anonymity of their authors in order to exist. However, Kierkegaard uses journalistic anonymity more broadly as an example of what follows from communication that is depleted of subjectivity. Kierkegaard states: that on the whole the press, representing abstract, impersonal communication, is demoralizing…that anonymity…is a basic source of modern demoralization; that on the other hand anonymity would be counteracted most simply, that a very beneficial corrective to journalism’s abstraction would be provided if we turned back once again to antiquity and learned what it means to be an individual human being, no more and no less, which also an author certainly is, no more and no less—this is self-evident.19

anonymity amounts to omitting oneself from one’s communication rather than one’s name. Kierkegaard writes, “not only do people write anonymously, but they write anonymously over their signature, yes, even speak anonymously.”20 anonymity forces the question as to why one chooses to communicate in the first place. An author, Kierkegaard claims, has a need to communicate himself.21 on the other hand, a “premise-author,” another title Kierkegaard gives to journalists, “has no need to communicate himself, because essentially he has nothing to communicate.”22 instead, the journalist is “one who is in need.”23 ideally, the author is essentially a teacher, and it is the reader who needs the author.24 However, the journalist inverts this relationship and demonstrates that “he needs in every way, and in every way he needs the public for instruction and information, for its forbearing indulgence, for its most gracious applause with the air of connoisseurs, for its money, for its honors.”25 a consequence of this need is that the journalist panders to the public instead of communicating something essential.

18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25

SKS 8, 89 / TA, 93. SKS 16, 38 / PV, 57. SKS 8, 98 / TA, 103. SKS 15, 99 / BA, 14. SKS 15, 99–100 / BA, 14. SKS 15, 100 / BA, 14. SKS 15, 101 / BA, 15. SKS 15, 100 / BA, 14.

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III. What the Press Communicates The press communicates chatter and publicity. Kierkegaard determines that journalism is foremost the production of “chatter” and “publicity.” Chatter is a symptom of the inability to keep silent, which amounts to an incapacity to demonstrate subjectivity. this is because, for Kierkegaard, “silence is inwardness” whereas “chattering gets ahead of essential speaking, and giving utterance to reflection has a weakening effect on action by getting ahead of it.”26 rather than dealing seriously with a particular matter at hand, the press continually seeks out something new to talk about. Kierkegaard essentially identifies chatter with extensive talk about the banal or private.27 the extensity of chatter is publicity, and the destructive force of the press, as Kierkegaard sees it, is identified with the modern capability to circulate en masse this kind of communication: the daily press, especially in minor affairs, is evil simply and solely through its power of circulation; in minor affairs it is a disproportionate means of communication and thus a kind of insanity which tends to make society into a madhouse….no, in and by itself circulation is an evil.28

the press represents the psychosis of a newly emergent urban and cosmopolitan mass society. Human relationships and human self-understanding in this new climate are his concern rather than the fact of growth and diversity (which was quite limited in Copenhagen). The hysteria or insanity comes from excessively inflating the significance of the immediate: “The daily press consists in its being calculated to make…the moment a thousand or ten thousand times more inflated and important than it already is.”29 there is a tension here: chatter indicates that nothing is of essential importance and defers decision by simply moving attention on to the next event, whereas publicity and circulation render hysterical every event and every moment into disproportionate importance—but always at arms-length from the subjectivity of the individual. thus, the daily press represents a move toward communication that is increasingly severed from any essential significance of lived existence. Kierkegaard offers a dystopian conclusion from the logic of journalistic communication, which leads to people becoming consumers of abstract communication rather than participants in genuine intercourse. “[e]ventually human speech will become just like the public: pure abstraction—there will no longer be someone who speaks, but an objective reflection will gradually deposit a kind of atmosphere, an abstract noise that will render human speech superfluous.”30 when the subjective and the personal are removed from communication, then it follows, for Kierkegaard, that the ethical and religious categories are also removed.

26 27 28 29 30

SKS 8, 92 / TA, 97. SKS 8, 90 / TA, 94; SKS 8, 92 / TA, 97; SKS 8, 95 / TA, 100. SKS 25, 428, nb30:53 / JP 2, 2173. SKS 21, 145, nb8:3 / JP 2, 2157. SKS 8, 97–8 / TA, 104.

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IV. The Press as an Example of Ethical Crisis Kierkegaard’s personal experience as the target of ridicule in the daily press augmented his ethical criticism of journalism and what he calls the “rabblebarbarism” of the crowd.31 Kierkegaard’s ethical concerns pertaining to the press are twofold: (1) the unethical aspect of the spectacle, and (2) the unethical aspect of avoiding action by reflection. (1) despite insisting the press and the public are abstractions, Kierkegaard also acknowledges the real power and real danger they possess: “the public is all and nothing, the most dangerous of all powers and the most meaningless.”32 it is nothing and meaningless insofar as it has no concrete character or form; it is nothing in particular but only “something” in general, an aggregate “formed by the participant’s becoming a third party.”33 becoming a “third party” in relation to one’s own actions and interactions with others is the danger Kierkegaard warns of. its danger is the anonymity and the security a public provides, behind which there is no accountability and which no one dares to oppose. Kierkegaard points to Christ’s execution as a cowardly act that only a crowd is capable of, that the act of spitting on Christ is something no individual alone would do unless guarded by the anonymity of the crowd.34 through the press the public exhibits an appetite for spectacle and the sensational. the public “seeks to be entertained and indulges in the notion that everything anyone does is done so that it may have something to gossip about.”35 and the daily press obliges. in one instance Kierkegaard likens the press to a dog that the public keeps for its amusement.36 when a person of distinction appears “the dog is goaded to attack him, and then the fun begins.”37 with this analogy Kierkegaard imagines (and perhaps recalls from experience) how the public and the press avoid a personal and an ethical relationship to events. once the “dog” has done its damage “the public will be unrepentant, for it actually does not keep the dog, it merely subscribes; neither did it directly goad the dog to attack nor whistle it back.”38 there is in fact no one who is responsible and no accountability since “the dog has no owner.”39 And finally, if the dog is apprehended and exterminated, the public response would be: “we all wanted it done—even the subscribers.”40 from the other side the press provides the public with its spectacle by circulating chatter, which nullifies the distinction between public and private in “a private-public garrulousness, which is just about what the public is.”41 Kierkegaard’s parable presents the press and the public in a dialectical 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41

SKS 16, 45 / PV, 64; SKS 16, 92 / PV, 112. SKS 8, 89 / TA, 93. SKS 8, 89 / TA, 94. SKS 16, 88 / PV, 108. SKS 8, 90 / TA, 94. SKS 8, 90 / TA, 95. ibid. ibid. (emphasis added). ibid. ibid. SKS 8, 95 / TA, 100.

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relationship of mutual affirmation, as mutual enablers of the basest characteristics of modern mass society: sensationalism, acrimony, impunity, and apathy. (2) despite the fact that the public is generally well informed on a broad range of topics, despite knowing various options regarding what must be done, Kierkegaard is convinced that people are neither encouraged nor willing to take decisive action.42 instead, he suggests that the reflection indicative of journalism actually deters people from acting as individuals. decisive action is met with “a thousand reflections from outside” that “immediately create opposition”43 to the individual, so that “what the individual fears more than death is reflection’s judgment upon him, reflection’s objection to his wanting to venture something as a single individual.”44 It is not reflection itself that Kierkegaard opposes but “stagnation in reflection” that occasions “retrogression by transforming the prerequisites into evasions.”45 to act as an individual is regarded as unethical since the modern view holds “that to be a human being is to belong as a specimen to a race….the race, the species, is higher than the individual.”46 the modern individual does not belong to himself but to “an abstraction in which reflection subordinates him.”47 the press is presented as fostering a conformist environment policed by the threat of demonstration of error by reflection, and the subordination of the particular by the universal. V. The Press as Example of Religious Crisis Kierkegaard’s religious concern with the press is an extension of the ethical and existential concerns previously mentioned: the press promotes an impersonal relationship to events, others, and existence in general. However, religiously the issue is also a matter of authority and truth. Kierkegaard writes, “there has never been a power so diametrically opposed to Christianity as the daily press. day in and day out the daily press does nothing but delude men with the supreme axiom of this lie—that numbers are decisive.”48 Kierkegaard interprets the liberalizing and democratic message of the press as part of a broader secularizing trend in modernity. the age, with the help of the press has turned the public into a person, a subject with opinions and a will, which believes itself to be powerful and authoritative for no other reason than its numerical size.49 but here again Kierkegaard does not really distinguish between the activity of the press and the formation of a public or a crowd. not only does the crowd fancy itself greater than kings,50 but it also believes it can intimidate god, confusing the

42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50

SKS 8, 99 / TA, 104. ibid. SKS 8, 82 / TA, 85. SKS 8, 92 / TA, 96. SKS 16, 87 / PV, 107. SKS 8, 82 / TA, 85. SKS 23, 374, nb19:70 / JP 2, 2165. SKS 8, 81 / TA, 85. SKS 8, 89 / TA, 93.

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voice of the people and the voice of god.51 when truth becomes a matter of balloting and the most subscribed-to opinion in the press, it may have political significance but it “becomes untruth when it is carried over into the realms of the intellectual, the spiritual, and the religious.”52 religious existence is only possible for Kierkegaard with the category of the single individual, which requires a personal relationship to god and to others with god as the middle term. a public is an impersonal relation and the press is an impersonal communication “which excludes god as the middle term (because the personal god cannot be the middle term in an impersonal relationship).”53 if the impersonal dimension of the public or the press or “the human race” assumes ethical authority, or becomes the middle term, then Kierkegaard claims Christianity is abolished.54 the press therefore represents the most salient example of an ethical-religious crisis in the present age, which Kierkegaard believes he is addressing in his writings. see also Chatter; Crowd/public; envy; Leveling; politics; society; worldliness/ secularism.

51 52 53 54

SKS 16, 103 / PV, 123. SKS 16, 89 / PV, 109. SKS 16, 91 / PV, 111. SKS 16, 102 / PV, 122.

pride daniel m. dion

Pride (Stolthed—noun; stolt—adjective) this term, derived from the older new danish Stolthed, translated here as “pride,” can also mean arrogance, haughtiness, loftiness, or presumption.1 it occurs more than 200 times in a variety of writings in numerous contexts in Kierkegaard’s authorship. it receives its most extensive analysis by Kierkegaard in the upbuilding discourse “against Cowardliness”2 and in The Concept of Anxiety,3 although the actual word appears most frequently in Stages on Life’s Way and next most in Either/Or. for interpretive purposes i identify general categories of usages; however, upon close comparison of these various usages the concept of pride is not systematically contained in a single meaning. frequent citations to its various appearances should give readers a strong starting point for deeper critical attention to this little studied concept in Kierkegaard’s authorship. because the context often determines the definition in most of these cases, it seems unlikely that there was an essential understanding of pride lurking behind the various usages, and only a provisional attempt is made to connect these various usages into a larger interpretive schema. the term “pride” is used frequently in both pseudonymous and non-pseudonymous works. there are four general usages, some receiving more focused treatment than others. they are pride as nobility, pride as cowardliness, false pride, and pride as eternal gift. a hermeneutic of the Kierkegaardian threefold stages of the aesthetic, ethical, and religious emerges as helpful for relating the various forms of pride that can be identified in Kierkegaard’s work to each other. this is an interpretive judgment and one that may or may not serve all interpretive purposes.4

Ordbog over det danske Sprog, vols. 1–28, published by the society for danish Language and Literature, Copenhagen: gyldendal 1918–56, vol. 15, columns 93–8. 2 SKS 5, 335–60 / EUD, 353–4. 3 SKS 4, 445 / CA, 145. 4 there is also the matter of Kierkegaard’s own pride as a writer, a charge leveled against him at various times in his life. He responds to this in different places. see, for example, SKS 16, 75 / PV, 95–6. 1

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I. Pride as Nobility this usage of pride is most associated with a kind of nobility held by an individual, high self-esteem, and the like. depending on the context, this usage has little moral depth to it, and it does not always end up for the best in the pride-filled individual. this is evident in the proud characters of various pseudonymous writings like Either/ Or, Repetition, and Stages on Life’s Way. for example, in “silhouettes,” from Either/ Or, part one, the author gives an analysis of the character marie beaumarchais of goethe’s Clavigo, in which he refers to her pride several times. she is deceived in love, but because of her (unhealthy) sense of pride she is incapable of seeing the deception. even the love she has for her deceiver itself is proud, and “because of its pride, the egotistically proud love regards a deception as impossible.”5 the love was so strong and so true for her that as reflection emerges in her and an acknowledgment of the deception begins to soften her denial, “everything is changed…now she is not only bound by the vow of silence that her pride extorted from her with the consent of her love…but now she does not know at all where she is to begin, or how, and this is not because new factors have intervened but because reflection has triumphed.”6 the barrier to reflection on the paradox of the deceived lover is love’s pride. the character of pride changes little but receives more description as the reader moves into “the seducer’s diary,” where it appears eighteen times. it is used to describe both the young Cordelia in descriptive moments and the seducer’s own character.7 again the pride extolled here is nobility or a sense of self-worth, and it retains its quality whether it is beneficial or detrimental to the character caught in the situation in which it arises. for example, the seducer describes Cordelia as she walks in the springtime as having a “recumbent pride,” comparing her to a spruce tree that has deep roots but reaches high into the heavens.8 in another place the seducer uses this noble pride to his advantage in his seductive manipulations: “the cautiousness I have used flatters her pride; the secretiveness with which I handled everything captures her attention.”9 the seducer himself, although only semi-aware of his arrogance, refers to his own pride as he manipulates Cordelia: “My pride, my defiance, my cold ridicule, my callous irony tempt her—not as if she would want to love me—no, there is certainly not the slightest trace of any such feelings in her.”10 However, a moment of reflective awareness that hints at another, deeper sense of pride comes in the seducer’s acknowledged “respect for the ethical”: “my chivalrous pride has contempt

SKS 2, 178 / EO1, 179. SKS 2, 182 / EO1, 183. 7 for example, SKS 2, 283 / EO1, 309: by manipulation the seducer has raised young Cordelia up to a certain level of reflective awareness, playing on “her pride that craved the unusual.” 8 SKS 2, 303 / EO1, 330. Later, in SKS 2, 305 / EO1, 333, the seducer describes Cordelia’s walking as having “not had much training in dance, and yet there was a pride in it, a natural nobility, but an absence of self-consciousness.” 9 SKS 2, 347 / EO1, 381. 10 SKS 2, 331 / EO1, 363. 5 6

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for making promises.”11 His pride is no different from young Cordelia’s, nor really marie beaumarchais’ before.12 and here the reader perhaps is brought to the very limit of such pride, of the nobility or assurance that buttresses one’s sense of self and its fragility. II. Pride as Cowardliness appearing about as frequently as the previous category, the usage of pride in the sense of cowardliness is used throughout the Kierkegaardian corpus and in several instances directly contrasted with pride as nobility. it receives the most systematic treatments of any of the usages and is a tempting benchmark to contrast to all of the other forms of pride because of these treatments. pride is a common vice that is actually cowardliness.13 This form of pride first emerges in Either/Or, part two, and it tracks the shift in genre and “stage” as b or the judge relates to a in his “esthetic Validity of marriage.” the judge recognizes the importance of a’s noble pride and so acknowledges that, but subtly shifts the meaning from the aesthetic, amoral sense of self-worth or nobility to a moralistic one that definitely crosses the boundary only barely acknowledged by A: “Perhaps i speak too mildly to you, perhaps i tolerate too much of you, perhaps i should have exercised more the authority that i, despite your pride, have over you.”14 Pride becomes a definitive obstacle in these reflections, although not in a noble sense (consider marie beaumarchais who retains a kind of dignity by refusing to acknowledge any deception), but in a moral sense: a married man can never conduct himself this way [as a seducer, who…] feels so strong because he has sipped the anesthetizing drive blended by defiance and despondency, cowardice and pride, feels so free because the bond that binds him to truth and justice seems to be loosened and he now experiences the speed that is the transition from good to evil.15

SKS 2, 334 / EO1, 367. Pride finds similar usage in many places in Repetition, where four times it is paired with honor (Ære) in SKS 4, 56, 70, 81 / R, 185 (twice), 202, 214, and in Stages on Life’s Way, “guilty/not guilty?” and “Letter to the reader,” where it appears thirty-four times, seven times paired with honor (Ære) in SKS 6, 185, 186, 210, 328, 358, 394 / SLW, 197, 198, 224–5, 353, 387, 425, and eight times paired with another modifier, for example: “lost” (SKS 6, 327 / SLW, 352), “offended” (SKS 6, 254 / SLW, 273), “feminine” (SKS 6, 253, 254 / SLW, 271, 273), “a steed’s” (SKS 6, 269 / SLW, 289), “my country’s” (SKS 6, 234 / SLW, 251), “secret” (SKS 6, 328 / SLW, 355), and “desperate” (SKS 6, 437 / SLW, 474) pride. all these forms indicate the flexibility of usage in the many works in which pride appears and calls the interpreter to look closely at the particular context for precise meanings behind each of these usages. 13 it is systematically related to passive cowardliness as its dialectically related active form. Cf. SKS 4, 445 / CA, 145. 14 SKS 3, 28 / EO2, 6. 15 SKS 3, 123 / EO2, 125. 11

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Further the Judge provides a commentary on A’s pride, with definite moral undertones: “to conquer takes pride, to possess takes humility,”16 and later: pride can be portrayed [artistically] very well, because what is essential in pride is not sequence but intensity in the moment. Humility is hard to portray precisely because it is sequence, and whereas the observer needs to see pride only at its climax, in the second case he really needs to see something that poetry and art cannot provide.17

the judge’s tone shifts dramatically towards a’s pride in “the balance between the esthetic and the ethical in the development of the personality”: “all the same, you have no life view….as far as enjoyment goes, you have an absolutely aristocratic [or privileged] pride.”18 a false sense of superiority persists with a’s pride, for “all human pride is only a flimsy security.”19 pride explicitly becomes one of many vices, completing the shift begun at the start of the work: “ambition, vanity, pride—these are forces that have an enormous resiliency and can drive a person far,” and yet they are all mere human qualities.20 in “against Cowardliness,” Kierkegaard’s auditors are exhorted on the dangers of cowardliness.21 this is a challenge to him, however, because he knows that the common listener would never identify herself with the cowardly. she may, however, identify with the proud, since, in common parlance, it is a kind of self-assurance, which, while it can reach arrogance and vanity, remains something most would extol. in clever fashion Kierkegaard links the two vices to show that this “pride” is not true (that is, false) pride but actually cowardice! and the self-satisfaction that all those proud people feel in the pews is actually cowardice, a most reprehensible vice. Clearly, the equation of these two is meant to shock the reader. but how pride and cowardice are the same must be understood correctly: commonly a proud person, who is truly a coward, takes “pride’s first leap into life” but immediately shrinks back from its lonely place and “goes begging to the very same person he proudly disdained; he who tossed his head proudly now bends his knees…now begs for life…[and looks] around for like-minded people…then they band together and are proud in a solidarity that is vanity and cowardliness.”22 III. False Pride Like the previous two usages, “false” (usand) pride emerges in contrast to the previous usage. it is aligned with the sin of Lucifer (“heaven-storming pride”),23 and it is rarely seen in its purest form in this world.24 false pride is actually the height of 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24

SKS 3, 128 / EO2, 131. SKS 3, 131 / EO2, 135. SKS 3, 183 / EO2, 202. SKS 3, 185–6 / EO2, 205. SKS 3, 248 / EO2, 285. SKS 5, 335–60 / EUD, 353–4. SKS 5, 342 / EUD, 354–5. SKS 8, 169 / UD, 61. SKS 5, 341 / EUD, 354.

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all despair—the self-assertive self-sufficiency of the demonic soul. It is contrasted with the more ubiquitous pride that is “cowardliness.”25 this rare false pride is a lonely pride, where one “must be able to be proud in solitariness, must be able to renounce and reject all reward in the world, the favor of people, and not a living soul, not the defiance of the proudest, not the pleas of the most of the most lovable, may disturb him.”26 there is an air of respect granted toward false pride, perhaps due to its solitary severity, whereas there is a more shocking and harsh treatment of readers with regard to cowardliness. IV. Pride as Eternal Gift on three brief occasions mention is made of a higher pride, a true pride when one recognizes one’s place in relation to god and in which one can take solace or from which one can draw hope and strength. because it rarely appears in the writings, it might seem inappropriate to give it its own section. this, however, is warranted because of its relation to other forms of pride. it appears only in relation to these other forms of pride, reclaiming some of the sense of nobility that is apparent in pride as nobility, but thoroughly transformed in the life of the faithful. In Kierkegaard’s first upbuilding discourse, “the expectancy of faith,” we are given an image of a student full of pride or intellectual arrogance for having been taught by a particular teacher or pastor, as if one could teach faith to another. in dialectical fashion Kierkegaard draws out the falseness behind such an attitude, that is, holding oneself in such high esteem because of one’s human teacher. it is better for one to submit to god: “he became my teacher,” Kierkegaard writes, “ ‘and this is my salvation, my joy, my pride’—would this be less beautiful?”27 in a discourse of faith, Kierkegaard contrasts the mentality of one who believes he has faith after studying with a famous teacher: “Had [he] been brought up [in faith]—as if it were another person who had done it.”28 Kierkegaard is highlighting the impossibility of such an occurrence. what is unique about pride in this context is that it is used in both examples: the faithful and the self-deceived. there is a kind of pride in each of them. one is true and the other is false and destructive. the joyful and beautiful pride is healthy, since it is born from devotion to God. It cannot result from one’s own self-sufficiency or from the belief that the gift of faith, which is a qualitatively different virtue from any human achievement, can be imparted from one (finite) human to another. in Works of Love Kierkegaard writes, “small-mindedness is the creature’s own miserable invention when it, neither truly proud nor truly humble (humility before god is true pride), creates itself and also distorts god, as if he were also smallminded.”29 again there is a distinction made between “false” and “true” pride, although here there is a deeper clue. true pride is actually the virtue of humility before God, reversing the sin of “false” pride, of puffing oneself up and taking 25 26 27 28 29

SKS 4, 382n / CA, 49n. SKS 5, 341 / EUD, 354. SKS 5, 22 / EUD, 12–13. SKS 5, 22 / EUD, 12. SKS 9, 269 / WL, 271.

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oneself as one’s own creator and ruler. the dialectic never ceases for Kierkegaard here, for one hears the word “pride” but is called to think its opposite in the life of the Christian, namely, humility before god. in sum, pride takes four distinct forms yet all are interrelated. it is frequently used in conjunction with honor (Ære), indicating a kind of nobility or high self-esteem. this self-regard can reach destructive heights, and in moral and religious contexts it is directly identified as a sin or vice, commonly paired with arrogance or vanity. systematically considered in certain writings it is equated with cowardliness, which indicates that at base such high self-regard is actually a form of despair. the sinfully proud person is actually a coward, unwilling and too weak to turn inward. this reveals false pride, rarely seen in the world and closely aligned with the demonic. all pride, however, is a mere shadow of true pride, which is actually humility before god, wherein one receives one’s self-worth not from self-assertion but as gift. see also demonic; despair; envy; evil; Humility; mood/emotion/feeling; salvation/ eternal Happiness; sin; temptation.

primitivity maxime Valcourt-blouin

Primitivity (Primitivitet—noun; primitiv—adjective) the danish primitivitet derives from the adjective primitiv,1 which comes from the french primitif. this term has its root in the Latin primitivus, which goes back to the word primus meaning “first” (Kierkegaard himself uses the last part of this etymology in the second of the Two Ethical-Religious Essays).2 the Ordbog over det danske Sprog tells us concerning primitiv that it qualifies (1) the first moment or the first stage of development from which some second thing originates and which underlies it. it can also serve to designate (2) what is still at an early stage of culture or civilization, or that which shares the characteristics of something at such an early stage.3 Primitivitet may convey either of these meanings. among Kierkegaard’s published texts The Concept of Anxiety, Stages on Life’s Way, and the Concluding Unscientific Postscript refer most often to primitivity. traces of this concept can also be found in The Concept of Irony, Fear and Trembling, Philosophical Fragments, A Literary Review of Two Ages, the second of the Two Ethical-Religious Essays, and The Sickness unto Death. but it is in his unpublished journals and papers, and particularly in his unfinished lectures on “The Dialectic of Ethical and Ethicalreligious Communication,” that Kierkegaard dwells most on this subject. primitivity is a multifaceted notion. overall, it could be described as a capacity to receive and to hold fast to one’s own impressions of existence. we will seek in this article to determine more precisely the nature of primitivity through a gradual analysis of its main characteristics. to do so, we shall consider its relation to: (1) authentic intellectual endeavors and human genius; (2) human existence in general; (3) Christian existence in particular; and (4) human faculties, especially the imagination. I. Primitive Thinking in The Concept of Anxiety and the Two Ethical-Religious Essays, primitivity is presented as a characteristic of the authentically gifted individual, of the true genius. In the first of these two works, Kierkegaard states that Ordbog over det danske Sprog: Supplement, vols. 1–5, published by the society for danish Language and Literature, Copenhagen: gyldendal 1992–2005, vol. 5, columns 775–6. 2 SKS 11, 99 / WA, 95. 3 Ordbog over det danske Sprog, vols. 1–28, published by the society for danish Language and Literature, Copenhagen: gyldendal 1918–56, vol. 16, columns 1294–5. 1

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Maxime Valcourt-Blouin the genius differs from every other man only in that he consciously begins within his historical presupposition just as primitively as adam did. every time a genius is born, existence is, as it were, put to a test, because he traverses and experiences all that is past, until he catches up with himself. therefore the knowledge the genius has of the past is entirely different from that offered in world-historical surveys.4

In a similar vein, Kierkegaard affirms in his lectures on communication that the role of the primitive genius is not to invent something wholly new but to “reexamine the universally human, the fundamental questions.”5 He also writes that a thinker, in order to be a thinker, needs to have an authentic “impression of himself,” a “primitive impression of existence”6 obtained through living and experiencing existence on his own.7 However, many thinkers in his day seemed to Kierkegaard to resort only to scholarship and acquired knowledge instead of relying on their primitive impressions (“one now becomes an author simply and solely by becoming a reader”)8 thereby contributing to the confusion of the modern age instead of being “general-examiners,”9 the way true geniuses are supposed to be. through their work, these authors augmented quantitatively the mass of knowledge available without significantly clarifying the most fundamental questions.10 this conception of primitivity’s role in the development of the true thinker can be seen at work in Kierkegaard’s evaluation both of specific contemporary figures and of himself. Indeed, on the one hand, we can find in his writings judgments concerning the lack of primitivity of the two main Hegelian thinkers of the danish golden age, johan Ludvig Heiberg and Hans Lassen martensen. in both cases, he reproaches them for resorting to the thoughts of others instead of to their primitivity to nourish their creativity. of Heiberg and his followers he states that “not a single primitive thought is to be found in them, or at least rarely. what they know they borrow from Hegel,”11 while he declares at one point in a letter to his brother peter Christian Kierkegaard that “martensen really has no primitivity but permits himself to appropriate outright all of german scholarship as his own.”12 on the other hand, in his unpublished lectures on communication, Kierkegaard places himself among the “more primitive thinkers.”13 More specifically, he credits himself elsewhere for having “presented the decisive definitions of the entire territory of existence with a dialectical acuity and a primitivity not attained in any literature.”14 He also refers to the position that god involves himself with the human 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14

SKS 4, 406–7 / CA, 104–5. SKS 27, 433, papir 371:2 / JP 1, 657. SKS 27, 417, papir 369 / JP 1, 654. Cf. SKS 7, 314–15 / CUP1, 344. SKS 27, 390, papir 365:4 / JP 1, 649. SKS 27, 299, papir 366:1 / JP 1, 650. Cf. SKS 27, 417–18, papir 364 / JP 1, 654. SKS 18, 193, jj:165 / JP 5, 5697. SKS 28, 43, brev 21 / LD, 337, Letter 240. SKS 27, 422, papir 371:1 / JP 1, 656. SKS 20, 37, nb1:34 / KJN 4, 35.

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race “in such a way that the true situation is honestly and unconditionally admitted” as “my primitivity, never thought of before in Christendom.”15 it should also be noted that Kierkegaard seems, at some point, to have admitted there was some form of primitivity in pastor adolph peter adler, even though the more “primitive” aspects of his works would burst out of him “altogether confusedly.”16 II. Human Existence despite being inseparable from Kierkegaard’s comprehension of the genius and the true thinker, primitivity is not the characteristic of only an elite of gifted individuals, nor is it an aspect of human existence pertaining only to the intellect. Kierkegaard implies multiple times that primitivity is meant for all, and that “every human being is by nature intended for primitivity.”17 also, in The Book on Adler, the notion of primitivity is applied explicitly to an experience quite different from pure thinking: the experience of falling in love. not only does falling in love imply primitivity, but also “the primitivity of falling in love is the coming into existence of erotic love itself,”18 for erotic love exists only in the subject who primitively experiences love. in fact, primitivity plays an essential role in the process of becoming human; it involves the whole person. this becomes particularly clear when Kierkegaard considers the opposite of becoming human through one’s primitivity: what he sometimes calls “aping,” by seeking to be just like everyone else.19 in a fragment of “the dialectic of ethical and ethical-religious Communication,” Kierkegaard laments the fact that “one now becomes a man simply and solely by aping “the others” instead of by primitivity,”20 and in a later journal entry, he casts doubt on whether a life lived through “aping” is genuinely human.21 such an existence is lived through “adaptation and comparison,”22 and its main characteristic is “dishonesty,” for whoever lives in such a way accepts everything as common practice and therefore “evades responsibility”23 for acting decisively in one way or the other. The Sickness unto Death goes even further on this point: according to this text “to lack primitivity” is “to have emasculated oneself in a spiritual sense,”24 for every self is “angular” and therefore meant to be “ground into shape”25—while depriving oneself of one’s primitivity out of fear of others deprives one of one’s self instead.

15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25

SKS 26, 36, nb31:51 / JP 2, 1440. SKS 15, 172 / BA, 262. SKS 26, 40, nb31:55 / JP 1, 84. SKS 15, 273 / BA, 117. SKS 25, 305, nb29:13 / JP 3, 3560. SKS 27, 390, papir 365:4 / JP 1, 649. Cf. SKS 22, 215, nb12:121 / KJN 6, 216–17. SKS 27, 417, papir 369 / JP 1, 654. SKS 27, 433, papir 371:2 / JP 1, 657. SKS 11, 149 / SUD, 33. ibid.

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therefore, Kierkegaard’s saying that “it is the basic misfortune of the modern age that it lacks primitivity”26 involves more than just the recognition of a crisis in the sphere of thought; it means an admission on his part that there is in the modern age a crisis that concerns the way people seek to become accomplished as human beings. but, for Kierkegaard, that is not all: it also means a crisis in the way people seek to become Christian, for if primitivity is inseparable from genuinely human existence, it is even more inseparable from true Christianity. III. Living Christianity Primitively during the last few years of his life, “primitivity” takes on an increasingly religious meaning for Kierkegaard. in some passages of his journal, it is frequently linked to the idea of the true Christian existence and to some key Kierkegaardian concepts such as “spirit” and “the single individual” (den Enkelte). in one of these entries, Kierkegaard goes so far as to define primitivity as “the possibility of ‘spirit’” and to affirm that “Christianity means to follow one’s primitivity.”27 as for the notion of the “individual,” he writes on this subject among other things that “we see that those single individuals who primitively related themselves to god according to the new testament thereby suffered for their Christianity—they were, summa summarum, the Christians.”28 to clarify these statements, we may begin by noting the fact that, for Kierkegaard, primitivity is an essential part of genuine Christian existence because it isolates one from other people and therefore brings the individual to an authentic god-relationship. one of the main characteristics of the “single individual” is that he is alone with god in the consciousness of his own responsibility; primitivity in this case helps the individual to develop a proper relationship to god by separating him from the others and stopping him from “sharing in the nonsense of generations and of millions” by having him not use it “for cover or for excusing himself.”29 also, primitivity is essential because it is necessary for interpreting the new testament correctly. the new testament is so constituted that everyone can “interpret it each according to his own wisdom” in a primitive way by resorting to the primitive impression one has of it, which is the way god wants it to be interpreted.30 according to Kierkegaard, it is even protected from any interpretation that involves “aping” by having every assertion in it accompanied by it’s opposite.31 And finally, true primitivity brings the individual to seek first the kingdom of God; without necessarily being a genius, the genuine Christian “undertakes primitively Christianity’s requirement for being Christian” and therefore “sticks to what Christianity wants the world to be.”32 this is so because primitive thought exerts itself at a more fundamental level where the 26 27 28 29 30 31 32

SKS 27, 432, papir 371:2 / JP 1, 657. SKS 26, 40, nb31:55 / JP 1, 84. SKS 25, 367, nb29:105 / JP 3, 2907. ibid. SKS 25, 366, nb29:105 / JP 3, 2907. Cf. SKS 27, 625–6, papir 501 / JP 3, 2917. SKS 25, 305, nb29:13 / JP 3, 3560. SKS 26, 215, nb32:127 / JP 3, 3561.

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significance of first seeking God’s kingdom can arise,33 and primitivity increases the more literally one identifies one’s life with this kingdom.34 but, as Kierkegaard notes, most people fear becoming primitive and exerting their primitivity inside Christendom. He even refers at some point to “the strenuousness of primitivity,”35 from which most people shirk, preferring instead a false humility that preserves them from the task of becoming truly Christian. this false humility, which consists in regarding becoming a disciple or apostle too lofty a task for the common folk, inclines them instead to continue living and acting just like everyone else, thus making them into mere “specimen-men” (Exemplar-Mennesker).36 or, as Kierkegaard elsewhere puts it, belief in modern times is related to the race and not to the single individual, for faith has become merely a matter of believing because others have believed before us.37 in such a state of affairs, maieutics becomes a tool that can be used to reform Christendom, for by using it the right way human beings can “become aware of the fact that every individual (Enkelt) must seek the fundamental, primitive relationship to god.”38 IV. Primitivity and Infinitizing Reflection to conclude, it must be noted that The Sickness unto Death provides helpful indications concerning the nature of primitivity. there primitivity is treated in a section that considers “the despair of finitude,” which Anti-Climacus first characterizes as “to lack infinitude.”39 He calls this lack of infinitude “despairing reductionism, narrowness,” and soon after identifies this narrowness with a lack of primitivity.40 such a progression in the text makes it clear that primitivity is linked to the individual’s possession of infinitude within himself. This allows us to interpret the previous section of The Sickness unto Death (which is mainly concerned with infinitude and its corresponding despair) as also related to primitivity. Now for human beings, according to that section, infinitude is closely linked to the imagination, which is called by anti-Climacus “the medium for the process of infinitizing,”41 since it conditions our own process of self-reflection, and hence the way we relate to our whole self, including our own feeling, knowing, and willing. as anti-Climacus puts it, “when all is said and done, whatever of feeling, knowing, and willing a person has depends upon what imagination he has, upon how that person reflects himself…and the intensity of this medium is the possibility of the intensity of the self.”42 from these indications, we may infer that what Kierkegaard 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42

Cf. SKS 27, 431–2, papir 371:2 / JP 1, 657. Cf. SKS 26, 40, nb31:55 / JP 1, 85. SKS 25, 367, nb29:105 / JP 3, 2907. ibid. Cf. SKS 24, 494–5, nb25:78 / JP 2, 1646. SKS 22, 174, nb12:57 / KJN 6, 173. SKS 11, 149 / SUD, 33. Cf. ibid. SKS 11, 147 / SUD, 30. SKS 11, 147 / SUD, 31.

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means by “primitivity” is a human being’s capacity to reflect himself through his imagination. this impact of imagination on the human being’s other faculties and on the self enables us to understand how primitivity permits the “angles” of the self to be “ground into shape.”43 However, in order for this self-reflection to deserve to be called primitivity, it must be exerted the right way; for as Kierkegaard shows right after elucidating imagination’s role for human beings, there are also ways in which it can help an individual lose himself instead of helping him to become himself.44 this comprehension of primitivity brings us to see more clearly how it may be considered the “possibility of spirit” and an essential part of genuine human existence. For if primitivity is a human being’s capacity for self-reflection, it is also the capacity for elaborating an experience of existence that is really his own: “god’s joy in the world is that everyone should be a single individual who tells with primitivity what he wonders about most.”45 this experience may bring the individual to generate concern for his own existence and act according to what his own self-reflection reveals to him; he may thus develop his awareness of having a “self for whose sake” he can “venture everything.”46 only through this process may it eventually become possible for him to consider becoming Christian and “risk everything”47 by passionately seeking first the kingdom of God. Primitivity may also allow him to relate to higher ideas and concepts by “primitively taking possession of them, by examining, by modifying, by producing new,”48 for “the law for the development of the self with respect to knowing, insofar as it is the case that the self becomes itself, is that the increase of knowledge corresponds to the increase of self-knowledge.”49 therefore, while primitivity does not by itself ensure salvation (as can be seen in the case of adler), we may say it is nevertheless an essential factor for becoming “spirit.” god will relate to human beings only as spirit; it is therefore our task to seek to become spirit. See also Christendom; Crowd/Public; Despair; Finitude/Infinity; Genius; Imagination; Immediacy/Reflection; Individual; Passion/Pathos; Race; Self; Spirit.

43 44 45 46 47 48 49

SKS 11, 149 / SUD, 33. Cf. SKS 11, 147–8 / SUD, 31–3. SKS 23, 259, nb18:9 / JP 3, 3559. SKS 11, 151 / SUD, 35. SKS 26, 215, nb32:127 / JP 3, 3561. SKS 26, 236, nb32:141 / JP 1, 1067. SKS 11, 147 / SUD, 31.

progress matthew brake

Progress (Fremgang—noun; Fremskridt—noun) Frem is derived from the old norse fram, the old High german fram, meaning “forward,” and gang is derived from the old norse gangr, which means “to walk” or “to go.”1 Fremskridt can be used synonymously with Fremgang, though literally it means a “step forward.”2 in Kierkegaard’s day both Fremgang and Fremskridt meant “movement forward” or “progress.” Kierkegaard uses the term “progress” mainly in his journals from 1848 and after. in his published works, the most frequent occurrences of the concept are to be found in the Concluding Unscientific Postscript followed by the early upbuilding discourses, then Stages on Life’s Way and “the seducer’s diary” in Either/Or, part one. Kierkegaard uses the term “progress” in three main ways. first, he uses it when referring to society as a whole. Second, he uses it specifically in his criticism of Christendom. finally, he uses it to speak about the soul’s progress toward god. Before these three ways can be evaluated, we must first examine a root concept at the heart of Kierkegaard’s understanding of progress. I. The Fall and Progress to understand “progress” as Kierkegaard uses it, one must take into account his understanding of the fall of man. Kierkegaard believes that god’s “meaning of being human was an ideality of which we scarcely have an intimation.”3 the fall had brought with it such “guilt” and “degradation that a person cannot adequately feel the pain of it without having an impression of the prior ideality.”4 if humanity has progressed, it has been in the direction of forgetting its ideal, having “become habituated to the idea that the wretched state in which we are living is the natural condition.”5 any “progression” is a progression in “wretchedness.”6

Ordbog over det danske Sprog, vols. 1–28, published by the society for danish Language and Literature, Copenhagen: gyldendal 1918–56, vol. 5, columns 1246–8. 2 ibid., column 1280. 3 SKS 26, 372, nb35:13 / JP 2, 1818. 4 ibid. 5 SKS 26, 372–4, nb35:13 / JP 2, 1818. 6 SKS 26, 374, nb35:13 / JP 2, 1818. 1

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II. Society and Progress Kierkegaard understood that he lived in an age that valued the idea of human progress in the world; however, Kierkegaard mocks the idea of progress.7 speaking of progress and its proponents, he writes: “therefore the notion that the world is progressing is nonsense and also a view of existence which does away with god. those busy achievers in particular believe that they, as it were, are straining themselves for the human race and carrying it forward. o, spare yourself the trouble!”8 Kierkegaard firmly believed that the human drive for societal progress, this “achieving and achieving,”9 was “another priestly invention for money, a kind of earnestness which does away with god.”10 such progression forgets that all good gifts come from god and ignores the apostolic warning: “do not go astray.”11 Kierkegaard believed with don Quixote that “the world is evil, that what the world honors is mediocrity, or even worse.”12 Human existence is merely a “test” and “examination” of human lives.13 Kierkegaard writes, “no, neither you nor i have anything to do with playing providence or with wanting to achieve. you and i are being examined our whole life long.”14 this examination is “self-denial’s test.”15 “progress” is society’s way of ignoring Christ and Christianity’s requirements. to the secular, “progressive” mind, Christ and his disciples would be “comic figures.”16 what the contemporary world needs is martyrs to “[hurl] themselves against the human invention called “progress” and “force the generation back” to god’s inward governance.17 III. Christendom and Progress Kierkegaard also criticizes the idea that Christianity itself has likewise progressed from its inception. He speaks against the notion that there is progress from one generation to another and the idea that Christianity began in the new testament era with “the epoch of the son” but now has progressed to “the epoch of the spirit.”18 Kierkegaard holds that there can be no progression from the Christianity of the new testament because “Christianity in the new testament is Christianity,”19 and each generation begins anew from the beginning as opposed to progressing ahead 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19

SKS 21, 129, nb7:99 / JP 1, 1052. ibid. ibid. ibid. SKS 5, 42–3 / EUD, 33. SKS 20, 306, nb4:38 / JP 1, 317. SKS 21, 129, nb7:99 / JP 1, 1052. ibid. ibid. SKS 20, 306, nb4:38 / JP 1, 317. SKS 20, 420, nb5:122 / JP 3, 2640. SKS 26, 208, nb32:119 / JP 3, 3210. ibid.

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of the previous generation.20 For every generation, Kierkegaard says, “the final examination is the same.”21 Kierkegaard asserts, “but as always men prefer to make Christianity and the world homogenous.”22 thus, Kierkegaard criticizes the attempt of the clergy “to bustle about reassuring people that Christendom is progressing in the same sense as the world progresses.”23 To claim this “is just another way of flattering the world,”24 and in his view, “the world is not that honorable and good, not at all.”25 the world may progress, but in spite of any successes, it ultimately progresses in a direction away from obedience to god.26 in response to worldly progression, the church believes itself to be “permeating the world more and more,”27 but Kierkegaard states, “the truth of the matter is that the world is more and more wearing away and gnawing away the essentially Christian from Christianity.”28 if Christianity is progressing, it has only done so by “watering down what Christianity is.”29 Christianity’s true progression should be “the opposite of what the human mentality naturally thinks and covets.”30 true progression should look like Christ, which means it should look like crucifixion.31 Kierkegaard uses paul to demonstrate what true Christian progression looks like. He states: to transform hardships into a witness for the truth of a teaching, to transform disgrace into glory for oneself and for the believing congregation, to transform the lost cause into a matter of honor that has all the inspiring force of a witness—is this not like making the cripples walk and the mute speak!32

Christian progression rejects a cozy relationship with the prosperity of the world and instead finds its true progression in suffering as a witness. far from growing more perfect, Kierkegaard believes that Christianity is regressing, not progressing.33 Kierkegaard seems to go so far as to proclaim god’s judgment upon Christianity. He states: but here is the sting. in times past god has punished frightfully—and this meant that he still found something which pleased him so that he did not give men up entirely. now the most horrible punishment of all has come upon us, the truly majestic punishment upon “Christendom,” whose guilt is high treason…itself—god ignores us entirely. and 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33

ibid. ibid. SKS 21, 86, nb7:18 / JP 3, 3013. SKS 21, 85, nb7:18 / JP 3, 3013. ibid. SKS 26, 151, nb32:48 / JP 3, 3209. SKS 21, 85–6, nb7:18 / JP 3, 3013. SKS 24, 81, nb21:130 / JP 3, 3334. ibid. SKS 26, 16, nb31:18 / JP 3, 2975. SKS 10, 297 / CD, 277. ibid. SKS 5, 90 / EUD, 83. SKS 27, 646, papir 538 / JP 3, 3212.

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Matthew Brake therefore—what dreadful punishment—secular life goes on splendidly and mankind makes great strides in physical discoveries, etc.—but god ignores us.34

for both society and Christianity, progress was often used in relation to spiritual indictment. IV. The Individual and Progress towards God Central thus far to Kierkegaard’s use of the concept of “progress” has been its polemical use in pointing out the movement of society and Christendom away from obedience to god, but his comments do not stop there. He also reveals the way he believes one can truly progress toward god. outward prosperity is no guarantee of closeness with god.35 one must realize “that his life is retrogression and not progress” toward god.36 additionally, “in the relationship to god progress in one sense means the longer one lives with him the farther he feels himself to be away from him in one sense, for, after all, he is infinitely more elevated.”37 in this relationship with god, god gives the individual both joy38 and the knowledge that god sees the individual as he sees the sparrow, for “the more infinite one is the more he can and will concern himself with little things.”39 to understand Kierkegaard’s use of the term “progress,” one must understand the role of the fall of humanity in his thought. to Kierkegaard, any progress of humanity apart from new testament Christianity is a rebellion against god. society, for all of its achievements, is still part of a dishonorable world full of suffering. the church, instead of being martyrs pushing back against secular progress, embraced worldly progress; thus, Christianity became watered down. for the individual, one’s hope is not found in worldly progress but in realizing one’s distance from god and embracing the Christian faith that god has forgiven the sinfulness that creates the distance. see also Christendom; Crowd/public; Hope; individual; Leveling; present age; revolution; society; state; Voting; worldliness/secularism.

34 35 36 37 38 39

SKS 25, 283, nb28:91 / JP 3, 2563. SKS 7, 405 / CUP1, 446. SKS 20, 379, nb5:21 / JP 6, 6145. SKS 22, 313, nb13:65 / JP 6, 6516. SKS 20, 379, nb5:21 / JP 6, 6145. SKS 22, 313, nb13:65 / JP 6, 6516.

protestantism/reformation Curtis L. thompson

Protestantism (Protestantisme—noun); Reformation (Reformation—noun) the word Protestantisme, from the german Protestantismus and the french protestantisme, represents the sum of the evangelical-Lutheran and the reformed church communion’s doctrinal system.1 the concept of reformation, from the Latin reformatio, in a more specified sense refers to the circumstances that alter a particular domain whereupon changes are introduced elsewhere; it also refers to the church movement, led by Luther along with zwingli and Calvin, which carried through an alteration of roman Catholic church doctrines and practices and led to the formation of the protestant and reformed churches.2 Kierkegaard surely recognized the value of the reformation. it provided a corrective to Christianity that was needed at that time in history. He also acknowledged protestantism as a legitimate form of Christian communion, especially as juxtaposed to Catholicism. Kierkegaard did not, however, leave unaddressed the many problems he identified with each of these concepts. His misgivings with both of these concepts, while present from the beginning, became more pronounced over time. Kierkegaard’s discussion of this conceptual pair incorporates many themes that are worthy of comment. i will consider them in the form of theses i have distilled from scattered statements of Kierkegaard. martin Luther putatively posted the ninety-five theses that he had composed in Latin on the doors of all saints’ Church in wittenberg, saxony, and this event is widely regarded as the initial catalyst for the Protestant Reformation. It seems fitting here to post Ten Kierkegaardian Theses on protestantism/reformation. However, prior to that posting, the broad dual concept before us can be effectively introduced by quickly summarizing Kierkegaard’s comments on Luther. I. Kierkegaard on Luther the 1848 revolutionary wave in european history was generally short lived, but in denmark the political upheaval did lead to the end of absolute monarchy. the significant political events of 1848 prompted Kierkegaard to think in a more focused way on reform in general and more specifically on the Reformation and the Protestant Ordbog over det danske Sprog, vols. 1–28, published by the society for danish Language and Literature, Copenhagen: gyldendal 1918–56, vol. 16, column 1395. 2 ibid., vol. 17, column 569. 1

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form of Christianity that developed from it. as concerns martin Luther, Kierkegaard appreciates the intense passion and strength of the reformer, who as a religious individual was exceptional. However, the german reformer mistakenly thought that such religious intensity was the state of affairs of all people, and that assumption led him to mistakes in thinking through the whole project of reform. in a notebook entry of 1849 Kierkegaard expresses his view that Luther “was a confused character.”3 the claim can be made that “Luther was no dialectician”4 because he thinks that the reformation’s principle of subjectivity or inwardness gains entrance among Christians more easily than it actually does; Luther is the extraordinary Christian who handled the intense immediacies of the god-relationship in a way that others have difficulty doing, and his thinking of himself with his high spirituality as the norm, which showed “he had very poor knowledge of mankind,”5 led him to such misguided principles as the priesthood of all believers.6 1850 finds Kierkegaard raising the concern that people in Luther’s time liked to hear the law rather than gospel, but in denmark people only want to hear the gospel.7 missing is the “clergy” as the middle term of medieval Christianity: protestantism’s watchword that we are all priests has sunk into sheer secularism, and needed are rigorous Christian clergy to provide a potent witness to the many.8 Luther endorsed a wholesome, simple form of secularity, but rampant in denmark is an “unadulterated secularism” that is missing sacrifice and strenuousness.9 by 1854, Kierkegaard is stating that, while Luther posted his 95 theses, there is now only one thesis: the Christianity of the new testament does not exist at all, and in fact, protestantism is the very opposite of primitive Christianity.10 Luther the reformer hurt the cause of Christianity by not becoming a martyr; for him to sit—as portrayed in his table talks—“in placid comfort, ringed by adoring admirers”11 does not serve Christianity well.12 Luther’s “later life was not devoid of pointlessness,”13 and it can be said that “he gave birth in later generations to the mob,”14 who are participating in “the deepest confusion of the highest concepts and the most dangerous demoralization”: Luther, in short, “accredited mediocrity…and in protestantism we are blessed with this beyond all measure.”15

3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15

SKS 21, 296–7, nb10:76 / KJN 5, 307. SKS 222, 398, nb20:14 / JP 3, 3153. ibid. ibid. SKS 23, 437, nb20:76 / JP 3, 2527. SKS 23, 397–9, nb20:14 / JP 3, 3153. SKS 23, 152, nb16:86 / JP 3, 2513; SKS 23, 152–3, nb16:87 / JP 3, 2514. Pap. Xi–3 b 53, 101 / M, supplement, 474. SKS 25, 304, nb29:12 and 12.a / JP 3, 2546. ibid. ibid. ibid. SKS 25, 303, nb29:12 and 12.a / JP 3, 2546.

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II. Ten Kierkegaardian Theses on Protestantism/Reformation thesis 1 on the age: the contemporary time prides itself on being an age of reform, but in reality it is an age of wanna-be reformers who need to be reformed. “our age is the age of reforms,” writes Kierkegaard already in a notebook entry of 1847.16 at the same time, the age demands entertainment,17 so the operating understanding of reform lacks depth and leads to “a reformation devoid of character.”18 the idea of “to reform” is an “uncommonly elevated…idea,”19 and hypocrisy emerges in those without understanding who want to flirt with reform.20 in the late 1840s the reforming spirit of the age became a topic of newspaper articles, and in this discussion Kierkegaard states that the age’s reformers lack vigor and manliness, and a reformer without vigor and manliness is merely a parody of the true reformer.21 on Kierkegaard’s view, providence is sending no reformer, but might be sending “a servant or two—to reform the reformers.”22 it takes no courage to defy the king, but it takes a little courage “to speak against the reformers.”23 thesis 2 on Catholicism: Catholicism does not benefit from some of the doctrinal nuances affirmed by Protestantism, but it is to be respected because it takes seriously the call to passionately live the Christian faith. at points, Kierkegaard celebrates the protestant theological understanding. in 1834, Kierkegaard compares protestant and Catholic views on the role of the Holy spirit in preparing the human for divine grace.24 Kierkegaard’s pseudonym Vigilius Haufniensis in The Concept of Anxiety declares on the question of hereditary sin that “the profound protestant piety is victorious.”25 original sin cannot be regarded as removing responsibility for actual sin: protestant doctrine distinguishes appropriately between adam’s innocence and that of the subsequent person.26 to its credit, Catholicism is marked by “despairing presumption in the realm of wanting to be like Christ,”27 because for it the imitation of Christ is demanded; on the other hand, protestantism has devised “despairing humility,”28 which declares that imitation is too exalted and thus frees itself from imitation and honors itself for its humility.29 by 1854 Kierkegaard is writing that in protestantism “ideals are completely abolished,” although Catholicism “is somewhat

16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29

SKS 20, 199, nb2:143 / KJN 4, 198. Pap. iX b 10, 308 / BA, 229. SKS 24, 348, nb24:51 / M, supplement, 412. SKS 16, 257 / JFY, 213. ibid. SKS 14, 33 / EPW, 30–1. Pap. X–5 b 124, 321 / COR, supplement 243–4. Pap. Vii–2 b 235, 39 / BA, 149. SKS 27, 98, papir 59 / JP 2, 1463. SKS 4, 333 / CA, 26. SKS 4, 347 / CA, 41. SKS 23, 314, nb18:87 / JP 2, 1923. ibid. ibid.

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less lacking in ideas and spirit” because it “still has a concept and impression of Christian ideality.”30 thesis 3 on socrates: Socrates, who was given the task of raising questions and making people aware, set the standard for what a reformer actually is. socrates holds special status as a reformer. Kierkegaard writes in 1854, “outside of Christianity socrates stands alone—you noble, simple wise man—you were actually a reformer.”31 an early journal entry states that socrates is the only reformer Kierkegaard knows, for the others are narrow-minded.32 while Luther is to be respected, he was no socrates, for socrates was the greatest, “the hero and martyr of intellectuality,” who “understood what it is to be a reformer.”33 needed in Kierkegaard’s time is one like socrates: the “conceited, pompous, confused age” needs “a servant who can devour all these reformers the way socrates ate up the sophists.”34 thesis 4 on the secular mentality: The Reformation embraced full participation in secular life, but in the secular mentality of Danish Protestantism this healthy affirmation of secularization has deteriorated into an unhealthy secularism. Luther stressed faith, which was too high for the people, and after Luther came protestantism, and then sets in a secular mentality that even brags that it is the highest spirituality.35 the success of the reformation was easy, “because the ‘secular mentality’ understood that ‘this is something for us,’ ”36 because in a desacralized world devoid of rigor Christians can flee from responsibility: Protestant Christianity’s compromising has “finally achieved perfect conformity with flat, secular aspirations.”37 with the blending of infinite and finite in “an impenetrable ambiguity,” it is “necessary to become sober in order to come out of this state of intoxication.”38 the solution does not lie in doctrine, but in “witnesses to the truth” by which Christianity gains power, power to transform the world.39 thesis 5 on worldliness: Authentic Christian faith and life requires heterogeneity with the ways of the world, but Danish Protestantism exhibits a worldliness that is homogeneous with the prevailing cultural ethos. when religion is completely worldly it is absent a point of orientation for tending to its distinctive concerns. on Kierkegaard’s view, “A saint’s existence requires a significant degree of heterogeneity during the saint’s life,” but “protestantism in particular has actually come all too much into conformity with worldliness” to be able to foster heterogeneity.40 without heterogeneity the leveling process enters in with its concern for the masses, the numerical, the press, and so on. genuine reform requires attacking the crowd, but in denmark the crowd itself is actually dabbling in reform. for Kierkegaard, 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40

SKS 26, 287, nb33:48 / JP 4, 4814. SKS 25, 244, nb29:84 / JP 6, 6871. SKS 20, 145, nb2:16 / KJN 4, 143. SKS 23, 153, nb16:87 / JP 3, 2514. SKS 24, 198, nb22:173 / JP 6, 6712. SKS 23, 437, nb20:76 / JP 3, 2527. SKS 24, 385, nb24:105 / JP 2, 1904. SKS 24, 146, nb22:82 / JP 3, 3160. SKS 16, 182 / JFY, 128. SKS 16, 183–4 / JFY 129. SKS 21, 186, nb8:100 / KJN 5, 194.

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“any reformation that is not aware that basically it is every individual who must be reformed is eo ipso an illusion.”41 thesis 6 on law and gospel: The Reformers appropriately protested against the over-emphasis on the demand of the law that drowned out the grace-filled word of gospel, but in Denmark the gospel has been over-emphasized and the law has been lost—so a different approach is now needed. Kierkegaard laments that in his day the gospel has completely won out over the law.42 “protestantism [is] actually humanity’s revolt against Christianity”;43 when grace takes over, Christianity is shoved out completely. paganism has resulted, when “the intention of Christianity was to introduce ‘grace’ into life in order to transform all life.”44 Christ is gift; but if Christ is only gift, and in no sense example, then confusion prevails.45 for Kierkegaard, god does not reduce the price of salvation, but god does help us with grace.46 grace does not rule out the need for rigorous inwardness: with every increase in grace must come a comparable increase in inward rigor.”47 thesis 7 on imitation: Christianity demands that imitation be part-and-parcel of the Christian life, but when imitation is missing Christianity is reduced to mythology because it is not supported by transformed actuality. the imitation of Christ requires a readiness to serve, a willingness to suffer if need be, and the courage to sacrifice. protestantism abolishes imitation, exempting its followers from striving toward the ideal; Christ is taken purely as redeemer with Christ as prototype omitted, and any sort of rigor is interpreted as pride.48 for Kierkegaard, the god-man “always demands imitation.”49 without imitation, Christianity degenerates: imitation guarantees that Christianity will not become mythology, as it almost has in protestantism.50 thesis 8 on incendiarism: The Christian life is one of passion, and thus incendiarism or setting fire to people by evoking passion is a helpful notion for understanding what the truthful concept of Reformation/Protestantism is all about. Kierkegaard’s critique of Christianity progresses over time. in 1854, Kierkegaard holds that subjectivity and not simply objectivity is required for authentic Christianity to exist, and in his time subjectivity or passion does not really appear in the world any more. missing is the kind of “unconditioned passion” required for receiving Christianity’s content.51 in the same year he utilizes the notion of incendiarism: “it was incendiarism, setting fire to men by evocatively introducing a passion which made them heterogeneous with what is naturally understood to be man, heterogeneous

41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51

Pap. Vii–2 b 235, 50 / BA, 158n. SKS 23, 437, nb20:76 / JP 3, 2527. SKS 25, 315, nb29:27 / JP 6, 6863. SKS 25, 229, nb28:20 / JP 2, 1496. SKS 21, 296–7, nb10:76 / KJN 5, 307. SKS 27, 637, papir 524:1 / JP 2, 1821. SKS 24, 314, nb23:220 / JP 2, 1484. SKS 24, 385, nb24:105 / JP 2, 1904; SKS 24, 508–9, nb25:92 / JP 2, 1917. SKS 26, 23, nb31:30 / JP 1, 83. SKS 24, 384, nb24:105 / JP 2, 904. SKS 25, 339, nb29:77 / JP 3, 3133.

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with the whole of existence…in order to reach ‘the individual.’ ”52 protestantism in its current form strives to put out fires rather than to ignite them.53 thesis 9 on politics and the state: In the Reformation the religious was the primary and the political was the secondary, but in the reform taking place in Denmark it is the political that is primary and the religious that is secondary. Kierkegaard sees “a remarkable connection between protestantism and the modern political point of view,” because in both cases it is a battle “about the sovereignty of the people.”54 we become aware of Kierkegaard’s realism as regards politics when he writes in the context of discussing fichte that “politics is egoism dressed up as love.”55 that is why politics needs religion: for Christianity and the state to function properly, religion’s realm of heterogeneity in relation to finitude, as accomplished by resignation, must provide the counterweight to the state’s domain of finitude.56 However, Christianity is immersed in homogeneity with all its finite objectives; therefore, the state, which needs something transcendent to fulfill it, does not receive religion’s infinite perspective insofar as it has been reduced to politics, and at hand is a “mutual destruction” of these two.57 the age’s catastrophe is an “enervating disintegration,” with “all existence as if in the clutch of a dizziness induced and in intensification fed by wanting continually to aid the movement with the momentary, that is, with finite cleverness and with the numerical,”58 and with reforming by way of balloting.59 this age “corresponds inversely to the reformation—then everything appeared to be religious but became politics, and now everything appears to be politics but will become a religious movement.”60 thesis 10 on Kierkegaard’s task: The task at hand for Kierkegaard is to awaken people toward inward deepening but to do this without authority by influencing through heightened ideality. the huge nature of the task before Kierkegaard is apparent in that, as stated above, new testament Christianity no longer exists.61 the reflective person, unlike the shouting genius, recognizes that direct communication is ineffective and instead speaks of the matter in a comical form.62 Contemporary dabbling reformers direct their efforts at changing externals. this has it backwards. the task at hand is, for Kierkegaard, to work toward an awakening through the power of laughter, “dedicated with the highest approval of divine governance to becoming a vexing gadfly, a quickening whip on all this spiritlessness, which in secularized mediocrity has blathered Christianity down in a triviality, into being spiritless impotence, suffocated in illusion.”63 Kierkegaard has “worked to arouse 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63

SKS 26, 381, nb35:18 / JP 6, 6932. SKS 26, 382, nb35:18 / JP 6, 6932. SKS 27, 106, papir 72 / JP 4, 4061. SKS 24, 248, nb23:81 / JP 4, 4206. Pap. Xi–3 b 126 / JP 4, 4242. ibid. Pap. iX b 63:7 / JP 6, 6255. SKS 24, 256, nb23:100 / JP 4, 4208. ibid. Pap. Xi–3 b 53 / M, supplement, 474. SKS 8, 263, jj:371, jj:371.a / KJN 2, 242. Pap. Xi–3 b 53 / M, supplement, 475.

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restlessness oriented toward inward deepening,”64 but he has done this “without authority”: “instead of conceitedly making myself out to be a witness to the truth…i am an unauthorized poet who influences by means of the ideals.”65 Key is poetic imagination: “i am the last stage of the evolution of a poet toward becoming a sort of reformer in miniature. i have a much greater imagination than such a person would have, but on the other hand much less of the certain force of personality that is needed if one is to perform in that capacity.”66 Kierkegaard is a poet “whose task is to jack up the price and, if possible, to whisper in the ear of every individual what the requirement could be.”67 such striving calls for an inverted method in which the striving must apply some of its “power to systematically working against itself”68 lest it become essentially secular striving rather than a reforming effort; the task is “while working also to work against oneself.”69 Kierkegaard does not emphasize explicitly one of the reformation tenets that stood prominently in the ideas of martin Luther: Ecclesia semper reformanda est (“the church is always to be reformed”). if this tenet had played a bigger role in his understanding, he might have been quicker to regard the reforming he was doing in and through his authorship as an effort that was continuing the work of the protestant reformation. it seems he was more of a participant in and product of the ongoing protestant reformation than he realized, or, at least, articulated. see also apologetics; atonement/reconciliation; baptism; Catholicism; Christ; Christendom; Church; Communion; Contemporaneity; faith; grace; Holy spirit; imitation; Law; monasticism, politics; religious/religiousness; resignation; state; witness.

64 65 66 67 68 69

SKS 13, 50 / FSE, 20. SKS 13, 50 / FSE, 21. SKS 20, 227, nb2:225 / KJN 4, 226. ibid. SKS 23, 153, nb16:88 / JP 6, 6593. ibid.

pseudonymity joseph westfall

Pseudonymity (Pseudonymitet—noun; Pseudonym—noun; pseudonym—adjective) from the Latin pseudonymus, following the greek ψευδώνυμος. in its ordinary sense, a pseudonym (literally, “false name”) is a name other than an author’s own which the author uses with reference to a written text for the purpose of the ascription of authorship; a pseudonym is sometimes called a “pen name.”1 in any case, pseudonymity is one means by which an individual can write and publish a written work without appending his or her own name as author. Customarily, the implication of pseudonymous authorship is that the person actually responsible for authoring the work wishes to avoid immediate association in the minds of the readers or the public between himself or herself and the work in question. there are any number of possible motivations for pseudonymous authorship, however. Kierkegaard is himself one of european literature’s most noted practitioners of pseudonymity, with over a dozen works ascribed to pseudonyms, but his discussions of the concept and practice of pseudonymity are concentrated in a single text: “a first and Last explanation,” ascribed to Kierkegaard himself but published as an appendix to the pseudonymous Concluding Unscientific Postscript to the Philosophical Fragments. although there are occasional references to pseudonymity in other works—specifically, the newspaper articles “An Explanation and a Little more” (1845) and “an open Letter” (1851), On My Work as an Author (1851), and The Point of View for My Work as an Author (published posthumously, 1859)—it is safe to say that Kierkegaard does more to explain his understanding of the concept in “a first and Last explanation” than he does anywhere else, and thus this short text serves as a sort of touchstone for anyone attempting to understand the specifically Kierkegaardian sense of the term. interestingly—and importantly—pseudonymity is something Kierkegaard treats exclusively with regard to his own case as an author. thus, as there is no general discussion of the concept of pseudonymity in Kierkegaard’s writings, the applicability of Kierkegaard’s thoughts on pseudonymity beyond the bounds of his own authorship is an open question. that said, one can begin to see the vague outline of an understanding of pseudonymity in general from some of the things Kierkegaard has to say about his own practice of it. for Kierkegaard—or, at least, according to Kierkegaard’s account of his own occasional pseudonymity—the use of a pseudonym Ordbog over det danske Sprog, vols. 1–28, published by the society for danish Language and Literature, Copenhagen: gyldendal 1918–56, vol. 17, column 38.

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is the creation of a separate authorial persona (or personality) altogether. Creating such a persona to be the author to whom a written work is legitimately ascribed has consequences, however, for the work and the author’s relationship to the work, and an awareness of those consequences is thus necessary for the effective use of pseudonymity. taken together, these basic insights into the nature of pseudonymous authorship leave Kierkegaard—despite his single-minded concern for his own particular practice of pseudonymity—with something to say both about the nature and the significance of pseudonymity and pseudonyms in general. I. The Nature of a Pseudonym although it is customary to conceive of a pseudonym as simply a literary mask an author puts on, Kierkegaard makes very clear that, for him, pseudonymity entails more than a difference between the real name of the author and his or her pseudonym; there is in addition an essential difference between the person or personality of the real person responsible for having written the work and the fictional persona of the pseudonymous author. this difference becomes a central component of Kierkegaard’s analysis of his own pseudonymity, in large part as a means of demonstrating that he is not to be held personally responsible for the views set forth in his pseudonymous books. in “a first and Last explanation,” he writes: what has been written, then, is mine, but only insofar as i, by means of audible lines, have placed the life-view of the creating, poetically actual individuality in his mouth, for my relation is even more remote than that of a poet, who poetizes characters and yet in the preface is himself the author. that is, i am impersonally or personally in the third person a souffleur who has poetically produced the authors, whose prefaces in turn are their productions, as their names are also.2

while, again, Kierkegaard is here only attempting to account for his own uses of pseudonymity, he nevertheless relies upon an implicit concept of the pseudonym that at least allows for—if not necessitates—the presentation of one’s own pseudonymous creations as creators in their own right. Kierkegaard forces us to distinguish, then, between “one who writes pseudonymously” (such as himself), and a “pseudonymous author” (such as johannes Climacus, the pseudonym Kierkegaard produces to be the author of Philosophical Fragments and the Concluding Unscientific Postscript). pseudonymity, on Kierkegaard’s model, is thus both a literary maneuver and a mode of (admittedly fictional) being. this distinction is carried further by Kierkegaard in “a first and Last explanation,” to the point where he is unwilling to accept authorial responsibility for anything written in a work ascribed to a pseudonym: “in the pseudonymous books there is not a single word by me. i have no opinion about them except as a third party, no knowledge of their meaning except as a reader, not the remotest private relation to them, since it is impossible to have that to a doubly reflected communication.”3 2 3

SKS 7, 569 / CUP1, 625–6. SKS 7, 570 / CUP1, 626.

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He asserts that each pseudonymous author is a “poetically actual subjective thinker,” for whom what is written pseudonymously amounts to his “individuality-lines.”4 this last point is crucial to Kierkegaard’s understanding of what a pseudonym is, precisely because it delineates both the necessary correspondence between the pseudonymous author’s personality and what is written pseudonymously, on the one hand, and the separation Kierkegaard demands readers make in their reading between what is written in the pseudonymous works and the beliefs of søren Kierkegaard, on the other. what is ascribed to each pseudonymous author belongs to the pseudonymous author alone—and not Kierkegaard—precisely because what is ascribed to each pseudonymous author is his “psychologically consistent production.”5 the notion that the writing ascribed to a pseudonymous author constitutes a unique and identifiable production rooted in and defining the pseudonym’s personality ultimately becomes the centerpiece of Kierkegaard’s understanding of the nature of pseudonymity. Thus, in Kierkegaard’s definitive statement on the nature of pseudonymous authorship and the role played in an authorship by a pseudonym, he writes: my pseudonymity or polyonymity has not had an accidental basis in my person… but an essential basis in the production itself, which, for the sake of the lines and of the psychologically varied differences of the individualities, poetically required an indiscriminateness with regard to good and evil, brokenheartedness and gaiety, despair and overconfidence, suffering and elation, etc., which is ideally limited only by psychological consistency, which no factually actual person dares to allow himself or can want to allow himself in the moral limitations of actuality.6

a pseudonym, then, is a poetic personality, produced by but not identical to whoever is writing pseudonymously (in this case, Kierkegaard). that poetic personality is held to the standard of self-consistency on the basis of the works for which he or she serves as author, such that a reader may rightly believe that a pseudonymous author is the sort of person his or her works make him or her out to be, but may not extrapolate from those writings or that poetic personality to the real personality of the author of the pseudonym. thus, Kierkegaard writes, “in a legal and literary sense, the responsibility is mine, but, easily understood dialectically, it is i who have occasioned the audibility of the production in the world of actuality, which of course cannot become involved with poetically actual authors.”7 although some actual human being will always be in some sense responsible for what any pseudonym has authored, Kierkegaard does not think that this responsibility conflicts in any way with his simultaneous demand that the pseudonyms be afforded the status of authors independent of their own creators. to maintain the pseudonyms’ independence, Kierkegaard insists that someone writing pseudonymously must do all he or she can to prevent his or her own personality from becoming intermingled with that of the pseudonymous author he or she has created. to that end, Kierkegaard claims to have abided by a 4 5 6 7

ibid. ibid. SKS 7, 569 / CUP1, 625. SKS 7, 570–1 / CUP1, 627.

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strict policy of avoiding even the insertion of one word of his own into any of the pseudonymous books: “a single word by me personally in my own name would be an arrogating self-forgetfulness that, regarded dialectically, would be guilty of having essentially annihilated the pseudonymous authors by this one word.”8 in short, to include anything ascribable to himself in a work otherwise ascribed to a pseudonym would show the pseudonym for what he actually is—a fiction—and, as such, drive a psychological inconsistency into the heart of the pseudonymous author. for the pseudonyms to remain viable and independent authors, their authority over their own works must seem to the reader to be complete. this prevents both the dissolution of the pseudonymous author into something less substantial (such as an ordinary fictional character), as well as the problematic consequences of having to hold one author responsible for having said all the things the various pseudonyms say in their various, differing, and often conflicting works. again, Kierkegaard says almost nothing about pseudonymity that is not directly connected to his own pseudonymous works. although this sometimes makes it seem as if he only has something to say about his own authorial practice, rather than about pseudonymity in general, one can see quite clearly that his own practice depends rather completely upon an implicit concept of pseudonymity—if not a more general concept of authorship—the force of which would necessarily extend beyond the bounds of Kierkegaard’s particular authorship alone. to write pseudonymously—to produce a pseudonymous author—is, ultimately, to fragment one’s own writings into multiple named authorships. one might do this for any number of reasons; Kierkegaard certainly has his own. in any case, it is worth trying to understand just why one might utilize pseudonymity as Kierkegaard understands it, if one wishes to understand Kierkegaard’s concept of pseudonymity fully. II. The Purpose and Significance of Pseudonymity although “a first and Last explanation” is Kierkegaard’s fullest and most direct account of his understanding of pseudonymity as he practiced it throughout his authorship, it says remarkably little about what he might have been trying to accomplish by way of pseudonymity—or what one might try to accomplish thereby. two of his very late works, however, address this question directly: On My Work as an Author and The Point of View for My Work as an Author. once we have some sense of Kierkegaard’s understanding of the nature of a pseudonymous author, we must then turn to the question of the function or purpose of pseudonymity—why an author might choose pseudonymity over other modes of authorship. as we will see, for Kierkegaard, the meaning or significance of pseudonymity is essential to the practice; to attempt to use pseudonyms in some other way or to some other end is, ultimately, a misunderstanding of the concept and a misuse of the practice, for Kierkegaard. early in On My Work as an Author, Kierkegaard makes plain the maieutic purpose to which he claims he has always put pseudonymity: 8

SKS 7, 570 / CUP1, 626.

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“direct communication” is: to communicate the truth directly; “communication in reflection” is: to deceive into the truth. but since the movement is to arrive at the simple, the communication in turn must sooner or later end in direct communication. it began maieutically with esthetic production, and all the pseudonymous writings are maieutic in nature. therefore this writing was also pseudonymous, whereas the directly religious— which from the beginning was present in the gleam of an indication—carried my name.9

the close association of pseudonymity with maieutics follows directly from Kierkegaard’s earlier insistence upon the need for pseudonyms when an author wishes to present a point of view in writing that is inconsistent with his or her actual own. there is always something deceitful, for Kierkegaard, about such authorship— but it remains entirely possible for the deceit to be put to a good purpose, as he notes, deceiving others “into the truth.” While this may not be the classical definition of maieutics (as associated with socrates), it is nevertheless the mature Kierkegaard’s understanding of himself—or, more accurately, of his pseudonymous production— as maieutic (and socratically so). He makes this point again in a footnote in The Point of View, when he writes: “Here one will see the significance of the pseudonyms, why i had to be pseudonymous in connection with the esthetic production, because i had my own life in altogether different categories and from the very beginning understood this writing as something temporary, a deception, a necessary emptying out.”10 according to Kierkegaard, Kierkegaard is one thing and his pseudonyms are another. this, then, is the basis for his criticism of the attempts of others to ascribe authorship of the pseudonymous works to him by name. in “an open Letter,” he writes: “Consequently, all those numerous, qualitatively different pseudonymous works all the way from Either/Or, and, in addition, all my variegated upbuilding works, all these are packed together under one heading and called: søren Kierkegaard.”11 His effort to reject and discourage all such amalgamating readings of his multiply authored authorship culminates, once again, in “a first and Last explanation.” there, he insists that he is “just as little, precisely just as little” Victor eremita as the judge in Either/Or, just as little johannes de silentio as the knight of faith in Fear and Trembling, just as little Quidam as the imaginary constructor in Stages on Life’s Way.12 Kierkegaard is in fact none of these figures, being himself a different author altogether. “therefore,” he advises, “if it should occur to anyone to want to quote a particular passage from the books, it is my wish, my prayer, that he will do me the kindness of citing the respective pseudonymous author’s name, not mine—that is, of separating us in such a way that the passage femininely belongs to the pseudonymous author, the responsibility civilly to me.”13 the distinction he makes here between “feminine responsibility” and “civil responsibility” is an odd one, but one that is somewhat clarified by the proviso Kierkegaard makes, slightly earlier in the text, that although he is not the author of the pseudonymous works, 9 10 11 12 13

SKS 13, 13–14 / PV, 7. SKS 16, 64n / PV, 86n. SKS 14, 111 / COR, 51. SKS 7, 570 / CUP1, 626. SKS 7, 571 / CUP1, 627.

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properly speaking, he is nevertheless responsible for them “in a legal and in a literary sense.”14 Kierkegaard is willing to accept responsibility for the pseudonymous works insofar as they are products that must be regulated under danish law. He notes that “simultaneously with the publication of a book the printer and the censor qua public official have always been officially informed who the author was,”15 but he refers to himself as “the author” only in a legal sense: he is the person to whom the printer will send the censor, if an offense is found in one of the pseudonymous books. i take this to be what he means when he says that responsibility for the pseudonymous books belongs “civilly” to him. authorship is for Kierkegaard, however, also an existential act—a presentation of one’s personality by way of one’s writings. this is what we mean when we think of an author’s works as productions of his or her self, rather than as mere words. if there is to be any sort of personal relation or connection between an author and his or her literary production, then we must admit that, by “authorship,” we mean something more than the merely civil responsibility Kierkegaard confesses. this “something more” is, i think, what Kierkegaard refers to when he says that responsibility for the pseudonymous books belongs “femininely” to the pseudonyms themselves. Kierkegaard seems to mean that to write using a pseudonym is to distance what one writes absolutely from oneself, presenting the work written as one component in another author’s (a pseudonymous author’s) authorship. if, in depicting the pseudonymous authors as having a “feminine” relationship to the pseudonymous books what Kierkegaard means to say is that, insofar as a pseudonymous book is something like a child, its “mother” is the pseudonymous author—not Kierkegaard—then Kierkegaard is free to take upon himself the role of midwife in the relation, helping the pseudonymous author to “give birth” to his works without himself being responsible for them or what they contain. thus, in the Kierkegaardian sense of the concept, pseudonymity is both the production of pseudonymous authors—“poetically actual subjective thinkers,”16 who are, although something less than real persons, something more than fictional characters, as well—and the crafting of written works in relation to which one is more of a conduit than a creator. with this in mind, the most common use of pseudonymity in Kierkegaard’s day, as a mask meant simply to obscure the real author’s identity and nothing more, is at heart a misunderstanding of both pseudonymity specifically and authorship generally. such pseudonymity is, for Kierkegaard, really nothing more than anonymity—the negative (concealment) without the positive (personality). Kierkegaardian pseudonymity, on the other hand, is the unity of the positive and the negative, resulting in what he takes to be a maieutic deception into the truth. see also anonymity; authorship; Communication/indirect Communication; individual; personality; self; writing. 14 15 16

SKS 7, 570 / CUP1, 627. SKS 7, 569 / CUP1, 625. SKS 7, 570 / CUP1, 626.

psychological experiment martijn boven

Psychological experiment (psychologisk Experiment—noun; experimenterende Psychologi—noun) the word Experiment (Kierkegaard’s spelling) is derived from the Latin experimentum, a “trial,” “test” (from the verb experiri, “to try,” “put to the test”). Psykologi is from the post-classical Latin psychologia, which is derived from the greek ψυχή, meaning “life” or “breath,” and λόγος, meaning “word,” “reason,” or “discourse.”1 for Kierkegaard the “psychological experiment” or “imaginary psychological construction” is a literary strategy. it enables him to dramatize an existential conflict in an experimental mode.2 Kierkegaard’s aim is to study the source of movement that animates the existing individual (this is the psychological part). However, he is not interested in the representation of historical individuals in actual situations, but in the construction of fictional characters that are placed in hypothetical situations; this allows him to set the categories in motion “in order to observe completely undisturbed what these require”3 without caring to what extent someone has met this requirement or is able to meet it (this is the experimental part). the “psychological experiment” is a category of indirect communication that is developed most extensively by frater taciturnus, the pseudonymous author of the third part of Stages on Life’s Way. (i) taciturnus introduces the psychological experiment as a new trajectory in modern literature that offers an alternative to poetry and speculative drama. He develops this new trajectory in praxis (in the novella “ ‘guilty?’/‘not guilty?’ a story of suffering: a psychological experiment by frater taciturnus”)4 as well as in theory (in the “Letter to the reader” that accompanies his novella).5 (ii) two other pseudonymous authors further enrich the conceptual Ordbog over det danske Sprog, vols. 1–28, published by the society for danish Language and Literature, Copenhagen: gyldendal 1918–56, vol. 4, columns 255–6 (Experiment) and vol. 17, columns 39–40 (Psychologi, psychologisk). 2 the danish experiment has the same root as its english equivalent. However, in their translation of Kierkegaard’s works, the Hongs have chosen to use the notion “imaginary construction” instead of “experiment” (see R, xxi–xxxi; 357–62 for their explanation of this choice). other english translations, which i follow, favor “experiment” (for example, CUPH, 262 and KJN 2, 220, 242). 3 SKS 6, 431 / SLW, 467. 4 SKS 6, 173–368 / SLW, 185–397. 5 SKS 6, 369–454 / SLW, 398–494. see also taciturnus’ letter in Fædrelandet (SKS 14, 79–84 / COR, 38–46). 1

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field of the psychological experiment.6 Constantin Constantius develops the notion “experimenting psychology,”7 and Johannes Climacus reflects on the reader’s contemporaneity with the character.8 I. Frater Taciturnus and the Psychological Experiment as a New Trajectory in Modern Literature within the complex and multilayered text of frater taciturnus’ “Letter to the reader” a new theory of literature emerges that is suggested rather than explicated. taciturnus introduces the psychological experiment as an alternative for two trajectories in modern literature: poetry (for example, shakespeare) and speculative drama (for example, johan Ludvig Heiberg). all three trajectories—poetry, speculative drama, and the psychological experiment—deal with existential passions, which are made visible by creating a contradiction between the ideality and the actuality of a character. However, they fundamentally differ in the way this is done. (1) in poetry, an absolute passion is posited that leads to an irreconcilable contradiction between ideality and actuality. this contradiction is either essentially comic or essentially tragic, but never both at the same time. (2) in speculative drama, the contradiction is just a moment in a larger development. therefore, only a relative passion is posited and neither the comic nor the tragic can properly take hold of the situation. (3) in the psychological experiment, a new kind of absolute passion is posited: the religious. this religious passion complicates the contradiction between actuality and ideality in such a way that this contradiction becomes simultaneously essentially comic and essentially tragic. (1) Poetry. In the first trajectory, the misrelation between ideality and actuality is expressed either as a tragic or as a comic contradiction. taciturnus does not say much about the comic. However, from his few remarks it can be deduced that the comic expresses disbelief in the hero’s ideality and incites laughter.9 when a girl declares that she is willing to die for her beloved (ideality) but leaves him as soon as she learns that he only has four toes on his left foot (actuality), she becomes ludicrous. the girl’s ideality is exposed by the actual circumstances in which she is placed. the tragic contradiction, by contrast, expresses belief in the ideality of the hero and incites sympathy. taciturnus gives the example of romeo and juliet; a third and a fourth pseudonym could be added: petrus minor (Pap. Vii–2 b 235 14–16 / BA, 15–17) and Vigilius Haufniensis (SKS 6, 147–8 / CA, 54–6). 7 the notion “experimenting psychology” appears in the subtitle of Repetition, but is not mentioned anywhere else in the book. Constantius develops this notion in an unpublished reply to johan Ludvig Heiberg’s review of Repetition (Pap. iV b 110–11, 116–17 / R, 283– 323). 8 Climacus hints at another, more philosophical conception of the experiment (for example, SKS 7, 188 / CUP1, 206–7), but also reflects on the psychological experiment as developed by Constantius and taciturnus (cf. SKS 7, 239–40, 263–5, 453 / CUP1, 263–4, 288–91, 500–1). 9 Cf. SKS 6, 391, 405 / SLW, 420, 437; Pap. V b 148: 17 / SLW, supplement, 633; Pap. V b 150: 17 / SLW, supplement, 633–4. 6

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they love each other with absolute passion, but a family feud comes between them and makes them unhappy.10 in poetry, the tragic depiction of such an unhappy love has two characteristics. first, the lovers do not have the power to overcome the contradiction. second, the contradiction is determined by external circumstances (that is, fate, chance) and not by the lovers’ own relation to the ideality of love. (2) Speculative drama. Taciturnus finds a second trajectory in speculative drama.11 speculative drama expresses the contradiction between ideality and actuality in such a way that it is neither comic nor tragic, but becomes a relative moment in a dialectical development. the speculative hero does not discover love as an absolute passion that is given, but as a possibility that still needs to be actualized in reality. for him, “there is no assurance that the outcome will be happy if only the external obstacles will be cleared away.”12 unhappy love becomes a temporal contradiction that holds no lasting power over the speculative hero. instead of despairing over the contradiction, as romeo does when he poisons himself, the speculative hero overcomes it and moves on to a new love affair. “so,” taciturnus writes, “while one almost never hears mention of an unhappy lover, there is all the more competition about having been one, even more than once have suffered what these unhappy ones suffer, but also having overcome these sufferings etc. etc. etc.”13 speculative drama reduces the ideality of love to a “more or less happy love.”14 therefore, the contradiction is neither comic nor tragic. in the eyes of frater taciturnus, speculative drama lacks a sense of the infinite; it rejects the absolute passion of poetry, but does not posit a higher passion that saves it from mediocrity. “if poetry is to continue to exist,” he argues, “it must discover another passion, one just as legitimate as love was for poetry.”15 (3) The psychological experiment. taciturnus develops the psychological experiment as an alternative to poetry and speculative drama. (a) the psychological experiment posits a new kind of passion: the religious. (b) the religious demands a higher ideality that does not precede the actuality it contradicts, but is an act of freedom that comes after it. (c) to satisfy the demand of the religious, the individual has to make a double movement. (d) In the psychological experiment only the first of these movements is made by dramatizing an unresolved existential conflict in a series of contradictions that are simultaneously comic and tragic. (e) only the affected reader—who undergoes a catharsis in the process—can make the second movement. (a) The religious. taciturnus discovers this passion, not as something he has realized himself but only as a possibility that comes to the fore in the character he has “conjured up”: Quidam (somebody). this Quidam is characterized as “a demoniac character in the direction of the religious—that is, tending toward it.”16 according 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

SKS 6, 378 / SLW, 407. SKS 6, 382 / SLW, 412. SKS 6, 380 / SLW, 409. SKS 6, 379 / SLW, 408. SKS 6, 379 / SLW, 409. SKS 6, 380 / SLW, 410. SKS 6, 369 / SLW, 398.

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to Taciturnus, the religious consists “in being infinitely concerned about oneself and consequently not deeming oneself finished.”17 This infinite concern for oneself is not the same as egotism, because it places the individual in a relationship to god. it is important to emphasize that god is here not understood as a unifying ground on the basis of which the individual can understand his life as a progressive movement towards self-realization. On the contrary, God signifies a loss of grounding. The religious passion confronts the individual with something “other” that underlies his own relation to himself, but that will always escape his grasp. in poetry this transcendental element is also discovered, but there it is determined as coming from outside, as something that happens to the individual (fate, chance). the religious passion forces the individual to acknowledge that this ungraspable “other” is part of his own constitution as a self; therefore, it can no longer be perceived as something external. (b) Ideality as an act of freedom. the religious passion is just as absolute as the passion of love that animates poetry. in both cases the passion constitutes an ideality that is higher than actuality. However, for the religious passion the ideality is not an abstract given that precedes actuality (as in poetry), but a concrete action that comes after actuality. “this ideality, therefore, is not an illusory anticipation that still has not seen the actuality but is an act of freedom after the actuality.”18 in the psychological experiment, ideality is neither given as an absolute ground (poetry), nor won as a relative result (speculative drama). instead, it is an act of freedom that places the source of movement within the existing individual. (c) The double movement of inwardness. taciturnus suggests that this act of freedom “after the actuality” is the outcome of a double movement that has to be made to constitute inwardness. (i) an idealizing movement that turns the outer actuality into an inner possibility. in this idealizing movement the raw data of outer actuality are transformed to the qualitative opposites of inner ideality (for example, guilty?/not guilty?) and appropriated as existential possibilities.19 this makes the individual free from the purely accidental in outer actuality. (ii) an actualizing movement that turns the appropriated possibility into an actualized inwardness. in this second movement the individual chooses himself by linking the idea (that is, guilt) to his own existence and taking it up as his task.20 this makes him free from the abstract indefiniteness of possibility. Taciturnus describes this double movement of inwardness as a “negative infinity.”21 this simply means that this double movement will never be concluded in a positive result (at least not in time), given that “first of all, the result lies in the internal and, second, is continually postponed.”22 the result lies in the internal because it is not the outcome of a continuous process of development, but is determined by a rupture: the choice of the individual. the result is continually postponed because the choice only holds true for the moment in which 17 18 19 20 21 22

SKS 6, 448 / SLW, 486. SKS 6, 391 / SLW, 422. SKS 6, 406 / SLW, 439; Pap. V b 148:17 / SLW, supplement, 633. ibid. SKS 6, 411, 448 / SLW, 444, 486. SKS 6, 408 / SLW, 442.

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it is taken. The individual remains unfinished and ungrounded and, therefore, has to choose himself over and over again. (d) The dramatization of an existential conflict. the literary artist cannot give a static representation of the double movement of inwardness, but somehow has to activate the reader to make this double movement for himself. in taciturnus’ psychological experiment, the character—Quidam—only makes the first movement and discovers the qualitative opposites of ideality (love/no love; guilty/not guilty). However, he fails to complete the second movement that links his own existence to the idea. instead of choosing himself in the idea, Quidam lets the circumstances decide if the idea is present or not, and, therefore, he “enters into dialectical agony.”23 the dialectical agony is not represented as fixed state but is dramatized as an unresolved existential conflict. This dramatization does not decide if the ideality of the character is to be believed or not, but expresses both possibilities. in this way, a “dialectically infinitized spirit”24 will simultaneously see both the comic and the tragic in the same situation. this duplexity makes clear that the circumstances cannot decide if the idea is present or not; only the existing individual can decide this. (e) Catharsis. both poetry and the psychological experiment are indirect forms of communication that presuppose “an ability to be affected on the part of the spectator.”25 in both cases this ability to be affected is assisted by awakening fear and compassion. However, poetry aims to take away “the egotism in the affected spectator in such a way that he loses himself in the hero’s suffering, forgetting himself in him.”26 in contrast, the religious passion gives a new twist to this notion of catharsis. from a religious perspective “fear and compassion are something different and are purified not by turning outward but by turning inward.”27 the psychological experiment aims to let the outer world vanish in such a way that the reader becomes infinitely concerned about himself as an existing individual. II. Constantius and Climacus on the Psychological Experiment both Constantin Constantius and johannes Climacus see the psychological experiment as a way to deal with the existential difficulty that the inner is not the outer. (1) Constantius develops an experimenting psychology to activate the inwardness of the reader, without defining it in any way. (2) Climacus reflects on the psychological experiment as a way to make the reader contemporary with the character. (1) Experimenting psychology. the central theme of Constantius’ Repetition: A Venture in Experimenting Psychology is motion or movement. Constantius follows Aristotle’s definition of movement (κίνησις) as “the transition from possibility to actuality.”28 according to him, this transition must be understood as a repetition in the 23 24 25 26 27 28

SKS 6, 416 / SLW, 451. SKS 6, 391 / SLW, 420. SKS 6, 425 / SLW, 460. ibid. SKS 6, 359 / SLW, 462. Pap. iV b 117, 290 / R, supplement, 310.

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sphere of freedom (individual existence) rather than as an example of mediation in the sphere of logic (general knowledge). for that reason, Constantius has to make sure that the reader does not relate himself contemplatively to the existential categories, but in freedom. to this end, Constantius develops a new writing strategy, which he calls “experimenting psychology” or “imaginatively constructing psychology.”29 The aim of this writing strategy is to activate the reader in such a way that he finds the source of the movement within himself and is forced to become an active creator. Constantius creates this effect by imaginatively constructing individualities and situations that approximate actuality without ever reaching it. “i wanted,” Constantius writes “to depict and make visible psychologically and esthetically; in the greek sense, i wanted to let the concept come into being in the individuality and the situation, working itself forward through all sorts of misunderstandings.”30 these misunderstandings conceal the main idea “in order to exclude the heretics from understanding the book.”31 Such heretics are figures of half-truth who are not able to distinguish between jest and earnestness. to deceive these heretics, Constantius turns his text into a riddle that can only be solved by an existing individual who is able, first, to identify the confusions and, second, to develop the emerging existential category on his own. in this way, repetition—as the source of movement within the individual himself—becomes “a task for freedom”32 that has to be taken up by the reader. “only, in freedom’s relation to the task of freedom is there earnestness,”33 the rest is jest. (2) Making the reader a contemporary. johannes Climacus characterizes the psychological experiment as a strategy that makes the reader “contemporary [samtidig] with the existing person in his existence.”34 this effect is achieved by employing “linear measures approximating actuality rather than the foreshortened perspective.”35 in this rather enigmatic description, Climacus creates an opposition between what we could call “representations after the fact” and his own psychological experiment. representations after the fact create the illusion of actuality with the help of a distortive technique (the foreshortened perspective). psychological experiments, on the other hand, make the reader contemporary with the character by confronting him with an undecided existential conflict that approximates actuality, but never reaches it (that is, linear measures). This existential conflict is not depicted as something real that has already happened, but is invoked as a series of possibilities that still have to be decided. in another passage Climacus formulates this as follows: the imaginary construction [the experiment] does not take as its starting point a later moment in time and relate a remarkable conflict as something past, nor does it slacken the conflict in a reassuring conclusion, but by means of its teasing form makes the reader 29

311). 30 31 32 33 34 35

in their translation, the Hongs use both alternatives (for example, R, 125, supplement, Pap. iV b 117, 282 / R, supplement, 302. Pap. iV b 111, 274 / R, supplement, 298. Pap. iV b 111, 293 / R, supplement, 312. Pap. iV b 111, 268 / R, supplement, 292; Pap. iV b 117, 287 / R, supplement, 306. SKS 7, 453 / CUP1, 501 (translation altered). ibid.

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even more contemporary than he is able to become by way of a contemporary actuality and leaves him stuck in it by not giving a conclusion.36

for Climacus, the difference between a representation after the fact and a psychological experiment is that the former communicates a result that is already decided whereas the latter makes the reader contemporary with the character in real time and burdens him with an existential problem. see also authorship; Comic/Comedy; Communication/indirect Communication; movement/motion; passion/pathos; psychology; religious/religiousness; tragic/ tragedy.

36

SKS 7, 263 / CUP1, 289.

psychology nathaniel Kramer

Psychology (Psychologi—noun / psychologisk—adjective) from post-classical Latin psychologia, derived from the greek ψυχή, meaning “life” or “breath” and λόγος, meaning “word,” “reason,” or “discourse.”1 psychology is defined as the science or study of the conscious or psychical life.2 psychology is thus the investigation and understanding of human mental and psychical characteristics and functions. in Kierkegaard’s day psychology was understood to be primarily a philosophical engagement and analysis of such psychical processes and differed significantly from how we understand psychology today. Not until the latter half of the nineteenth century would psychology acquire the status of a formal discipline outside of philosophy in the domain of science. thus psychology as Kierkegaard uses it should be understood as a branch of philosophy. still, the emphasis on empirical analysis and observation in Kierkegaard’s work prefigures modern psychology, and both The Concept of Anxiety and The Sickness unto Death have been understood as important contributions to its emergence.3 Psychology as a discipline is almost exclusively referred to in the definite form (Psychologien). The indefinite form (Psychologi) appears only on the title page of Repetition and once in Stages on Life’s Way, in the chapter “guilty/not guilty,”4 although it also occurs three times in the form Psychologie in The Concept of Anxiety, twice with reference to johann Karl rosenkranz’s book of that title,5 once in the article “on the polemic of the fatherland” in the journal Copenhagen’s Flying Post,6 and twice in the notebooks.7 Kierkegaard also uses the adjectival form (psychologisk), 1 The Greek terms are, of course, notoriously difficult to define. The definitions above are generally acceptable, but each term acquired more variegated and nuanced meanings as it was appropriated by, for example, philosophy or Christianity or psychology. 2 Ordbog over det danske Sprog, vols. 1–28, published by the society for danish Language and Literature, Copenhagen: gyldendal 1918–56, vol. 17, columns 39–40. 3 it bears noting that the Hongs’ translation renders the danish words Sjæl and sjælelig as “psyche” and “psychical,” which have a close affinity to psychology. In addition to being translated in this way, both terms also suggest something more metaphysical and even explicitly religious when translated as “soul” in that the term connotes some force or power that animates living creatures. 4 SKS 6, 166 / SLW, 179. 5 SKS 4, 359, 447, 337n / CA, 54, 147, 30n. 6 SKS 14, 25 / EPW, 22. 7 SKS 19, 136, not4:9 / KJN 3, 136; SKS 19, 329, not11:19 / KJN 3, 327.

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sometimes preceded by the article det to form a substantive, “the psychological” (det Psychologiske). the most frequent occurrences of the word “psychology” and “the psychological” are to be found in The Concept of Anxiety followed by Stages on Life’s Way and A Literary Review of Two Ages. after these three texts the next most frequent occurrences are found in the Concluding Unscientific Postscript and The Book on Adler with the two volumes of Either/Or also containing several references. it is perhaps not surprising that The Concept of Anxiety would contain as many references as it does given the subtitle of the book, A Simple Psychologically Orienting Deliberation on the Dogmatic Issue of Hereditary Sin. following this line of thinking, however, one would be disappointed to find few references in The Sickness unto Death, often seen as a companion piece to The Concept of Anxiety and published a few years later. the subtitle of The Sickness unto Death is A Christian Psychological Exposition for Upbuilding and Awakening. given the temporal spread of references to psychology in Kierkegaard’s oeuvre as well as the number of texts that incorporate the term, one could safely say that “psychology,” or as it is referred to most often as “the psychological,” has a persistent presence. The Concept of Anxiety contains without question not only the most references to psychology but the most substantive development of the idea of psychology in Kierkegaard’s work. Kierkegaard states at the outset that the “present work has set as its task the psychological treatment of the concept of ‘anxiety,’ but in such a way that it constantly keeps in mente [in mind] and before its eye the dogma of hereditary sin.”8 Here Kierkegaard announces that a psychological investigation of a mental state will be the central point of his book as opposed to a strictly philosophical and religious investigation. Closer to the conclusion of The Concept of Anxiety, Kierkegaard reiterates that “[w]hat has been presented in this paragraph, as elsewhere in this work is what psychologically may be called freedom’s psychological attitudes toward sin, or psychologically approximating states. they do not presume to explain sin ethically.”9 one notices that the focus on psychology will be moderated by an attention to other discourses that also have some stake in not only the concept of anxiety but also the notion of sin as well as the fall. psychology in The Concept of Anxiety, in its definition as an empirical investigation into mental states, is therefore invoked as one of but not the only discipline to illuminate the nature of anxiety and its relationship to the human being. in an important sense, The Concept of Anxiety is not only a central work on psychology but is important also for the ways in which it delimits and circumscribes the domain of psychology. to give some sense of this relationship between the different disciplines and how they relate to one another, Kierkegaard appears to be especially interested in anxiety as a psychological condition. “anxiety is a psychological state that precedes sin.”10 this notion of anxiety as a psychological pathology butts up against sin, a religious state (though it is not really a state according to Kierkegaard), or in the vocabulary of the text, dogmatics. in the course of the text, Kierkegaard will explore not only psychology and dogmatics but ethics and aesthetics as well as articulate 8 9 10

SKS 4, 321–2 / CA, 14. SKS 4, 419–20 / CA, 118. SKS 4, 395 / CA, 92.

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the relationship between anxiety, sin, and the fall. thus psychology is, according to Kierkegaard’s usage, a domain that is to be clearly demarcated from philosophy and religion even if the object of all three is very similar: namely, the psychology of the human being. in navigating between these different disciplines or domains of knowledge, Kierkegaard takes up the limitations of psychology as well. He writes: “if sin is dealt with in psychology, the mood becomes that of persistent observation, like the fearlessness of a secret agent, but not that of the victorious flight of earnestness out of sin. the concept becomes a different concept, for sin becomes a state. However, sin is not a state.”11 sin becoming an object of empirical analysis thus fundamentally alters the very nature of sin, according to Kierkegaard. psychology therefore misses what is distinctive and important about sin in the first place. Still, Kierkegaard considers psychology a valuable resource if it is aware of its own limitations. “the only science that can help a little is psychology, yet it admits that it explains nothing, and also that it cannot and will not explain more.”12 one of the reasons for this is that the focus of psychology “is fixed exclusively upon the particular phenomenon, but at the same time it does not have its eternal categories ready and does not lay adequate emphasis upon saving mankind.”13 without such categories at its disposal, categories that dogmatics does have, psychology is necessarily limited in its explanatory power. to understand Kierkegaard’s view of psychology further, consider his discussion of the psychologist. Kierkegaard compares the psychologist to “a police agent” who sits in his room but nevertheless “knows everything that takes place.”14 the psychological observer should also have “a poetic originality in his soul so as to be able at once to create both the totality and the invariable from what in the individual is always partially and variably present.”15 Kierkegaard sees the psychologist as a prescient observer of human behavior who makes inductive claims about the psychology of the person observed. in fact Kierkegaard suggests a curious contiguity between psychology and more aesthetic concerns when he writes that the psychologist should have a “poetic originality.” Kierkegaard appears to claim that the psychologist must not only be such an observer of human nature but should also have a certain facility in constructing theories or narratives about such behavior, hence a poetic aptitude. Stages on Life’s Way itself contains several uses of the term “psychology,” in fact second only to The Concept of Anxiety. Stages on Life’s Way, part one, william afham’s “in Vino Veritas,” does not contain any references but the following two sections do. judge william is in the main concerned with what he calls the “psychological conditions” or presuppositions that inform the actions and behavior of a human being. with marriage being the central ethical institution discussed, judge william seeks to understand the inward and hence psychological bases on which one both enters into as well as removes oneself from marriage. in one instance he takes 11 12 13 14 15

SKS 4, 322–3 / CA, 15. SKS 4, 356 / CA, 51. SKS 4, 379 / CA, 75. SKS 4, 359–60 / CA, 55. ibid.

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on the question of whether there is an exception to the commitment and obligation of marriage. “i shall only depict the psychological presuppositions, the psychical conditions that must be present if there is to be any question at all of a justified exception.”16 one should note here that the phrase “psychological presuppositions” does in fact draw on the word psychology, while the translation “psychical” translates the danish word sjælelige. it is not surprising that frater taciturnus’ lengthy discourse “guilty?/not guilty?” contains most of the references insofar as its very subtitle is “an imaginary psychological Construction.” Here taciturnus frames the contents of the document found in søborg Lake as a certain kind of novel, that is a psychological novel—and taciturnus calls himself a “poor wretch of a psychologist who dares to count on but little sympathy for imaginary psychological constructions and unreal fabrications.”17 as with judge william’s “psychological presuppositions,” taciturnus proposes a “psychological sketch” because “people certainly want to have a little psychology, a little observation of so-called actual people.”18 taciturnus focuses on marriage like william but, as he says, with a turn toward the religious and not the ethical. one of the “actual” people he describes is a girl who becomes for taciturnus a “psychological experiment” or construction. where william emphasized psychological presuppositions, taciturnus sees his discussion of characters as constructions or experiments. as with The Concept of Anxiety, taciturnus also begins to think of psychology as a particular domain or branch of knowledge. this is perhaps made most apparent in the subsection titled in part “the Last frontier between the esthetic and the religious Lies in the psychological.”19 Psychology also appears rather significantly in Kierkegaard’s review of Thomasine gyllembourg’s novel Two Ages. the noun form does not appear though, which is to say that Kierkegaard is less interested in psychology as a form of knowledge or discipline and more in a sense of psychology as observations of mental states. only the adjectival noun and adjectival forms are used. perhaps surprisingly there are no references to psychology in the final section of A Literary Review of Two Ages, the lengthy and famous essay “the present age.” all of the uses occur in the section titled “an esthetic interpretation of the novel and its details,” which constitutes an in-depth analysis of the characters, their motivations, and the events of the novel. Kierkegaard claims gyllembourg’s novel as a psychological novel when he proposes to “trace the psychological development of the various main characters, showing how and to what extent their presuppositions control crucial events.”20 typically in such novels, and in Two Ages in particular, “action must always occur through the psychological term of the individual.”21 Kierkegaard’s positive assessment of the novel in general has to do with what he regards as the excellent and complex psychological presentation of the characters, tracing their motives and actions to 16 17 18 19 20 21

SKS 6, 165 / SLW, 177. SKS 6, 179 / SLW, 190–1. ibid. SKS 6, 412 / SLW, 446. SKS 8, 41 / TA, 41. ibid.

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some part of their psychology. Kierkegaard praises the author for “psychological discernment,”22 and in two cases writes “[h]ow accurate and fitting everything is: the psychological delineation and the reflexion of the age.”23 The word “reflexion” marks for Kierkegaard the primary characteristic of the present age and the subject of the novel: that the present age is marked by introspection and the reflective capacities, which are the study of psychology.24 see also anthropology; anxiety; Consciousness; despair; guilt; individual; inwardness/inward deepening; Life-View; melancholy; mood/emotion/feeling; personality; present age; psychological experiment; self; spirit.

SKS 8, 46 / TA, 46. SKS 8, 51 / TA, 51 and SKS 8, 53 / TA, 53. 24 the Hongs note in their historical introduction to the translation of Two Ages that Kierkegaard uses the Danish term for reflection in two ways. Kierkegaard means, often at one and the same time, both the idea of “the reflected image and effect of the age in private, domestic, and social-political life (danish Reflex), and also reflection as deliberation (Danish Reflexion).” The translation uses both the English “reflection” and “reflexion” to suggest the double meaning. see “Historical introduction” in TA, ix. 22 23

punctuation steven m. emmanuel

Punctuation (Interpunktion—noun; interpungere—verb) “punctuation” is commonly rendered in danish by the noun tegnsætning and the phrase at sætte skilletegn (literally, placing marks that separate).1 Kierkegaard uses the term Interpunktion (from the Latin interpunctio), which captures the sense of a point or mark placed between two words, sentences, or ideas for the purpose of clarifying the relation between them. while Kierkegaard cheerfully deferred to others in the matter of spelling, he considered himself to be without peer in the use of punctuation. in his private papers, he offers a detailed outline of his usage. His observations on punctuation warrant a closer look, not only because so few writers have given any serious philosophical attention to these conventions, but because Kierkegaard’s discussion yields valuable insight into what he thought about reading, writing, and his task as a religious author. as a matter of style, punctuation falls quite naturally under the heading of aesthetics. However, Kierkegaard’s remarks about punctuation, when viewed alongside other statements he makes about language and communication, reveal more than a merely aesthetic interest. His discussion betrays a deep desire for precision and clarity, for transparency of meaning in the written word. indeed, punctuation is actually an integral part of Kierkegaard’s attempt to transcend the inherent limitations of writing, to endow the written word with ethical and religious significance. Kierkegaard is acutely sensitive to the nuances of each punctuation mark and its potential for conveying mood and meaning. for example, the colon “establishes reflexivity, perspective, and transparency in the sentence in such a way…that by the colon the antecedent clause is carried through the consequent clause and the reverse.”2 when combined with a dash (Tankestreg), the colon can express “ethical accent, pithiness of concept, antithesis, lucidity of two parts of a figure on one line, rhetorical emphasis, etc.”3 He notes that the colon is especially useful for distinguishing and clarifying concepts.4 Ordbog over det danske Sprog, vols. 1–28, published by the society for danish Language and Literature, Copenhagen: gyldendal 1918–56, vol. 23, column 925. the crossreferenced entry for Interpunktion appears in vol. 9, column 622. 2 SKS 20, 100, nb:150 / JP 5, 5985. 3 SKS 20, 100, nb:149 / JP 5, 5985. 4 ibid. 1

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Kierkegaard read other authors’ use of punctuation with a critical eye. He complains, for instance, that most danish writers use the period in such a way that the logic of their writing is obscured.5 to illustrate this point, he uses an example based on a sentence from schopenhauer: “everything disappoints, the hope or— that hoped for.”6 although the use of the dash gives form to the sentence, it does not, in Kierkegaard’s opinion, provide ample room for the thought to be expressed. He proposes a more expansive alternative: “everything disappoints: the hope, what is hoped for does not come, or what is hoped for does come—and disappoints.”7 He justifies this version by noting that it more effectively addresses itself to the psychological situation of the reader who has experienced despair. even the best and most authoritative manuals of style tend to present punctuation as a set of conventional rules for stopping sentences. although some grammarians allow a bit of latitude for considerations of breathing and individual aesthetic preferences, the aim of punctuation is always to facilitate comprehension. to this end, it is in the writer’s best interest to be in compliance with the rules. Kierkegaard refers to this perfunctory usage as “abstract grammatical punctuation,” and he concedes that this approach is entirely appropriate in the case of scholarly writing. However, he is emphatic that it cannot suffice for rhetorical purposes.8 in his rhetorical writings, which include the edifying or upbuilding discourses, Kierkegaard approaches the use of punctuation in a purposeful way. He views the use of punctuation as a genuinely creative act, which has the potential to produce a certain effect in the reader. in this respect, Kierkegaard’s own practice is, by his own description, “deviant.” but the distinction between his usage and that of other authors is not simply that between punctuating “by the book” and punctuating in a manner that departs from the rules in order to capture the natural flow of speech. though Kierkegaard is certainly interested in this latter usage, his ultimate aim is not aesthetic but ethical and religious. in the discourses, punctuation is used to create the conditions under which the thought or idea contained in the writing can be inwardly or existentially appropriated by the reader. to this end, the aim of punctuation is to facilitate the communication of spirit, to allow the essential thought or idea to emerge from the sensuous medium of the writing. in order to understand the unique role that punctuation plays in Kierkegaard’s discourses, we need to look more closely at some conceptual distinctions he makes concerning the relation between language and music. in the essay entitled “the immediate erotic stages or the musical erotic,” Kierkegaard’s pseudonym considers the relationship between idea and medium in various forms of artistic expression. in the case of painting, sculpture, and architecture, for example, the idea is itself a component of the medium. we cannot conceive the idea of the sculpture apart from its sensuous form. in the plastic arts generally, “the idea is integral to the medium.”9 But this is not the case with language. Language, as absolutely qualified 5 6 7 8 9

SKS 20, 99, nb:146 / JP 5, 5981. SKS 25, 414–15, nb30:41 / JP 5, 6883. ibid. SKS 20, 99, nb:146 / JP 5, 5981. SKS 2, 74 / EO1, 67.

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by spirit, is “the authentic medium of the idea.”10 However, language realizes its potential as the perfect medium of the idea only “when everything sensuous in it is negated.”11 the sensuous in the spoken word is its sonic quality, which it shares with music. both language and music address themselves to the ear, which is “the most spiritually qualified sense.”12 yet there is still an important difference between the two, since language has a temporal dimension that music lacks. music occurs in time but is not temporal in the same way that language is. as Kierkegaard’s pseudonym explains: “music does not exist except in the moment it is performed, for even if a person can read notes ever so well and has an ever so vivid imagination, he still cannot deny that only in a figurative sense does music exist when it is being read. it actually exists only when it is being performed.”13 the musical note vanishes in the performance of it, continually disengaging itself from its sensuous immediacy. Because music is qualified by spirit, it has “power, life, movement, continual unrest, continual succession. but this unrest, this succession, does not enrich it; it continually remains the same.”14 in a word, music merely “sounds.” in the essay on the musical erotic, it is claimed that language is “bounded by music on all sides.”15 this is clearly meant to include the written form of language: “if i assume that prose is the language form that is most remote from music, i already detect in the oration, in the sonorous construction of its periods, an echo of the musical, which emerges ever more strongly at various stages.”16 Here a subtle shift from reading to speaking, from the eye to the ear, is made with reference to punctuation. indeed, there is the danger that so much attention will be given to the abstract musical quality of the prose that language will fall away altogether and the idea will be abandoned, as often happens in poetry. this is not to say that prose writing cannot be a vehicle for serious ethical or religious communication, but that the musical role that punctuation plays in such writing must be subordinated to the task of giving expression to the idea. According to Kierkegaard, punctuation does two things. First, it gives defining structure—sensuous, visual form—to the sentence. “my chief concern,” he says, is “that to the eye the shape of the sentences becomes apparent.”17 Kierkegaard invents a descriptive piece of vocabulary to describe this function, which he terms “architectonic-dialectical” (architektonisk-dialektisk).18 second, punctuation creates a certain rhythm in writing that can be heard when read aloud. punctuation is therefore also a means of bringing out the musical quality inherent in language. 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18

SKS 2, 73 / EO1, 67. SKS 2, 74 / EO1, 68. ibid. SKS 2, 75 / EO1, 68. SKS 2, 77 / EO1, 71. SKS 2, 76 / EO1, 69. SKS 2, 75 / EO1, 69. SKS 20, 99, nb:146 / JP 5, 5981. ibid.

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the idea of reading aloud is at the heart of Kierkegaard’s understanding of the role of punctuation in the discourses: above all i must repeat that i have in mind readers who read aloud and who have had practice both in following every little variation in the idea and also in being able to reproduce it orally. i am quite willing to put myself to the test of having an actor or orator accustomed to modulating his voice read a little piece from my discourses as a test— and i am convinced that he will concede that much of what he usually has to decide for himself…is here provided by the punctuation.19

because punctuation is connected to the sensuous and musical form of the written word, and because the written word is disconnected from its writer, thus lacking the temporal and historical conditions for the authentic expression of spirit, it would seem that writing could only ever have an aesthetic purpose. but this would be to overlook one crucially important point: that Kierkegaard uses punctuation expressly for the purpose of guiding the reader in the act of reading aloud. it is intended to facilitate an act of speech that is temporally and historically qualified, that is, an act of speech that assumes the form of a personal address. by preparing the text to be read aloud, punctuation plays a key role in achieving the religious purpose of facilitating the reader’s inward appropriation of the message. though the words may capture the reader’s eyes, this would be to mistake the artistry for the meaning of the text. the form of the sentences is designed to point beyond the words to the thoughts behind them; and it accomplishes this by shifting the focus from the visual to the auditory, by preparing the text for the reader’s ear. although punctuation is what accounts for the visual shape of the sentences, it is, when properly employed, self-annulling (or self-effacing). in the discourses, Kierkegaard uses punctuation as a means of negating the sensuousness of the text. it accomplishes this precisely by facilitating the reader’s enactment of the words in speech. regarding the text of the discourse, Kierkegaard explains that as soon as the reader “has received it, then it has ceased to be; it is nothing for itself and by itself, but all that it is, it is only for him and by him.”20 furthermore, by creating the conditions for speech, punctuation imparts to the writing the form of a personal address, so that when the text is read aloud, the reader may experience that the words are speaking directly to her and to her alone. it is in this concrete temporal and historical situation of reading aloud that the reader, the “single individual” to whom Kierkegaard’s discourses are always addressed, can existentially appropriate the meaning of his words. in one of a series of entries concerning bishop mynster, Kierkegaard imagines reading one of mynster’s sermons aloud before a congregation in order “to show that upbuilding is something quite different from a possible curious interest.”21 He also notes with admiration the practice in england of requiring people to read

19 20 21

ibid. SKS 5, 289 / EUD, 295. SKS 24, 365, nb24:73 / JP 6, 6768.

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sermons aloud, for in this way “the one speaking is reminded that he also is being addressed.”22 of course, there is always the possibility that the discourse will miss its mark. everything depends on how it is received by the reader. the ideal reader is one who approaches the task of reading with a certain seriousness that Kierkegaard sometimes likens to that of a lover. such a reader is one who reads willingly, slowly, repeatedly and, of course, aloud. this would seem too much for any author to expect, unless the subject were a matter of infinite personal concern to the reader. Thus everything about the design of the discourse is aimed at creating and reinforcing the impression that it speaks directly to that individual reader’s deepest concerns. nothing contributes to this impression more than the act of reading aloud—which explains why Kierkegaard frequently prefaced his discourses with such passionate, enthusiastic appeals as the following: my dear reader, read aloud, if possible! if you do so, allow me to thank you for it…. by reading aloud you will gain the strongest impression that you have only yourself to consider, not me, who, after all, am “without authority,” nor others, which would be a distraction.23

Kierkegaard makes the same point again and again in different ways in the prefaces to his religious discourses. the emphasis is always on the reader’s personal appropriation of the meaning of the text by giving it a voice, an auditory dimension— or as he says in one preface, by transforming the discourse into “a conversation.”24 the primary role of punctuation in the discourses is to facilitate this process. see also Communication/indirect Communication; Language.

22 23 24

ibid. SKS 13, 33 / FSE, 3. SKS 5, 231 / EUD, 231.

Qualitative difference Leo stan

Qualitative difference (qvalitativ Forskjel—adjective, noun; Qvalitets Forskjel— noun) spelled slightly differently in contemporary danish, Kvalitet and kvalitativ are related both to the german Qualität and the french qualité. all of them ultimately derive from the Latin word qualitas—which was Cicero’s choice when translating the greek concept, ποιότης (suchness). in general, qualitas designates either a particular property or a quintessential trait of an object or person. the same word could also refer to the nature or essential constitution of something. However, as to its danish cognate, kvalitet, it customarily connotes a beneficial characteristic that implies a definite virtue, ability, competence, or skill.1 interestingly, although this meaning is outdated today, kvalitet might have referred to an individual’s reputation or high social standing. in Kierkegaard’s case, quality remains an essentially philosophical-existential term, filtered more or less directly through Aristotle’s Categories, Kant’s “transcendental analytic,” and Hegel’s logic. Forskjel—spelled today forskel—is related to the danish noun Skel (boundary, dividing line), and the verb at skille (to separate, to divide). generally speaking, Forskjel refers to the fact that two or more things do not tally or are inconsistent with one another, especially with regard to their constitution or size. thus understood, Forskjel designates discrepancy or disagreement. at the same time, the term could specify a certain relation between objects, more specifically, the idiosyncratic mark which makes one thing different from another.2 Here, it should be noted that aside from Forskjel and Forskjellighed, Kierkegaard uses, albeit very rarely, the explicitly Latin term, Differents.3 in Kierkegaard’s oeuvre, the expression “qualitative difference” is deployed in two closely related senses. The first meaning—which can be considered ancillary— has to do with Kierkegaard’s efforts to differentiate between divergent realms of human existence or various modes of thinking. it is with this connotation in mind that he postulates the qualitative difference between the “private man”4 and the “public

Ordbog over det danske Sprog, vols. 1–28, published by the society for danish Language and Literature, Copenhagen: gyldendal 1918–56, vol. 11, columns 875–7. 2 ibid., vol. 5, columns 830–2. 3 see, for instance, SKS 11, 99 / WA, 94. 4 SKS 23, 235, nb17:90 / JP 3, 2955. 1

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person”5; and that “between speculative doubt and common doubt.”6 similarly, Kierkegaard uses the same conceptual compound to refer to disparate forms of human expression. thus, he insists on the qualitative difference between music, on the one hand, and language or discourse, on the other.7 elsewhere, he alludes to the geometrical difference between the polygon and the circle but, nota bene, in a strictly existential context.8 in all of these instances, Kierkegaard is probably indebted to aristotle, while his intention is to stress the strong heterogeneity between divergent realities, particularly, the fact that two things have nothing in common with each other. However, the central meaning Kierkegaard attaches to the concept of qualitative difference is religious in nature, which is to say that it is predicated on the spiritual dimension of the concrete particular individual. to elaborate, very early in his authorship Kierkegaard noted the “essential difference”9 between “truth as inwardness”10 and “all objective knowledge.”11 second, since he approaches Christianity exclusively from the perspective of the existing individual (den Enkelte); and since he argues that the latter is conceivable primarily in terms of qualitative (not quantitative) determinations, Kierkegaard concludes that every Christian notion must be ultimately “a qualitative category.”12 it should also be remembered that closely related to the category of quality is Kierkegaard’s notion of the leap. scholars argue that there are three sources for Kierkegaard’s understanding of the leap: aristotle’s theory of movement or change (κίνησις);13 friedrich Heinrich jacobi’s philosophy of active freedom;14 and gotthold ephraim Lessing’s theological naturalism.15 relevant here is that, while critiquing jacobi’s view,16 Kierkegaard declares himself (via johannes Climacus) in favor of Lessing’s understanding of the leap. moreover, Climacus uses Lessing

5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13

p. 794.

ibid. SKS 1, 286 / CI, 247. SKS 2, 78–9 / EO1, 72–3. SKS 1, 82 / CI, 21; SKS 25, 223, nb28:11 / JP 4, 4392; Pap. iii b 14 / JP 2, 1633. SKS 7, 229 / CUP1, 253. SKS 7, 229 / CUP1, 252–3. SKS 7, 229 / CUP1, 253. SKS 11, 97 / WA, 93. see Howard and edna Hong’s commentary under the heading “Leap” from JP 3,

for particular details, both historico-theoretical and bibliographical, regarding this interaction see anders moe rasmussen, “friedrich Heinrich jacobi: two theories of the Leap,” in Kierkegaard and the Renaissance and Modern Traditions, tome i, Philosophy, ed. by jon stewart, aldershot: ashgate 2009 (Kierkegaard Research: Sources, Reception and Resources, vol. 5), pp. 33–49. 15 see Curtis L. thompson, “gotthold ephraim Lessing: appropriating the testimony of a theological naturalist,” in Kierkegaard and the Renaissance and Modern Traditions, tome i, Philosophy, pp. 77–112; especially, pp. 92–4, pp. 96–7. 16 SKS 7, 98–9 / CUP1, 100–1. 14

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as a basis for his argument that the leap is undergirded by a qualitative (that is, inwardness- and freedom-centered) change.17 Climacus starts from Lessing’s general principle that “contingent truths of history can never become the demonstration of necessary truths of reason.”18 when applied to religion, Lessing’s thesis shows, according to Climacus, that there cannot be a “direct transition from [the] historical reliability [of the bible] to an eternal decision”19 that targets the eternal happiness of a particular person. Climacus goes on to say that Lessing thereby rejects the possibility of “quantifying oneself into a qualitative decision.”20 His conclusion is that the genuine existential transformation comes about through the individual’s sovereign—that is, contingent, unpredictable, and non-systematizable—will, that is to say, through “a qualitative change that… cannot be explained by the little-by-little of a direct development.”21 in this way, Climacus realizes that the leap represents “a break in immanence,”22 that is, a qualitative alteration or momentous metamorphosis, conceivable only in terms of subjective autonomy and pathos-full volition. incidentally, it is for this very reason that the leap accounts for the qualitative passage from one existential stage to another.23 the real thrust of the philosophical expression “qualitative difference” must be understood in the soteriological context of Kierkegaard’s thought.24 the category of sin is pivotal in this regard. to begin with, in The Concept of Anxiety Haufniensis the same thesis seems to be at work in The Concept of Anxiety concerning the transition from the quantitative-historical dimension of anxiety to the qualitative emergence of sinfulness. SKS 4, 336–41, 368–9, 377, 393–4 / CA, 29–35, 64, 73, 90. for further clarifications see David Goicoechea, “The Moment of Responsibility (Derrida and Kierkegaard),” Philosophy Today, vol. 43, no. 3, 1999, pp. 211–25. 18 gotthold ephraim Lessing, “Über den beweis des geistes und der Kraft; an den Herrn director schumann,” Gotthold Ephraim Lessing’s Sämmtliche Schriften, vols. 1–32, berlin: stettin 1825–28 (ASKB 1747–1762), vol. 5, p. 80. see also the english translation: Lessing’s Theological Writings, trans. by Henry Chadwick, stanford: stanford university press 1957, p. 53. 19 SKS 7, 94 / CUP1, 96. 20 SKS 7, 94 / CUP1, 95. 21 SKS 7, 503n / CUP1, 554n. Here, one should keep in mind that Kierkegaard might have deployed the idea of the leap as a means of opposing the Hegelian dialectical hypothesis that certain quantitative dynamisms could lead to changes in quality. Contra Hegel, Climacus argues that the transition from quantitative determinations to qualitative aspects is made possible solely by the single individual’s passionate and free act of volition. see thompson, “gotthold ephraim Lessing: appropriating the testimony of a theological naturalist,” p. 92, note 70. see also SKS 7, 308–9 / CUP1, 337–8. 22 SKS 7, 269 / CUP1, 295. see also SKS 4, 337 / CA, 30, where Haufniensis writes that every “new quality appears…with the leap, with the suddenness of the enigmatic.” 23 see in this respect SKS 19, 375, not12:4 / JP 1, 808 and SKS 7, 234 / CUP1, 258. 24 However, in “the immediate stages of eroticism,” we come across the fundamental qualitative difference between mozart’s Don Giovanni and all other operas in the history of music heretofore. this allows us to infer that the category under discussion is equally indicative of artistic superlative achievement or aesthetic perfection. see SKS 2, 77–8 / EO1, 71–2. 17

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observes that “sin comes into the world as the sudden, i.e., by a leap.”25 at the same time, Haufniensis continues, “this leap also posits the quality,”26 by virtue of which sinfulness originates an ontological separation between the human and the divine. Moreover, this qualitative divide is irrevocable within the confines of earthly life, being related to the Christian doctrine of sinfulness. anti-Climacus phrases this difference thus: “as a sinner, man is separated from god by the most chasmic qualitative abyss.”27 furthermore, as the only forgiver of sins god is segregated from humankind “by the same chasmic qualitative abyss.”28 the idea that “god and man are two qualities separated by an infinite qualitative difference”29 resurfaces numerous times and with minor variations in Kierkegaard’s authorship30—a fairly certain indication of its paramount importance. An additional confirmation thereof lies in its prominence in Kierkegaard’s Christology. In this respect, the infinite qualitative separation becomes inseparable from the offensive crux of Christ’s paradoxical status.31 moreover, we are warned that “Christ’s infinitely qualitative difference from every man”32 is that as god or as divine, “he himself, without conditions, must give consent to every humiliation he suffers.”33 the same term appears time and again in Kierkegaard’s attempts to clarify the unique nature of Christian existence and its normative challenges. thus, in his notebooks Kierkegaard meditates on the qualitative difference between the Christian understanding of spirit and the everyday intercourse of human life.34 on another occasion, Kierkegaard takes note of the “wholly qualitative difference”35 between “the spiritual individual [Aands-Menneske]”36 and “the animal human [DyreMenneske].”37 in a similar vein, he qualitatively dissociates the new testament Christian from the natural man, whose relation to the savior is quite antagonistic and resentful.38 SKS 4, 338 / CA, 32. ibid. 27 SKS 11, 233 / SUD, 122. 28 ibid. 29 SKS 11, 237 / SUD, 126. 30 see SKS 11, 229, 233, 238 / SUD, 117, 121, 127; SKS 11, 104, 105 / WA, 100, 102; SKS 12, 43 / PC, 28–9; SKS 20, 74, nb:88 / JP 2, 1349; SKS 20, 252, nb3:16 / JP 6, 6076; SKS 21, 236, nb9:59 / JP 2, 1383; SKS 24, 144, nb22:78 / JP 2, 1416; SKS 23, 236–7, nb17:92 / JP 3, 3646; SKS 26, 113–14, nb31:159 / JP 3, 3650. see also SKS 7, 445–6 / CUP1, 492, where Climacus makes use of the expression “the absolute difference” when comparing the human to the divine. in SKS 25, 309, nb29:18 / JP 3, 3649 Kierkegaard points to a “difference of contradiction [Modsætnings Forskjel] between god and man” (translation slightly modified). 31 SKS 11, 239 / SUD, 128–9. 32 SKS 22, 413, nb14:118 / JP 3, 3645. 33 ibid. 34 SKS 25, 265–6, nb28:57 / JP 3, 3648. 35 SKS 25, 421, nb30:48 / JP 1, 81 (translation modified). 36 ibid. 37 ibid. 38 SKS 26, 290, nb33:50 / JP 2, 2080; SKS 24, 329, nb24:18 / JP 3, 3647. 25 26

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additionally, the qualitative difference is meant to illuminate the existentialnotional dissimilarity between various facets of Christian life. Here one might mention the heterogeneity between thinking in general and the paradoxical nature of faith,39 or Climacus’ analysis of the humorist’s distance from true Christianity.40 there is also the qualitative difference between “sacred history”41 (that is, Christ’s life on earth) and “history in general.”42 another manifestation of qualitative heterogeneity is Kierkegaard’s sharp separation between the realm of the genius, who is the acme of aesthetic brilliance and artistic originality, and the incommensurable Lebenswelt of the apostle, who is the recipient of a transcendent revelation and a pre-eminent model of the spiritual life.43 no less radical is the qualitative difference between authentically witnessing to the truth and the coarse plebeianism espoused by the danish protestant establishment (which treacherously and continuously tries to cover it up).44 Kierkegaard subsequently extrapolates this critique to contemporary Christendom, which loses sight of the ontological gap between god and humanity and thus lays the ground for the infusion of paganism into original Christianity.45 see also anxiety; Christ; decision/resolve; existence; god; identity/difference; immanence/transcendence; inwardness/inward deepening; Leap; objectivity/ subjectivity; offense; sin; stages.

SKS 11, 98 / WA, 94. SKS 7, 454 / CUP1, 501. see also SKS 20, 91, nb:129 / JP 5, 5975. 41 SKS 12, 44 / PC, 30. 42 ibid. 43 SKS 11, 95–111 / WA, 91–108. see especially SKS 11, 97 / WA, 93. a similar sharp opposition is posited between new testament Christianity and all collectivist (or purely quantitative) reductions of human existence. see SKS 25, 49–3, nb30:136 / JP 3, 2974; SKS 26, 129–30, nb32:17 / JP 2, 2074. in this context, it is also worth recalling the qualitative disjunction that anti-Climacus posits between the externality (or visible side) of human life and its potential godliness (which is essentially invisible). this is particularly true of Christ, whose divinity cannot be indubitably deduced from what we know about his earthly existence. see SKS 12, 42–3 / PC, 28–9. 44 SKS 26, 24, nb31:30 / JP 1, 83. 45 SKS 23, 84–5, nb15:122 / JP 1, 516; SKS 11, 161 / SUD, 46–7; SKS 4, 398 / CA, 95. 39 40

race joseph ballan

Race (Slægten—noun) the modern danish Slægt is antedated by the old norse slekt and the old danish slæct, which derive from the middle Low german slacht. the related middle High german word, geschlecht, survives in modern german. a genealogical term, Slægten denotes a common line of descent among members of the same group, family, or species. to be beslægtet means to be related in a familial sense. referring to the human race or humankind in philosophical and theological contexts, it suggests the common lineage of all human individuals, which orthodox Christian theology ultimately traces to adam. more narrowly, the word can indicate a group of people who are similarly located in a longer genealogical sequence, a “generation.”1 Kierkegaard sometimes uses Slægt in this sense, but our focus shall be on those instances of the term that make reference to what is universally human. As early as 1833, reflecting on H.N. Clausen’s lectures on dogmatics,2 Kierkegaard was developing a basic distinction between the individual and the human race.3 toward the end of his life, in 1854, he voiced despair over the “degeneration” of the race as a whole,4 wondering whether Christianity sanctions the continued propagation of the race.5 the concept of the human race is found throughout Kierkegaard’s writings, but it appears with most frequency in discussions of sin and of the relationship between Christ and the rest of humanity. most notably, it occupies an important place in the conceptual architecture of The Concept of Anxiety, but one also finds substantive discussions of it in Practice in Christianity, in Two EthicalReligious Essays, and in various edifying discourses, such as the 1845 “on the occasion of a Confession.” As the lexical definition suggests, to speak of the human race is to identify what characteristics all humans share in common, and therefore what differentiates humans from animals. Kierkegaard thinks that the essentially human in this respect boils down to singularity or individuality and we shall see that this is one of the problems with “race” as a concept for naming what is distinctive about human beings. Ordbog over det danske Sprog, vols. 1–28, published by the society for danish Language and Literature, Copenhagen: gyldendal 1918–56, vol. 20, columns 655–6. 2 see SKS 19, 71, not1:8 / KJN 3, 67 for Kierkegaard’s notes on Clausen on the race and the individual. 3 SKS 19, 84, not1:9 / KJN 3, 81. 4 SKS 26, 426–7, nb36:28 / JP 2, 1822. 5 SKS 26, 375–6, nb35:14 / JP 4, 3970. 1

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when it comes to the question of humanity and animality, the point is not that there are differences between a variety of species, but that, in the group Animalia, there are, most basically, two different forms of relation between individual and species. the category of the individual human is “higher” than that of the human “species” (Arten),6 but individual animals are not singular in this same qualitative sense. Human superiority over nonhuman animals is therefore grounded in the singularity of each individual in the species.7 each individual human being contributes something qualitatively new to the history of the race,8 and the fact that every individual is different from every other individual makes the “god-relationship” possible, for humans.9 what is distinctively human is not some universally shared substance, but the simple fact that individuals differ from each other. Kierkegaard makes explicit that “the individual” is a higher category than “the race,”10 and this conceptual hierarchy mirrors the zoological hierarchy of human animals over nonhuman ones, because each individual human being is more than simply an expression of the species Homo sapiens. the term “race” thus often carries a negative valence in Kierkegaard’s writings, in which it is above all the opposite, as the universally human, of the “single individual.” the tendency of contemporary society is to privilege “collective” categories such as “race” and “church,” and Kierkegaard wishes to oppose this tendency in the name of Christianity’s category of the individual.11 indeed, many passages might lead one to doubt whether Kierkegaard has any positive explanatory use for a concept of the human race at all. at best, the term in its common acceptation is a “misunderstanding,” at worst it is “paganism,”12 the deification of something finite. Declining to contribute an account of the essential goodness and truth of the human race, a “goethean and Hegelian”13 fashion of the day, he mocks those who grow “inanely self-important in a consideration of the whole human race [Menneskeheden].”14 similarly, and even though Kierkegaard also records the injunction to love the entire human race as Christianity’s ethical teaching,15 and as the example set by Christ,16 elsewhere the race is said to be dubious as an object of ethical concern, being so abstract that it potentially leads one to escape one’s concrete responsibilities and duties.17 few would dispute the assertion that the concept of humankind is an “abstraction,”18 but Kierkegaard goes a step beyond that claim to suggest that, because such an

6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18

SKS 7, 503 / CUP1, 554. SKS 9, 231–2 / WL, 230. SKS 4, 335 / CA, 28. SKS 16, 67n / PV, 88n. ibid. SKS 24, 395, nb24:118 / JP 2, 1906. SKS 16, 67n / PV, 88n. SKS 16, 66–7n / PV, 88–9n. SKS 5, 402 / TD, 21. SKS 9, 27 / WL, 19. SKS 9, 113–14 / WL, 109–10. SKS 6, 242 / SLW, 260. SKS 7, 144 / CUP1, 154–5.

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abstraction is ill-suited to the especially “concrete” character of sin,19 thinking with this particular abstraction is dangerous because it permits one to ignore the matter of one’s own individual standing before god. to achieve a theoretical perspective on the human race requires a concept of universality that requires the thinker to assume a stance of “observation” in relation to humankind, thereby forgetting one’s own responsibility.20 in this way, employing the concept of the human race stands in the way of an “honest” relationship with god.21 for all that, however, the concept of the human race is not one that Kierkegaard introduces only to privilege another concept over it. after all, Christ is given as a “prototype” or “model,” not simply for individual human beings, but for the race as a whole,22 and, as we shall see below, part of becoming an ethical subject involves assuming a renewed relationship to the universally human, to the race as an historical entity. only the “speculative” concept of the race is “fantastical,” because it subsumes real existing individuals under the rubric of the universally human,23 so the task for thought is to dismantle that speculative concept, to counteract its cultural and ecclesiastical effects, and to build in its place a concept of the race that does not privilege the universally human over the category of the individual. related to the opposition between the race and the single individual is the principle that the human race is productive of quantitative gradations, but not of qualitative differences. Qualitative difference inheres in the individual and is not located at the level of the race. from where, then, do individuals originate, if not from the race? johannes Climacus asks this question, noting that he cannot produce a satisfactory answer.24 Kierkegaard’s point seems to be that one ought not to account for the origins of the individual human being using a concept that only has validity on a quantitative level. the individual corresponds to the qualitative and cannot be reduced to that which can be described in terms of more and less. this claim serves as the basis for the critique of “traditional concepts”25 of adam’s sin and of hereditary sin that make adam and his sin stand outside the race and thereby give to the human race a “fantastic beginning,”26 and that account for the origins of the human race by means of a “myth of the understanding.”27 as regards sinfulness, the difference between adam and other members of the race is quantitative, not qualitative, because sin does not come into the world in the life of a nineteenth-century individual in any other manner than the way in which it came into the world in the life of adam. the logical principle behind this theological one is that quantitative accumulation does not, of itself, produce qualitative novelty or change.28 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28

SKS 4, 362 / CA, 57. SKS 5, 411 / TD, 32. SKS 5, 413 / TD, 34. SKS 8, 332 / UD, 231. SKS 11, 197 / SUD, 83. SKS 7, 144 / CUP1, 154. SKS 4, 336 / CA, 29. SKS 4, 332 / CA, 25. SKS 4, 340 / CA, 34. SKS 4, 336 / CA, 30.

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that the race is a quantitative category means that the race has a history. the individual becomes guilty through a qualitative “leap,” yet this leap always makes a quantitative contribution to the history of the race, which contribution Kierkegaard characterizes as an “accumulation” (Tilvæxt) of sinfulness29 that gets registered on the level of individual members of the race. sinfulness spreads, by means of sexuality, through the generations of human beings coming after adam, and a historical accounting can be made of this genealogical process.30 Herein lies the relationship between the sinfulness of the individual and that of the race: as a species, the human race itself is sinful, but that fact does not entail the guilt of every human being, which comes into existence anew in the case of each individual,31 yet even though the individual becomes guilty by a “leap,” the “quantitative accumulation [of sinfulness] left behind by the race [i.e., an historical process] now makes itself felt in that individual.”32 but this quantitative accumulation of sinfulness at the level of the race is not an illusion or, as Kierkegaard might say, a “phantom.” for example, job, another “prototype” of the race, is “innocent, humanly speaking,” yet remains guilty in the sight of god thanks to a debt of “essential guilt,” a guiltiness that seems to inhere in the very fact of being a member of the human race.33 becoming an ethical self through repentance demands that one actively appropriate this history of the sinful race. this principle about repentance is found in Either/Or, part two, in a passage in which Kierkegaard has judge william suggest that this process of becoming a self also entails rejoining the race through repentance.34 it seems to be in tension with most other discussions of sin and the race in Kierkegaard’s writings,35 in which the task is to separate oneself from others,36 not to be reconciled with the universally human. by ascribing guilt to a collective entity such as the race rather than to individuals, individuals “objectify” and thus mitigate the suffering involved in being a sinful human being.37 Here the concept of “the race,” mediated by “long, systematic introductions and world-historical surveys,” becomes a source of “consolation” and a means of avoiding becoming subjective,38 not, as judge william would have it, a means of choosing oneself. the association between the race-concept and “world-historical surveys” illustrates the close connection Kierkegaard makes between the concepts “human race” and “world-historical,” the human race being one of the objects of the worldhistorical perspective. world history speaks about the progress of “the race,” and SKS 4, 357 / CA, 52. SKS 4, 357–8 / CA, 52–3. 31 SKS 4, 343–4 / CA, 37. 32 SKS 4, 357 / CA, 52. 33 SKS 8, 379–80 / UD, 284–5. 34 SKS 3, 207 / EO2, 216. 35 but see SKS 7, 503n / CUP1, 554n, where the race becomes “higher than the individual” in an unspecified “paradoxical” sense. See also SKS 18, 283, jj:430 / KJN 2, 261. 36 SKS 7, 53–4 / CUP1, 48. 37 SKS 7, 254 / CUP1, 279. 38 ibid. 29 30

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the latter is as much an “abstraction” as the “world-historical” is.39 so the notion of the race’s history that is developed in The Concept of Anxiety, and that includes adam as an individual among other individuals, constitutes an alternative to the speculative philosophy of world history. the latter, according to Kierkegaard, views the history of the human race as a progressive development, and it includes the appearance of Christianity within that teleology. One is justified in attributing inventions such as gunpowder to the human race as a species, and in citing such technological advances as evidence of the progress of humankind, but Christianity has no place in this kind of narrative because the teaching of Christ is not true in the same sense that a chemist’s account of the properties of gunpowder, for instance, is true. instead, Christ’s teachings are true as a “way” of being.40 similarly, while the artistic innovations of the genius rightly become part of the history of the race, the proclamation of the apostle, which also brings something new, nevertheless remains heterogeneous to that history.41 optimistic reasoning about the progress of the human race had become “incessant” in Kierkegaard’s day,42 and not merely among philosophers, but also among theologians and preachers of a triumphal Christianity,43 which is to say, in “Christendom.”44 In this situation, Kierkegaard affirms a vision of the world as neither necessarily progressing nor necessarily regressing,45 although he does at one point suggest that god’s will is in fact that the human race should advance, but that the “deification of the established order,” such as is allegedly on offer in Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, runs counter to god’s will in this respect,46 because to deify the established order is to make it usurp the place of god in bringing about the advance of humanity as a whole. another way of putting the opposition is to say that the speculative philosophy of world history, which is to say the philosophical history of the human race, identifies a “metaphysical τέλος” for the human race, while Christianity gives an “ethical τέλος” for individuals.47 in addition to its place in discussions of sin and history, Slægten is a key term in Kierkegaard’s Christology and soteriology. on the matter of Christology, Kierkegaard levels an accusation against contemporary philosophers and theologians that echoes his criticism of the kind of historical thinking that assimilates the advent of Christianity to a rational teleology: a triumphal Christianity wants to make Christ “homogeneous” with the rest of the human race,48 when in fact Christ, as the “godman,” is heterogeneous to the race,49 which treated jesus of nazareth as a “cruel

39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49

Cf. SKS 7, 144 / CUP1, 154–5. SKS 12, 204 / PC, 208. SKS 11, 98 / WA, 94–5. SKS 12, 216–17 / PC, 221. SKS 12, 218–19 / PC, 223. SKS 16, 101 / PV, 121. SKS 12, 226 / PC, 232. SKS 12, 97 / PC, 88. SKS 7, 144 / CUP1, 155. SKS 12, 218–19 / PC, 223. SKS 12, 216–17 / PC, 221.

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stepfather” treats an “illegitimate child,”50 an analogy that vividly suggests that Christ at once belongs and does not belong to the race. Christ’s ongoing significance for the human race is as a “model” (Forbilled), and the failure of “Christendom” in this respect is a collective failure to take Christ’s pattern of life seriously as a challenge to the ways of life of contemporary Christians and not simply as a sacred narrative to be admired.51 soteriologically, neither his roman nor his jewish contemporaries are responsible for the crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth; the guilt lies in the human race as a whole,52 a fact the horror of which should be communally remembered by the Christian church.53 Church, that is, should be a place where Christians learn to be horrified at the fact that they have each participated, through the category of the race, in the death of Christ. because each individual human being participates, through the race, in the crucifixion of Christ, each individual stands in need of redemption.54 while the contemporary generation (medlevende Slægt) of roman palestine is no more guilty than the race as a whole (Slægten),55 Kierkegaard does assume that the jews who were contemporaneous with Christ in particular are the direct agents of his death.56 it is only because “the category of the race…intervenes” in the relationship between Christ and the jews that the latter do not ultimately bear the guilt for Christ’s death, and it is also the same category of the race that lets them enjoy “atonement” for their sins, especially for the sin of executing an innocent man, for, in terms of atonement, Christ’s death is efficacious at the level of the race.57 this soteriological principle is grounded in an observation about Christ’s life: as a living model for the race as a whole, jesus’ relationship to humans is always mediated by the category of the race. He does “not relate himself as an individual human being to others.”58 while Christ’s atoning relationship to individual humans is mediated by the category of the race, one should not infer from this that individuals should relate to Christ as their model through the race as a middle term. Kierkegaard often says that to do so amounts to the “abolition” of Christianity.59 the race seems to function as a middle term when it is a matter of atonement, but not when it is a matter of discipleship. see also atonement/reconciliation; exception/universal; History; individual; Leap; sin.

50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59

SKS 12, 171 / PC, 168. SKS 12, 233 / PC, 239–40 (translation slightly modified). for example, SKS 10, 184 / CD, 172. SKS 10, 185 / CD, 173. SKS 10, 297–300 / CD, 277–80. SKS 11, 69 / WA, 65. SKS 11, 68 / WA, 64. ibid. SKS 11, 80 / WA, 76. for example, SKS 19, 113–14, nb12:103 / JP 2, 1781.

reason jamie turnbull

Reason (Fornuft—noun) Fornuft is derived from the older new danish fornoft, from the medieval Low german vornuft and corresponds to the modern german Vernunft.1 “reason” is the intellectual capacity to think, judge, draw inferences, determine the causes and coherence of things, and develop ideas and principles.2 the concept plays a far greater role in Kierkegaard’s thought than his explicit use of the term suggests. indeed, the ability of human beings to make sense of themselves and reality on the basis of their own cognitive and intellectual capacities is a central concern in Kierkegaard’s work. while Kierkegaard sought to draw a limit to human reason in the name of what must necessarily lie beyond it, his own work is, of course, an intellectual endeavor with a rationale and logic of its own. Reflections on the nature of reason can be found in early works such as The Concept of Irony, the first volume of Either/Or, the unfinished manuscript Johannes Climacus, or De omnibus dubitandum est, and in later writings such as For SelfExamination. However, it is in Fear and Trembling, Philosophical Fragments, and the Concluding Unscientific Postscript where Kierkegaard’s most sustained reflection on human reason is to be found. Given that these are our most important sources, this entry will focus upon these works. before turning to these texts individually it is useful to extract from them some of the general context that frames Kierkegaard’s thinking about reason. Perhaps not coincidentally, the texts in which reason and its limitations figure most prominently are united in a concern with the “modern philosophy” of speculation and “the system.”3 one does not need to go outside these texts to discern that their common target is the attempt to apply the Hegelian logic of mediation to dogmatics and theology.4 according to that approach, the divine and the human need not be regarded as heterogeneous categories, but might rather be understood as continuous. if this were the case, then human beings would be able to make sense of god and their own natures on the basis of reason alone. Human beings would be capable of

Ordbog over det danske Sprog, vols. 1–28, published by the society for danish Language and Literature, Copenhagen: gyldendal 1918–56, vol. 5, columns 724–6. 2 ibid. 3 SKS 4, 101, 103 / FT, 5, 7; SKS 4, 215–16 / PF, 5–6; SKS 7, 10, 22 / CUP1, 5, 13. 4 see, for example, SKS 7, 277 / CUP1, 305. 1

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giving a philosophically coherent and in principle comprehensive account of god, the world, and themselves. against the speculative account, Kierkegaard contends that god and man do not stand in a scalar, or relative, relation to each other but are absolutely different. the union of god and man in the incarnation of Christ cannot be mediated, and hence rationally comprehended, by means of human reason, since it constitutes an absolute paradox.5 Christ’s incarnation is not reducible to the movement of reason, as Hegelian logic conceives of it. the logic of mediation does not provide the means for human beings to make sense of god and themselves, to gain a clear and consistent conception of their own natures by means of reason. Human beings are, rather, entirely dependent upon God (and a God-relationship defined in terms of the categories of faith and grace) to realize their ultimate telos. for this reason Kierkegaard charges the Hegelian with disregarding, or corrupting the nature of god, the theological nature of human beings, and the relation between them. focusing on the powers and abilities of human reason, the Hegelian fails to understand the reality of our theological situation, namely, that our theological predicament lies in the corruption of our nature (including our reason) by sin, and that the way out of that predicament lies in a relation of faith and grace to a transcendent god.6 the limitations of human reason in respect to Christianity lie at the heart of Fear and Trembling, published under the pseudonym johannes de silentio. the concern of this text is not with making sense of the incarnation, but with making sense of the pre-incarnation figure of Abraham. The focus of Fear and Trembling is, in part, the Hegelian and speculative idea that the rational nature of reality is embodied in the institutions, practices, and culture of society.7 the result of this, Kierkegaard thinks, is that one is presumed to stand in a correct relationship to god (to have faith) simply by virtue of standing in the correct social relations, that is, in being an acculturated member of society who follows its ethical laws and principles. the idea that “[t]he ethical as such is the universal”8 is the premise from which the three “problemata” of Fear and Trembling proceed, and which they seek to draw into question with respect to understanding abraham.9 Understanding Abraham’s faith, and his action of willing to sacrifice his son isaac, in terms of reason (and so as rational and ethical) is necessarily frustrated by the fact that he has an immediate and personal relationship to the absolute, to god. for this reason Kierkegaard holds that the source of abraham’s actions cannot be generalized, justified, or made intelligible in terms of the universal. As such, abraham’s faith is said to constitute a paradox for human reason. for “[t]he paradox of faith…is this: that the single individual is higher than the universal, that the single individual…determines his relation to the universal by his relation to the absolute, not his relation to the absolute by his relation to the universal….This paradox cannot 5 6 7 8 9

SKS 4, 251 / PF, 46. SKS 7, 323 / CUP1, 353–4. SKS 4, 155 / FT, 62. SKS 4, 148 / FT, 54. SKS 4, 148, 160, 172 / FT, 54, 68, 82.

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be mediated.”10 abraham’s god-relationship is realized not through conforming to the allegedly rational and ethical laws and principles of his society (“the universal”) but from his being directly commanded, as a particular individual, by god (“the absolute”). The action of setting out to kill Isaac thus embodies a conflict between social and Christian ethics, and raises the prospect of a “teleological suspension of the ethical.”11 As Kierkegaard affirms, “[t]he story of Abraham contains…a teleological suspension of the ethical. as the single individual he [abraham] became higher than the universal. This is the paradox, which cannot be mediated.”12 the faith of abraham thus represents the possibility of a paradox that cannot be resolved or made intelligible in terms of reason, but necessarily stands as a limit to human reason. the same concern about the limitation of reason in relation to god can be discerned in the writings of the pseudonym johannes Climacus. in these texts the focus shifts from the faith of the pre-Christian abraham to the nature of Christ’s incarnation itself, and the theological situation of human beings post-incarnation. for Kierkegaard the main difference between abraham’s god-relationship and what is possible with respect to our own God-relationship lies in the figure of Christ as intermediary, or middle term, between god and human beings. while Christ is god’s revelation to human beings, Kierkegaard is concerned that the possibility present in abrahamic faith of an immediate and essentially personal relationship be preserved in Christian faith. thus although Christ is a man who presents god’s message in terms of human language and reason, he is also a god who cannot be understood by means of reason―but necessarily transcends it. Philosophical Fragments notoriously pits the socratic and non-socratic hypotheses against each other. the socratic hypothesis can be characterized as the idea that human reason alone is sufficient to make sense of human nature, while the non-Socratic hypothesis holds that human reason is limited and insufficient on its own; and that human beings are thereby dependent upon a transcendent god to reveal the essence of human nature to them.13 we are told that there is an “ultimate paradox of thought: to want to discover something that thought itself cannot think.”14 moreover, we are told that this ultimate paradox is commonly missed, or overlooked, because of “mediation.”15 Philosophical Fragments does not merely contain general claims about the limited nature of reason as such, but more specifically addresses the limitations of rational demonstrations aimed at proving the existence of god. it is, we are told, “foolishness” to want to undertake such a demonstration, the reason being that “i never reason in conclusion to existence, but i reason in conclusion from existence. for example, i do not demonstrate that a stone exists but that something which

10 11 12 13 14 15

SKS 4, 162 / FT, 70 (my emphasis). SKS 4, 148 / FT, 54. SKS 4, 159 / FT, 66 (my emphasis). SKS 4, 220, 222 / PF, 11, 13. SKS 4, 242 / PF, 37. ibid.

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exists is a stone.”16 either i must presuppose that god exists, in which case my demonstration merely expands upon my presupposition, or i assume that god does not exist, in which case my demonstration is superfluous. For this reason Kierkegaard claims that “existence…can never be demonstrated.”17 Of all of Kierkegaard’s works, that in which the concept of reason figures most prominently is the Concluding Unscientific Postscript. Indeed, the first part of the Postscript is concerned with the inability of human beings to discern the truth of Christianity by means of reason (that is, objectively). the second part of the Postscript continues this charge while maintaining that the essence of Christianity lies in a subjective, or inward, relationship of faith and grace to a transcendent god. such a god-relationship has no objective, or intersubjective, determinants, and so necessarily draws a limit to reason.18 for that the difference between Christians and pagans cannot be judged by human reason but is rather a matter for god alone, entails that there just is no rational basis upon which speculative thought can reduce faith to reason, Christianity to philosophy. the relationship between reason and faith, or mediation and Christianity, is a subject that runs throughout the Postscript, but is specifically treated in the chapters “possible and actual theses by Lessing,” “subjective truth, inwardness; truth is subjectivity,” and “the issue in Fragments: How can an eternal Happiness be built on Historical Knowledge?”19 in “possible and actual theses by Lessing,” Kierkegaard complains that “the importation of movement into logic [as has allegedly been undertaken with the concept of mediation]…simply confuses logic.”20 in response to the speculative view of logic, Kierkegaard states that while “a logical system can be given…a system of existence cannot be given.”21 the idea appears to be that the very nature of human existence or being (at least in the case of post-incarnation human beings) prevents us from being able to give a comprehensive and coherent account of ourselves. for “the systematic is the conclusiveness that combines,”22 while the existence to which we are subject is “the spacing that holds apart.”23 as Kierkegaard goes on to make clear in the chapter “subjective truth, inwardness; truth is subjectivity,” that human beings are subject to existence entails that they cannot achieve cognitive transparency about themselves. Human beings cannot formulate veridical judgments about themselves that would serve to unite the two sides of their nature, as subject and object, so as to be able to achieve a formal identity in the manner of an “I-I.” for “[t]he I-I is a mathematical point that does not exist at all….modern speculative thought has mustered everything to enable the individual to transcend himself objectively, but this just cannot be 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23

SKS 4, 245 / PF, 40. ibid. SKS 7, 370 / CUP1, 407. SKS 7, 72, 174, 329 / CUP1, 72, 189, 361. SKS 7, 106 / CUP1, 109. ibid. SKS 7, 114 / CUP1, 118. ibid.

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done. existence exercises its constraint.”24 if human beings could achieve cognitive transparency about themselves, they would be able to make sense of human nature on the basis of reason alone, without being dependent upon a transcendent god. yet for Kierkegaard such “objectivity” is constrained by the nature of human existence (as finite and sinful, etc.), and it overlooks the essentially subjective nature of the Christian god-relationship (and of the τέλος of the theological nature of human beings). against the anthropocentric pretentions of Hegelian logic, Kierkegaard holds that “[m]ediation is a mirage, just as the I-I is,”25 and “god is a subject and hence only for subjectivity in inwardness.”26 In the final chapter of the Postscript, “the issue in Fragments,” Kierkegaard returns to the theme of the “teleological suspension of the ethical” in Fear and Trembling, although this time in the guise of the absolute relation to the absolute telos. we read: it may be very commendable for a particular individual to be a councilor of justice, a good worker in the office, no. 1 lover in the society, almost a virtuoso on the flute, captain of the popinjay shooting club, superintendent of an orphanage, a noble and respected father―in short, a devil of a fellow who can both-and and has time for everything. but let the councilor take care that he does not become too much a devil of a fellow and proceed to do both all this and have time to direct his life toward the absolute τέλος.27

the idea is that, in virtue of the “both-and” of mediation, the individual’s relationship to god might be conceived of on the same scale as his other social relations. in other words, the god-relationship, what it is to be a Christian, might be reduced to just another social role, so that what it is to be a Christian always conforms to our social and rational natures. against this Kierkegaard maintains that “this both-and means that the absolute τέλος is on the same level with everything else,”28 and that “it is foolish to place the absolute τέλος on the same level as the rank of captain of the popinjay shooting club and the like.”29 in this way, Kierkegaard seeks to maintain the possibility that what god demands of us can be contrary to the norms dictated by our civic role in society or by rationality. in this article i have focused on Kierkegaard’s attempt to draw a limit to reason and philosophy, but this piece would not be complete without briefly noting that reason also has a fundamentally positive role to play in Kierkegaard’s thought. for it is precisely by virtue of their rational capacity to discern that the nature of the incarnation is absolutely paradoxical that human beings can enter into a proper relationship with god. reason thus has a fundamental role to play in leading human beings to choose between faith and offense, and to realize the end of their theological natures.30 yet the basic fact that forces this choice upon us, namely, that god and man 24 25 26 27 28 29 30

SKS 7, 180 / CUP1, 197. SKS 7, 181 / CUP1, 198. SKS 7, 183 / CUP1, 200. SKS 7, 365 / CUP1, 401. ibid. SKS 7, 366 / CUP1, 402. SKS 12, 113–14 / PC, 120–1.

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are absolutely different, is not a matter for rational demonstration. while maintaining that he himself is without divine or religious authority, Kierkegaard hopes that if we are honest with ourselves and listen to the voice of conscience, then we will see that this is the case.31 the irony of this is that the bitter polemic against the Hegelian speculators, in which they are portrayed as so obviously wrong and foolish, must end finally in “witnessing.”32 as far as the limits of reason and philosophy are concerned, a Hegelian account of the incarnation cannot be said to be false, or wrong, except on a non-rational presupposition of Kierkegaardian faith. see also absolute; Concept; Contingency/possibility; Contradiction; dialectic; exception/universal; faith; identity/difference; immanence/transcendence; Logic; objectivity/subjectivity; paradox; truth.

31 32

SKS 7, 358 / CUP1, 393. SKS 21, 50, nb6:68 / KJN 5, 84.

recollection nathaniel Kramer

Recollection (Erindring—noun; erindre—verb) from the older new danish (ca. 1500–1700) erindring and the german Erinnerung, a verbal substantive of the verb erindre. the meaning of the noun erindring is strongly connected to the verbal noun. therefore, the primary lexical meaning in danish is an expression, either oral or written, which reminds someone of something. Erindring in the singular is used synonymously with other danish terms that refer to the capacity or faculty for remembered representations, such as Hukommelse and Minde; hence memory more generally. the singular and the plural (erindring and erindringer) may refer to concrete things that remind one of a person, a place, or an event, such as a souvenir or a keepsake, or to the often strong emotional memories or representations connected to certain times and places.1 the term “recollection” appears with varying frequency throughout the entirety of the Kierkegaardian corpus and is a constant reference point for Kierkegaard and his pseudonyms. it occurs most frequently in Repetition, Stages on Life’s Way, and the Concluding Unscientific Postscript. Repetition contains by far the most occurrences and is arguably the central text in Kierkegaard’s conceptualizing of recollection. These three texts devote significant space to defining recollection in specific contexts, usually by way of contrast with another term. Both volumes of Either/Or contain significant references to recollection, with the first volume being the most important in this regard. Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits also contain significant references, with Works of Love rounding out the texts with the most significant number of occurrences. Stages on Life’s Way opens with a fairly extensive engagement with the concept of memory, a discussion that will be drawn upon elsewhere in the corpus. “in Vino Veritas” is in fact subtitled “a recollection,” and the word translated by the Hongs as “preface” is in the danish Forerindring.2 as the Hong translation notes, forerindring is “a word very rarely used now in danish….[and] literarily means ‘prerecollection.’ not only is the preface here a discussion of recollection and a preface to a recollection, but the nook of eight paths portion is itself a recollection.”3

Ordbog over det danske Sprog, vols. 1–28, published by the society for danish Language and Literature, Copenhagen: gyldendal 1918–56, vol. 4, columns 507–10. 2 SKS 6, 15 / SLW, 7. 3 SLW, explanatory notes, 676, note 13. 1

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Hence the entirety of Stages on Life’s Way both in form and in substance treats the issue of recollection. William Afham, the pseudonymous author of the first part of Stages, discusses recollection throughout, and at the very beginning of “in Vino Veritas” makes a distinction between recollection and memory (Hukommelse). drawing upon an earlier distinction made by plato in the dialogues, afham declares that “one can remember very well every single detail of an event without thereby recollecting it…. [however] the experience presents itself to receive the consecration of recollection.”4 afham goes on to claim that whereas the old person loses memory, he or she still has recollection, as opposed to the young person who may have memory but lacks the capacity for recollection. the distinction between the two is bound up in the synthetic or combinatory power of recollection as opposed to the fragmented and disparate power of memory to recall instances and moments without any attempt to unite or fit them together into some whole. “Recollection wants to maintain for a person the eternal continuity in life and assure him that his early existence remains uno tenore [uninterrupted], one breath, and expressible in one breath.”5 thus, recollection for afham remains on the side of ideality and eternity, whereas memory remains on the side of temporality. afham also therefore connects recollection with the essential as opposed to the mere arbitrariness or accidental nature of memory. “what is recollected is not inconsequential to recollecting in the way that what is remembered is inconsequential to remembering.”6 Here afham divides the activity of recollecting and remembering not only conceptually but also from what is recollected and remembered, the memories themselves. recollection as an activity is necessarily selective in what it chooses to remember. memory on the other hand is indiscriminate and anything remembered thus falls under the faculty of memory. Recollection, furthermore, is a reflective capacity and memory a more immediate one. ultimately, recollection as afham describes it is of the order of a secret, an idea with which he begins “in Vino Veritas.” while everyone remembers and forgets to varying degrees, recollection is absolutely individual, hence essential and singular to the individual. afham also claims that recollection keeps things at a distance, presumably to see the whole, whereas the power of memory views things up close, isolates them and thereby focuses on details. recollection contextualizes and situates what is remembered in some greater and meaningful whole. afham explores the distinction between memory and recollection in the context of a love affair or an engagement. Hence one might consider recollection and its function as part of the aesthetic life-view, though we will see later that recollection is part of the ethical and the religious as well. Either/Or, part one contains several references to recollection in the context of the aesthetic, though with some important differences from afham’s discussion. in “rotation of the Crops,” a provides his own analysis of the concept of recollection, though here in relation to forgetting. in describing the principle of rotating crops, a writes “the more resourceful one can be in changing the method of cultivation, the better, but every particular change still 4 5 6

SKS 6, 17 / SLW, 9. SKS 6, 18 / SLW, 10. SKS 6, 20 / SLW, 12.

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falls under the universal rule of the relation between recollecting and forgetting. it is in these two currents that all life moves, and therefore it is a matter of having them properly under one’s control.”7 Not only does A claim a universal significance for recollection as did afham, but as an aesthete he also encourages the ability to manipulate the faculties of recollecting and forgetting. rather than simply being at the mercy of an arbitrary forgetting and remembering, an aesthete cultivates and develops them as a conscious activity. a suggests as well that recollection not only involves the selection of some memories over others as a feature of recollection but defines more precisely the relationship between recollection and forgetting. recollection involves a forgetting such that in the process of recollecting one chooses to forget some memories in order to recollect others. a promises that “when an individual has perfected himself in the art of forgetting and the art of recollecting in this way, he is then able to play shuttlecock with all existence.”8 yet control of recollecting and forgetting also appears to fail at times, even for the aesthete who cultivates power over them: i know that i have seen her, but i also know that i have forgotten it again, yet in such a way that the remnant of the recollection that is left does not refresh me. with a restlessness and vehemence, my soul, as if my welfare were at stake, demands this image, and yet it does not appear; i could tear out my eyes to punish them for their forgetfulness.9

to the consternation of a, the failure of recollection to actually recollect, to provide that synthetic connection to the past, is thwarted, and forgetfulness ensues. when Erindring fails to gather separate memories into some greater and meaningful whole, its failure may well become a source of frustration. for example, a, putting himself in the position of elvira from mozart’s Don Giovanni, asks: “Can i bring him to mind? Can my recollection call him forth now that he has vanished, i who myself am only my recollection of him? this pale, hazy image—is this the faust i worshipped?”10 recollection in this case only provides hazy and indistinct images, far from the continuity that afham’s recollection provides. a explores yet another problem with recollection in the section titled “the unhappiest one.” the aesthete makes the point here that “recollection is above all the distinctive element of the unhappy ones.”11 the reason for recollection being such a definitive feature of those who are unhappy resides in the pairing of recollection with yet another term. in this case it is the concept of hope: “there are the hoping and the recollecting individualities. if, generally, only the person who is present to himself is happy, then these people, insofar as they are only hoping or only recollecting, are in a sense certainly unhappy individualities.”12 the individual in the process of recollecting, directed toward the past as he or she is, is made parallel with the hoping individuality, who is directed toward the future. neither of these personalities is 7 8 9 10 11 12

SKS 2, 282 / EO1, 292. SKS 2, 284 / EO1, 294. SKS 2, 314 / EO1, 324. SKS 2, 207 / EO1, 213. SKS 2, 216 / EO1, 223. ibid.

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happy, since neither one lives in the present, where, according to a, one can be truly happy. once again, recollection, rather than providing that consecration of life suggested by a, results in a form of despair. recollection in both Stages on Life’s Way and Either/Or is not only a feature of the aesthetic life-view but of the ethical as well. In “Reflections on Marriage,” the married man proclaims that the title of husband provides possibilities for recollection that knit together his life into a meaningful whole: “i honor the King, as does every good married man, but i would not exchange my titles with his. this is the way i see myself; and i like to think that every other married man does the same….”13 recollection thus has an eternal dimension to it, in which the merely temporal becomes absorbed into something with greater significance: “It is plain and everyday—indeed, what is as plain and everyday as marriage; it is totally temporal, and yet the recollection of eternity listens and forgets nothing.”14 the married man therefore repeats the distinction between memory and recollection as afham gave it. the difference between aesthetic and ethical recollection in this case is based on what is actually recollected. Here again, recollection has the capacity to provide continuity to the self by rescuing from time what is lost in the past: oh, that my memory will be faithful, that it will preserve everything when it is lost, an annuity of recollection for my remaining days, that it will give me even the most minor details again and that i may say with the poet when i am anxious about today: et haec meminisse juvat [and it is pleasant to recollect these things], and when i am troubled about tomorrow: et haec meminisse juvabit [and it will be pleasant to recollect these things ].15

finally, the married man makes use of the sense of Erindring as keepsake. He writes that if he should die, his wife will become a memorial (et Minde), whose function will be to recollect him: then i have left behind me what i shall miss, indeed, the very last thing i would do without, but i have also left behind me what i most reluctantly would do without: a memorial that many times and in many ways will preserve the recollection of me better than the poet’s song and the stubborn immortality of a monument, a memorial that will subtract from itself in order to give to me.16

in keeping with the ethical life-view, judge william also critiques the aesthetic conception of recollection. this criticism is found mainly in the “esthetic Validity of marriage” and insists that the keeping open of possibility emphasized by the aesthete will eventually be terminated: just consider, your life is passing; for you, too, the time will eventually come even to you when your life is at an end, when you are no longer shown any further possibilities in life, when recollection alone is left, recollection, but not in the sense in which you love 13 14 15 16

SKS 6, 91 / SLW, 93. SKS 6, 112 / SLW, 118. SKS 6, 92 / SLW, 94. SKS 6, 133 / SLW, 142.

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it so much, this mixture of fiction and truth, but the earnest and faithful recollection of your conscience that is the aesthete’s object.17

such recollection, as william sees it, will call forth a recognition not only that no new possibilities are to be had in life but also that a life is full of wasted possibilities. against the aesthete’s conception of recollection, and more directly against a’s pairing of recollection and hope as constitutive of the unhappy ones, william offers recollection and hope as a consecrating and sanctifying possibility: “the healthy individual lives simultaneously in hope and in recollection, and only thereby does his life gain true and substantive continuity.”18 in fact, william sees this combination of hope and recollection as evidence of marriage’s “right relation to time,” that marital love has both the security of the past through recollection and the promise of the future through hope.19 the Hong translation is not always consistent in translating Erindring as “recollection” in Stages, nor even for that matter in the rest of the corpus. for example, in taciturnus’ “Letter to the reader,” the pseudonym writes: “some of my countrymen think that denmark is living on old memories [Erindringer].”20 Kierkegaard himself and his pseudonyms are also not necessarily consistent either in the distinction between recollection and memory that afham establishes. this may well suggest that afham’s distinction only holds for his authorship, though the situation appears to be more complex than this. sometimes Erindring is rigorously intended as an oppositional category to memory (Hukommelse) and at other times it is synonymous with memory. johannes Climacus’ Concluding Unscientific Postscript continues the foregoing logic of understanding recollection in relation to some other term. in his “glance at a Contemporary effort in danish Literature,” Climacus pits recollection against the moment. Climacus critiques judge william and the ethical stage when he writes that, “[w]here johannes the seducer ends, the judge begins: Woman’s beauty increases with the years. Here time is accentuated ethically, but still not in such a way that precludes the possibility of recollection’s withdrawal out of existence into the eternal.”21 this is to say that if judge william advances the idea that recollection proper escapes the aesthetic tendency to see “woman as only of the moment,”22 Climacus still sees recollection as escaping out of the world into a metaphysical world. this same idea is repeated earlier when Climacus writes in the context of Philosophical Fragments: Although the requirement of the ethical is affirmed, although life and existence are accentuated as a difficult course, the decision is nevertheless not placed in a paradox, and the metaphysical withdrawal [Tilbagetagen] through recollection into the eternal is

17 18 19 20 21 22

SKS 3, 25 / EO2, 16. SKS 3, 141 / EO2, 142. SKS 3, 142 / EO2, 143. SKS 6, 451 / SLW, 490. SKS 7, 273 / CUP1, 299. SKS 7, 272 / CUP1, 298.

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continually possible and gives immanence a touch of humor as the infinite’s revocation [Tilbagekaldelse] of the whole in the decisiveness of the eternity behind.23

in an expansion of the childhood connection to memory, as opposed to the adult world of recollection that afham set up, Climacus associates this with a misunderstanding of repentance. the child fears punishment for sin as opposed to the recollection of sin. The childlikeness of self-inflicted penance is that the individual still wants piously to persuade himself that the punishment is worse than the recollecting of the guilt. no, the most rigorous punishment is the recollecting itself. punishment is most rigorous for the child because the child has no recollection and thinks as follows: if i could only escape the punishment, i would be happy and contented. but what is inwardness? it is recollection.24

Climacus thereby gives recollection a surprising value insofar as he suggests that recollection is synonymous with inwardness. this does not necessarily contradict any of the foregoing considerations of recollection, but it does extend and amplify the significance of recollection for the religious point of view. Thus, Climacus’ view of recollection takes into full consideration what it means to be in time from a religious standpoint. recollection also has its place in the dialectical development of love in Works of Love. in the case of “the work of Love in recollecting one who is dead,” Kierkegaard takes up the idea of recollection in the responsibility to remember the dead. Kierkegaard writes “if you want to ascertain what love there is in you or in another person, then pay attention to how he relates himself to one who is dead.”25 He continues, observing that recollection itself is shown most completely as well in relation to the dead: “i know of no better way to describe true recollection than by this soft weeping that does not burst into sobs at one moment—and soon subsides. no, we are to recollect the dead, weep softly, but weep long.”26 in fact, Kierkegaard states that this recollecting of the dead is a most “unselfish” form of love.27 the reason for this is that there is no return, no reciprocity, no repayment from the dead. they are no longer, and hence are incapable of such a repayment. in fact Kierkegaard compares such love of the dead to the love parents have for their children. part of the difficulty in such love is the fact that time takes away such recollection. Time encourages the encroachment of a forgetting that would overcome or destroy the recollection of the dead. “the loving recollection of the dead has to protect itself against the actuality around one, lest through ever-new impressions it acquire full power to wipe out the recollection, and it has to protect itself against time—in short, it has to guard its freedom in recollection against that which wants to compel one to

23 24 25 26 27

SKS 7, 245 / CUP1, 270. SKS 7, 499 / CUP1, 550. SKS 9, 341 / WL, 347. SKS 9, 342 / WL, 348. SKS 9, 345 / WL, 349.

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forget.”28 this is also why Kierkegaard designates such a work of love as the most faithful because it maintains a recollection of the dead as an act of love in the face of the movement of time and its forgetfulness. “the work of love in recollecting one who is dead is thus a work of the most unselfish, the freest, the most faithful love. therefore go out and practice it; recollect the one who is dead and just in this way learn to love the living unselfishly, freely, faithfully.”29 Repetition contains arguably the most elaborate and developed conception of recollection. on a par with afham’s discussion of the concept, Constantin Constantius’ question of whether a repetition is possible or not is formulated against the idea of recollection. on the opening page of Repetition, Constantius announces this opposition between repetition and recollection when he writes: “say what you will, this question will play a very important role in modern philosophy, for repetition is a crucial expression for what ‘recollection’ was to the greeks. just as they taught that all knowing is a recollecting, modern philosophy will teach that all life is a repetition.”30 Constantius’ claim that recollection is a greek form of knowing refers to plato’s notion of anamnesis, in which knowledge is understood to be had from a pre-existence and learning therefore consists in rediscovering that knowledge via recollection. recollection in Repetition is thus fundamentally linked to socrates’ maieutic strategy, in which the teacher does not convey knowledge to the learner but provides the occasion for the learner to recollect the truth that is already within him. in arguing for the possibility that repetition might be a modern equivalent to platonic recollection, Constantius also explains the differences between the two. “repetition and recollection are the same movement, except in opposite directions, for what is recollected has been, is repeated backward, whereas genuine repetition is recollected forward.”31 Constantius then goes on to compare and contrast recollection and repetition in a more lyrical way by comparing the two using various metaphors. Constantius’ experiment is to see if repetition might substitute for recollection and thereby return that which is lost to time. indeed, repetition would seem to function as a new form of memory in which one can literally have once again that which has passed. at the bottom of Constantius’ experiment with repetition (and recollection) is the problem of relating to or coming to grips with one’s past. Constantius discovers that such a repetition is not possible, and he becomes resigned to the flux of time that ultimately takes away, the fact that one does not get back what was lost to the passing of time. repetition is subject to the same sort of failure as recollection. see also actuality; being/becoming; dialectic; experience; History; identity/ Difference; Immediacy/Reflection; Stages; Teacher.

28 29 30 31

SKS 9, 348 / WL, 354. SKS 9, 352 / WL, 358. SKS 4, 9 / R, 131. ibid.

redoubling/reduplication wojciech Kaftanski

Redoubling (Fordoblelse—noun, Fordobling—noun; fordoble—verb); Reduplication (Reduplikation—noun; reduplicere—verb) Fordoblelse comes from the old danish verb fordoble, forduble and the derived nouns Fordobbelse and Fordobling. the Ordbog over det danske Sprog notes Kierkegaard’s usage of Fordoblelse and Ludvig Holberg’s usage of Fordobbelse as variations on the normal danish Fordobling.1 its lexical meaning in danish is to increase by a large quantity (to double the number), simply to do something twice or to duplicate.2 it can also mean to make something stronger with double emphasis. Reduplikation is derived from Latin reduplicatio, via the old danish verb duplere or dublere, duplicere or duplikere. it is often translated into danish as fordoble, dobblet, dublet. its lexical meaning in danish refers to the relation between original and copy (duplikat). it often refers to the exchange of legal documents concerning trade, such as bills of exchange and contracts.3 Re- is a prefix that refers to direction or place: back or again.4 redoubling and reduplication appear sporadically throughout both Kierkegaard’s pseudonymous and signed writings. However, they play an important role in his thought. the frequent occurrence of these concepts arises and has its culmination in the period 1846–50, especially in Concluding Unscientific Postscript, Works of Love, and Practice in Christianity. although scholars disagree on whether, and to what extent, they are interchangeable, it is clear that these concepts are closely related. most of the time Kierkegaard equates redoubling and reduplication contextually; however, sometimes he treats the terms as having distinct meanings. both concepts relate to the ethical-religious sphere of human existence. redoubling emerges as a more complex concept that has both broader and narrow meanings, while reduplication—which appears less often than redoubling in Kierkegaard’s works— Ordbog over det danske Sprog, vols. 1–28, published by the society for danish Language and Literature, Copenhagen: gyldendal 1918–56, vol. 5, columns 319–20. note that Kierkegaard uses Fordobling only three times: once in Philosophical Fragments (SKS 4, 276 / PF, 76), once in Johannes Climacus, or De omnibus dubitandum est (SKS 15, 58 / JC, 171) and once in The Book on Adler (SKS 15, 274 / BA, 119). 2 Cf. SKS 10, 53 / CD, 45: “doubled weight of despair” (Fortvivlelsens fordoblede Vægt). 3 Ordbog over det danske Sprog, vol. 3, column 1130. 4 robin allan, philip Holmes, and tom Lundskær-nielsen, Danish: An Essential Grammar, London: routledge 2000, p. 176. 1

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seems to be applied more precisely. Kierkegaard treats reduplication particularly as relating to an individual’s existence, while he refers to redoubling as addressing both human existence in general and the existence of a particular individual. throughout Kierkegaard’s enterprise, one can see the linguistic and conceptual development of redoubling and reduplication. the major considerations of both concepts occur in broad discussions of human nature and indirect communication. Kierkegaard uses redoubling and reduplication to present the spiritual dimension of the human being. a human being is in its essence a spirit and therefore has certain features—for example, love, confidentiality, truth, and righteousness—which Kierkegaard, through reduplication and redoubling, understands spiritually. as a consequence, Kierkegaard presents the human being as the eternal self that exists before god and is in the process of becoming. redoubling and reduplication, with regard to indirect communication, stress the relation between the communicator and the receiver, namely the communicator’s subjective engagement in the process of communication. The concept of redoubling is first encountered in Kierkegaard’s pseudonymous work Repetition and is related to the eponymous main concept of this work (Gjentagelse).5 Though one can find precursors to the concepts of reduplication and redoubling in Either/Or and The Concept of Irony—in the appearance of the etymological root dobbelt for example—repetition is the mother concept for the proper understanding of these terms. Kierkegaard’s usage of redoubling in Constantin Constantius’ work is to be seen in the danish words dobbelt and fordoble. In two of the “Letters from the Young Man” to “[His] Silent Confidant” one can find redoubling related to job’s blessing in receiving everything double except the life of his children: “only his children did job not receive double (dobbelt) again, for human life cannot be redoubled (lader sig fordoble) that way. Here only repetition of the spirit is possible…which is the true repetition.”6 the true repetition of the spirit is contrasted with the repetition of worldly possessions.7 redoubling is associated with the former type of repetition. The first definition of redoubling, expressed in the word Fordobling, can be found in Philosophical Fragments by johannes Climacus: “yet coming into existence can contain within itself a redoubling [Fordobling], that is a possibility of coming into existence within its own coming into existence.”8 That definition binds redoubling with the realm of human existence and spirit. redoubling refers to the double movement of becoming an individual: on the one hand, the individual, due to the fact of merely being in the world, has her own historical point of beginning. on the other hand, “the more special historical coming into existence comes into existence by way of a relatively freely acting cause, which in turn definitively points to an absolutely freely acting cause,” 9 which is the realm of spirit and the eternal.

5 6 7 8 9

SKS 4, 88 / R, 221. ibid. Cf. SKS 24, 244, nb23:73 / JP 3, 3687. SKS 4, 276 / PF, 76. ibid.

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in Christian Discourses Kierkegaard points to the difference between the man and the bird. in redoubling the man has two beginnings: one is his historical existence, the other arises in the chance of becoming in the eternal way—to be himself before god.10 another entry, regarding redoubling in Johannes Climacus, or De omnibus dubitandum est, links the concept with repetition: “Here is redoubling [Fordobling]; here is a matter of repetition [Gjentagelse].”11 first encounters with reduplication take place in Hilarius bookbinder’s Stages on Life’s Way. reduplication also appears in william afham’s “in Vino Veritas” and in frater taciturnus’ “Letter to the reader.” However, the danish terms used are Reduplikation and Reduplication respectively (Reduplication will reappear in Kierkegaard’s notebooks). in both cases it refers to differences in the natures of man and woman, pointing to the inability for women to “grasp reduplication [Reduplikation]” as her nature is immediacy.12 reduplication here is characteristic of the male’s nature, which traverses both the erotic and the spiritual realms. male ideality lies in the reduplication of the spirit, which “invariably destroyed” the immediate;13 by contrast, female nature is predominantly erotic. both redoubling and reduplication appear frequently in the Concluding Unscientific Postscript. Redoubling occurs for the first time expressed in Danish as Fordoblelse; changing the suffix –ing into –else has an active connotation in danish.14 redoubling is introduced in a discussion that deals with being and becoming of the truth. truth is redoubling when in the relation of adequacy the “is” of the truth is accentuated. “[truth’s] being, is the abstract form of truth. in this way it is expressed that truth is not something simple but in an entirely abstract sense a redoubling [Fordoblelse], which is nevertheless canceled at the very same moment.”15 Climacus identifies redoubling—which here is an abstract aspect of the truth comprehended in an idealistic manner—with reduplication, saying: “when for existing spirit qua existing spirit there is a question about truth, that abstract reduplication [Reduplikation] of truth recurs.”16 the true reduplication is the reduplication of a subject’s thinking in his existence: “that the statement about thinking does not reduplicate [reduplicerer] itself in the concept of thinker, that the thinker’s own existence contradicts his thinking, shows that one is merely didacticizing.”17 in the example of the relation between a teacher and a learner, Climacus associates reduplication with the inward movement of an individual who wants to grasp the truth.18 at this point reduplication and redoubling seem to have interchangeable functions. SKS 10, 52 / CD, 41. Pap. iV b 150. 12 SKS 6, 65 / SLW, 65; SKS 6, 395 / SLW, 427. 13 ibid. 14 robin allan, philip Holmes, and tom Lundskær-nielsen, Danish: A Comprehensive Grammar, London: Routledge 1995, p. 177. The suffix –else is added to a verb to form a noun for an action or process. 15 SKS 7, 175 / CUP1, 190. 16 SKS 7, 176 / CUP1, 191–2. 17 SKS 7, 276 / CUP1, 304. 18 SKS 7, 304 / CUP1, 333. 10 11

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after developing the concept of truth, Kierkegaard goes on to develop the concept of love. at the beginning of his signed 1847 work, Works of Love, Kierkegaard introduces the concept of redoubling to explain another concept: non-preferential love. to love without preferential scope is to love the other as one’s neighbor. “the concept ‘neighbor’ is actually the redoubling [Fordoblelsen] of your own self.”19 Here redoubling follows the thread from Stages on Life’s Way, where it was associated with the difference between the erotic and spiritual characteristics of the individual. the person who loves erotically “can by no means bear redoubling [Fordoblelsen].”20 Redoubling signifies a change within the individual’s spirit according to which the individual renounces to love preferentially those who are close to him (family, beloved, friend) on account of loving others as oneself. the other becomes a redoubled self to whom one has a duty; to love oneself is to love the other. in Works of Love one notices three aspects of redoubling: the strong association of love with redoubling, the strong association of love with the human spirit, and the absence of reduplication in the work. Kierkegaard says: “[L]ove is a redoubling [Fordoblelse] in itself”21 and therefore cannot become an object itself; love is in the realm of infinity and has the quality of “the redoubling [Fordoblelse] of the spirit.”22 Love cannot be compared as finite things can be compared, since love has the character of the infinite and spiritual, and the factor of the infinite is a redoubling. Redoubling is the characteristic of another spiritual realm: confidentiality. “Only God is confidentiality, just as he is Love.”23 Redoubling as the characteristic of confidentiality is granted with the human relationship to God; in one’s true confidentiality towards the other one redoubles one’s confidentiality between the individual and God.24 He continues: when…the eternal is in a human being, this eternal redoubles [fordobler] in him in such a way that every moment it is in him, it is in him in a double mode [dobbelt Maade]: in an outward direction and in an inward direction back into itself, but in such a way that this is one and the same, since otherwise it is not redoubling [Fordoblelse].25

redoubling links the outward and the inward of an individual’s existence by expressing outwardly what he held inwardly to be true.26 “[t]he one who loves is or becomes what he does.”27 by loving another one attains love that changes his inward realm; love “is always redoubled [fordoblet] in itself”28 and becomes the eternal characteristic of the one who loves. this thread will reappear in anti-Climacus’ Practice in Christianity using the term “reduplication.”

19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28

SKS 9, 29 / WL, 21. ibid. SKS 9, 182 / WL, 182. ibid. SKS 9, 152 / WL, 152. SKS 9, 152 / WL, 151. SKS 9, 278 / WL, 280. Cf. SKS 11, 103 / WA, 99. SKS 9, 279 / WL, 281. SKS 9, 280 / WL, 282.

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the individual who has the eternal in him—besides truth and love and confidentiality—gains righteousness. This righteousness is an eternal characteristic of the spirit who has the capacity to distinguish right and wrong. “but the truth and perfection of eternal life are eternally to show the difference between right and wrong with the righteousness of eternity.”29 the true human being who is characterized by spirit has a difference in herself. an imperfect human being can be either an imaginary being like a mathematical idea—not having the difference in itself—or can be just a “vanishing being” having the difference outside itself.30 “[t]he being of righteousness has this perfection, that it contains a redoubling [Fordoblelse]; this redoubling [Fordoblelse] that it contains in itself is the difference between right and wrong.”31 the righteous being is righteous because this is its inner characteristic—the characteristic of its spirit—and because its actions represent (redouble) righteousness. in anti-Climacus’ Practice in Christianity both redoubling and reduplication reappear. the main context in which these concepts are engaged is indirect communication. the indirect communication can be formed in two ways; the difference between them lies in the relation between “the communication and the communicator.”32 when the communicator is absent from the communication as a subject—the “communicator is a zero, a nonperson, an objective something”33—the redoubling of communication is present in the unity of opposites: communication is of the subjective, but the communicator is a disinterested medium.34 the other way is when the “communicator is the reduplication [Redupplikationen] of the communication” and therefore is present as subject in the communication.35 “[t]he reduplication [Redupplikationen] lies in precisely this, that the teacher is integral… through his existing in what he teaches.”36 both reduplication and redoubling in Practice in Christianity correspond with redoubling presented in Works of Love. Further on, however, Anti-Climacus refines the notion of redoubling, unveiling its ontological aspect: and what, then, is to be a self? it is to be a redoubling [Fordoblelse]. therefore in this relation it means truly to draw duplexity [Dobbelthed] to itself….but a self is a redoubling [Fordoblelse], is freedom; therefore in this relation truly to draw to itself means to posit a choice….but a self can truly draw another self to itself only through a choice—thus truly to draw to itself is a composite….Christ is a composite and yet one and the same, is the abased one and the lofty one….if he could truly draw to himself without a choice, he would have to be unitary, either the lofty one or the abased one, but he is both. thus nothing…nothing on earth draws to itself in this way, through a

29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36

SKS 10, 216 / CD, 207. ibid. SKS 10, 217 / CD, 208. SKS 12, 137 / PC, 134. SKS 12, 137 / PC, 133. Cf. Pap. X–5 b 234. SKS 12, 137 / PC, 133. SKS 12, 128 / PC, 123.

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Wojciech Kaftanski duplexity [Dobbelthed]; only spirit can do that, and in turn only in this way can spirit draw spirit to itself.37

redoubling is the structure of the human self and is based on Christ’s structure, which contains duplexity in itself. an individual’s self is drawn by Christ according to the individual’s choice. Christ is a spirit and an individual has the same spiritual realm, and as “spirit [can] draw spirit to itself.”38 indirect communication is required by the possibility of offense that dwells in the Christian message. the god-man requires faith in paradox, and the faith is a choice. in relation to other human beings, individuals do not put themselves into the position of Christ. “if one person is to use dialectical redoubling [Fordoblelse] in relation to another, he must use it maieutically in order to avoid becoming an object of faith or an approximation thereof for another.”39 the dialectical redoubling is an act of indirect communication that concentrates on the fact that the structure of human nature is remodeled by the spiritual realm of truth. the truth itself is the redoubling within itself that is expressed in the individual’s spirit. the being of the truth is its “life” in individuals.40 the understanding of redoubling and reduplication arises through the reading of those concepts as interconnected; however, in the late period of anti-Climacus’ writings and in Kierkegaard’s journals there emerges a subtle distinction between these concepts. redoubling seems to be presented as a more complex concept, while reduplication refers to an individual’s particular existential realm.41 redoubling in the general sense is “direct redoubling [Fordoblelse] of being in relation to thinking, which gives only thought-being”;42 it refers to the psychological structure of human nature. redoubling as merely a psychological function may serve to produce a phantom self, “a composed fiction,”43 that imitates inward communication by “making his monologue into a dialog”44 and “any such existing into an illusion or imaginary constructing.”45 in the narrow sense redoubling refers to the spiritual realm of a human being’s life (the spiritual person),46 that is transformed by a “constraining third factor outside oneself.”47 redoubling is in that sense the result of the individual’s positive response to Christ’s invitation. to summarize, redoubling and reduplication serve to expose the qualitative difference between the thought of the individual and her action. both concepts present the complexity of an individual’s existential-spiritual sphere, which is characterized by truth, love, confidentiality, and righteousness understood as spiritual SKS 12, 163 / PC, 159–60. ibid. 39 SKS 12, 146 / PC, 143. 40 SKS 12, 202 / PC, 205. 41 SKS 20, 199, nb:201 / JP 3, 3665. 42 SKS 12, 202 / PC, 205. Cf. SKS 22, 303, nb13:47 / JP 3, 3660; SKS 23, 45, nb15:66 / JP 1, 188; SKS 24, 133, nb22:55 / JP 2, 1793. 43 SKS 15, 274 / BA, 118. 44 ibid. 45 SKS 23, 45, nb15:66 / JP 1, 188. 46 SKS 13, 233–4 / M, 183–4. 47 SKS 23, 45, nb15:66 / JP 1, 188. 37 38

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qualities. indirect communication, which is possible only through redoubling and reduplication, is the proper way of communicating the eternal truth, which ultimately relates an individual to god (as master-teacher). See also Communication/Indirect Communication; Double-Reflection; Imitation; inwardness/inward deepening; Love; mediation/sublation; repetition; spirit; time/temporality/eternity; truth.

religious/religiousness Lee C. barrett

Religious (Religieuse, Religiøse—noun); Religiousness (Religieusitet, Religiøsetet— noun) both religieuse and religiøse, as well as religieusitet and religiøsitet, are derived from the Latin word religio, meaning devotion to the sacred.1 Kierkegaard often preferred to use the french-based variants Religieuse and Religieusitet rather than the more common Religiøse or Religiøsitet, although he did employ both sets of terms, often interchangeably. in many contexts Kierkegaard probably avoided “Religion” because it had a nuance of institutionalism and suggested a formal system of beliefs and practices. Kierkegaard’s diverse expositions of the phenomenon of religious pathos differed markedly from our contemporary academic study of religion. He did not engage in any sort of empirical investigation of the major religious traditions of the world. rather, Kierkegaard and his pseudonymous authors posited “religiousness” as a possible mode of human experience that can appear in a variety of particular instantiations. Kierkegaard’s remarks can be read as a phenomenological description of the essential form of what he took to be the religious life, present in all particular expressions of authentic religious experience. because this religiousness does not require a special revelation or official teaching, it can appear in many historically conditioned guises. in spite of this consistent and pervasive tendency to treat “the religious” phenomenologically, Kierkegaard and his various pseudonyms nevertheless did speak of it in different ways in different contexts. sometimes religiousness seems to be a broad set of attitudes, dispositions, and values that overlap with ethical categories. often the concept “the religious” is so expansive that it includes Christianity as a subset. At other times religiousness suggests a more specific way of life, governed by particular passions and values that are distinguishable from both the ethical life and Christianity. furthermore, in some of the pseudonymous writings the religious life seems to be a developmental stage through which every individual should progress in moving from ethical existence to Christianity. because of these variations in use, the significance of each of Kierkegaard’s employments of “the religious” and “religiousness” needs to be sorted out.

1 Christian molbech, Dansk Ordbog indeholdende det danske Sprogs Stammeord, vols. 1–2, Copenhagen: gyldendal 1833, vol. 2, p. 241 (ASKB 1032).

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I. “The Religious” and “Religiousness” in the Broadest Sense Kierkegaard often employs “the religious” and “religiousness” very broadly, associating “the religious” with the highly general concept of “upbuilding.”2 in these contexts “the religious” usually serves as a contrastive term to the aesthetic life and aesthetic literary works. for example, Kierkegaard describes himself as a religious author rather than an aesthetic writer and claims that this religious purpose was evident in the publication of Two Upbuilding Discourses from 1843.3 He maintains that, as a whole, his authorship had a religious purpose that even informed the seemingly aesthetic works.4 Continuing this religious/aesthetic contrast, frater taciturnus juxtaposes the religious concentration on internal suffering with the aesthetic focus on external impediments to worldly well-being.5 in such contexts, Kierkegaard often closely links the ethical and the religious, sometimes even eliding them into a composite concept. for example, he claims that “authority” is an “ethical-religious” concept to be distinguished from the aesthetic category of “genius.”6 similarly, he contrasts the ethical-religious with politics, for the ethical-religious takes its point of departure from god, while politics is oriented toward the established order.7 the essays produced by the pseudonym H.H. are described as “ethical-religious” writings. in a parallel fashion Climacus refers to the “ethical and religious point of view,”8 and notes that the notion of god is linked to the “impression of the infinitude of the ethical.”9 similarly, in Either/Or judge William discerns a dimension of eternal significance in his ethical commitments and associates this ultimacy with religion.10 often Kierkegaard or his pseudonyms associate “the religious” with Christianity, and seem to regard “the Christian” as a subset within the broader category of “the upbuilding.”11 for example, frater taciturnus treats Christianity as a particular form of religious existence.12 Kierkegaard consistently describes his own writings as religious, even when they deal with explicitly Christian themes.13 according to Kierkegaard, a “religious” address can deal with Christian themes and even attempt to defend Christianity.14 occasionally Kierkegaard or his pseudonyms describe some specifically Christian concepts like “sin” as being “Christian-religious.”15 Reinforcing this conflation, Frater Taciturnus considers Christian sermons to be a 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15

SKS 21, 56, nb6:74 / JP 6, 6238. Pap. X–5 b 217 / EUD, supplement, 487. SKS 16, 31 / PV, 49. SKS 6, 420 / SLW, 454. SKS 22, 152, nb12:12 / JP 6, 6447. Pap. iX b 24 / WA, supplement, 228. SKS 7, 242 / CUP1, 266. SKS 7, 222 / CUP1, 244. SKS 3, 42 / EO2, 34. SKS 7, 233 / CUP1, 256. SKS 6, 424 / SLW, 460. SKS 16, 29 / PV, 47. SKS 11, 95 / WA, 93; SKS 11, 106 / WA, 102. SKS 7, 244 / CUP1, 269; SKS 7, 245–6 / CUP1, 270–1; SKS 7, 266 / CUP1, 292.

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variety of “religious” monologue addressed to god, differing from other religious monologues in that they are said aloud in public.16 furthermore, taciturnus lists only three stages of existence and locates Christian doctrines in the religious stage.17 Kierkegaard’s close association of “the religious” with “the upbuilding” suggests certain salient and pervasive characteristics of his understanding of religiousness. religiousness is a basic posture toward life as a whole and is a comprehensive framework for thinking, acting, and feeling. most importantly, this posture is teleological. Kierkegaard’s writings assume that human beings, whether they are aware of it or not, have been structured in such a way that their true fulfillment can be found only through the quest for a happiness that transcends ordinary worldly definitions of well-being. Humans are intended for “the highest” by God, a lofty goal that cannot be reduced to vocational success, familial felicity, financial prosperity, or social acclaim.18 because its aspirations are so extravagant, religiousness can be described as the striving for a relation to the eternal,19 or as the yearning to enjoy an eternal happiness or blessedness (Salighed). Kierkegaard allows that specific types of religion and even specific religious individuals can conceive of eternal happiness in a variety of different ways. by using this highly formal analysis, Kierkegaard was defining religiousness in terms of its function in human life rather than in terms of its ideational or experiential content. Kierkegaard was not interested in identifying religion with a set of necessary regulative principles, a collection of innate ideas, or a system of metaphysical inferences. moreover, religiousness does not require a specific type of extraordinary spiritual episode, be it the experience of the numinous, the sublime, or the transcendence of individuation. rather, religiousness is the pursuit of a type of absolute fulfillment that the world cannot provide. Kierkegaard claimed that this religious teleology should motivate a dynamic movement that would inform a lifetime. He believed that the potential relationship to the eternal is not immediately given and must be intentionally actualized.20 religiously understood, becoming an individual before god is a strenuous task.21 often Kierkegaard linked the concept of religious maturation with the image of directional movement, particularly the image of life as a journey.22 according to Kierkegaard, this particular type of journey involves the inward transformation of pathos,23 which requires an urgent concern for the quality of the individual’s own life.24 the journey toward god is simultaneously the consolidation and stabilization of the individual’s identity, for the individual’s true identity and goal are progressively clarified.25 Hence the self’s religious life is a development, subject to narration, and susceptible to failure. this theme of the religious life as a strenuous task led 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25

SKS 6, 427 / SLW, 463. SKS 6, 439 / SLW, 476. SKS 6, 435 / SLW, 472. SKS 7, 531 / CUP1, 584. SKS 6, 242 / SLW, 259. Pap. X–5 b 117 / JP 2, 2033. SKS 8, 384 / UD, 289. ibid. SKS 6, 428 / SLW, 465. SKS 8, 160 / UD, 49.

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Kierkegaard to contrast the mystical sense of immediate unity with the divine, the “oriental reverie in the infinite”26 in which all discrepancies are reconciled in a totality, to the true arduousness of religious striving. in Kierkegaard’s works the passions and dispositions that constitute religiousness are multiple. perhaps the most foundational is the recognition of utter dependence upon god. the theme that a person can do nothing apart from god runs throughout Kierkegaard’s literature. individuals should strive to become nothing before god, for “the highest is this: that a person is fully convinced that he himself is capable of nothing, nothing at all,”27 while god in heaven is capable of all things. similarly, frater taciturnus suggests that the religious involves a trust in god’s sustaining power and a belief that providence is concerned with each and every person.28 this theme of dependence is closely linked to the motif of a gratitude that even involves the cultivation of joy in the midst of suffering and spiritual danger.29 the tragedies and oppositions that inevitably afflict the individual should be received as loving chastisements, opportunities to be weaned away from worldly attachments, or prods to religious maturation.30 almost all of Kierkegaard’s voices are insistent that this pursuit of the eternal is an imperative, an appointed task that is subject to evaluation. god is the source of the ideal in light of which our lives are evaluated and also the one who performs the evaluation.31 individuals are obligated to develop the selfhood that they have been structured to pursue, and are held responsible for having made progress or for having wasted their opportunity for growth. according to Kierkegaard, each hour is a call to duty, and the whole of life constitutes a decision about the individual’s eternal destiny.32 because the task is so daunting and the goal so lofty, the pervasive feeling of guilt is a characteristic of the religious person.33 Consequently, continual repentance is also a hallmark of the authentically religious life.34 II. Religiousness as Distinguished from Christianity and the Ethical this morphology that pervades almost all of Kierkegaard’s discussions of religiousness is complicated by the fact that sometimes in his literature “the religiousness of immanence” seems to be a particular form of human life, distinguishable not only from aesthetic existence but also from the ethical life and Christianity.35 this unique religious inwardness is often described as the actualization of an innate potential to relate to the divine that resides within the individual. religion here is the 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35

SKS 17, 231, dd:30 / JP 1, 1019. SKS 5, 300 / EUD, 307. SKS 6, 415–16 / SLW, 450. SKS 6, 433–4 / SLW, 469–70. SKS 8, 347–60 / UD, 248–63. SKS 8, 224 / UD, 124. SKS 8, 399–412 / UD, 306–20. SKS 6, 426 / SLW, 462. SKS 6, 431 / SLW, 468. SKS 20, 90, nb:129 / JP 5, 5975.

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cultivation of insight that can be accessed through the individual’s own efforts. for example, in Philosophical Fragments Climacus contrasts the socratic recollection of the eternal with Christianity’s foundation in revelation. accessing timeless truths within the individual is juxtaposed to trusting in god’s self-revelation.36 Climacus presents socrates’ pedagogical practice and passionate inwardness, including his protestations of ignorance, as the epitome of the position that the individual already possesses a latent capacity for truth that awaits actualization through a self-initiated effort. because of this foregrounding of human agency, Climacus presents socratic piety as a foil to Christianity’s reliance upon god’s grace. in some contexts religion seems to be not only a distinct way of life, but also a way of life that is a moment in a developmental process. “religiousness a,” as elaborated by Climacus in the Concluding Unscientific Postscript, appears to play a role in the celebrated schema of “the stages of life” (Stadier). according to many interpretations of this motif, each stage is riddled with inner tensions and disappointments that can propel the individuals existing within it into the next more fulfilling stage of life. An individual’s life should exhibit a predictable advance from less satisfying to more satisfying stages of existence, until the structural tensions in the self are happily resolved in the Christian stage. religiousness would therefore be something more specific than a form of human experience; it would be a discrete stage in the dialectical development of the human spirit. However, a closer look at the text shows that Climacus’ various remarks about “religiousness a” serve different particular purposes and do not exhaust Kierkegaard’s understanding of the religious. in fact, after the Concluding Unscientific Postscript Kierkegaard did not mention the distinction between “religiousness a” and “religiousness b” again. Climacus introduces “religiousness a” as a concept that simply indicates the pathos-filled aspect of Christianity, as distinguishable from its dialectical, paradoxical, and doctrinal dimensions.37 Climacus had earlier emphasized the importance of passionate inwardness for any form of religiosity, defining “Socratic” faith in terms of the pathos involved. inwardness is so crucial that Climacus declared that “[s]ubjectivity, inwardness, is truth.”38 Here the subjective “how” is decisive for religious authenticity rather than the objective “what,” the doctrinal teachings. accordingly, Climacus proposes that if someone in an idolatrous land prays with the passion of infinity to an idol, that person prays in truth to God.39 “truth” here suggests much more than the epistemic validity of propositions about states of affairs; truth is that which gives meaning and value to human life, enables the individual to make sense out of existence, and addresses anxieties and disquietudes about life’s worth and purpose. the goal of the religious life is not extrinsic to the process of pursuing it; for eternal happiness, the new quality of life, is defined by the mode in which it is acquired.40

36 37 38 39 40

SKS 4, 218–42 / PF, 9–36. SKS 7, 505 / CUP1, 555. SKS 7, 189 / CUP1, 207. SKS 7, 184 / CUP1, 201. SKS 7, 359 / CUP1, 394.

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in elaborating the content of this passion, Climacus describes an “existential pathos” which he later identifies as “Religiousness A,” a way of life that meshes to a large extent with his earlier account of the “socratic” position that “subjectivity is truth.” this “religiousness a” is a kind of natural and generic religiosity that individuals can strive to actualize. it is an “immanent” form of the religious life, meaning that it is a permanent possibility of the human spirit, rooted in capacities that are inherent in human nature. accordingly, Climacus asserts that “religiousness a” “has only universal human nature as its presupposition.”41 the ordinary experience of life can evoke and motivate this religiosity; it does not require special doctrinal teachings, a unique revelation, or the initiative of divine agency. “religiousness a” has important ties to the ethical stage, for it continues to emphasize the individual’s life as a task. the difference is that now this task is no longer conceived primarily as the enactment of duties rooted in social roles and interpersonal relationships. rather, the task is to appropriate an eternal happiness that transcends all such societal factors.42 This religiousness is more precisely defined by Climacus in his description of the “initial,” “essential,” and “decisive” expressions of “existential pathos.” its most basic characteristic is the commitment to orient one’s life absolutely to the absolute good, and only relatively to relative goods.43 this striving to relate absolutely to the absolute necessarily involves resignation, suffering, and guilt. the acute awareness of the difficulty involved further distinguishes this mode of existence from the more sanguine ethical stage. The resignation of finite satisfactions, the “initial” stage, is crucial because in order to relate to the absolute, “everything that is in the way is cleared out, every finitude.”44 the individual must cultivate a willingness to renounce, if necessary, immediate forms of happiness. the absolute is not just one more desirable good that could be used to supplement other goods, as if they were all logically on a par. familial happiness and successful careers are not goods that can be compared with an eternal happiness. in fact, the willingness to surrender penultimate goods for the sake of the absolute good is one of the crucial hallmarks of a genuine relation to the absolute. even though this orientation toward the absolute does not demand the immediate renunciation of all of life’s ordinary joys and satisfactions and is not a Manichean rejection of finitude and temporality, the individual must be prepared to give them up if such a sacrifice is required by fidelity to the absolute. Climacus further asserts that because this detachment from immediacy is often painful to achieve, the religious life necessarily involves suffering, the “essential” expression of the religious life. the commitment to the absolute will always occur in a context in which the self is already entangled in powerful attachments to lesser goods, and extrication from those entanglements will be arduous and distressing. Furthermore, because it is difficult to subordinate relative goods to the absolute good, guilt, the “decisive” expression of the religious life, will inevitably be felt over 41 42 43 44

SKS 7, 508 / CUP1, 559. SKS 7, 274–328 / CUP1, 301–60. SKS 7, 352–510 / CUP1, 387–561. SKS 7, 510 / CUP1, 561.

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not having accomplished this subordination earlier or more thoroughly. a vexatious gap always remains between the ideal and the actuality. Climacus insists that even by attempting to exonerate themselves in regard to specific acts, individuals demonstrate that at some level they experience themselves as being responsible for having failed to enact the ideal perfectly. paradoxically, the very presence of this pervasive guilt, and the self-negation it involves, shows that the individual is indeed passionately relating to the absolute. somewhat abruptly, Climacus proceeds to sharply differentiate this “religiousness a” from “religiousness b,” his adumbration of Christianity. Here his language suggests that “religiousness a” is a way of life different from Christianity. the life of “religiousness a” had been portrayed by Climacus as the product of the individual’s own decision and resolution,45 and strenuous internal effort must be exerted in order to sustain the task of self-actualization.46 However, in his description of religiousness b, Climacus insists that Christian pathos does not naturally evolve out of the ordinary emotional dynamics of the human spirit; it is not immanent in human nature. Christian passions are dependent on a certain network of unique concepts, a “what,” that must be learned, such as the doctrine of the incarnation. Christianity requires an authoritative body of teachings, and cannot be defined exclusively in terms of general religious passions that can occur naturally. as such, Christianity presupposes a revelation of a transcendent god through an historical event rather than the recollection of an internal truth or the actualization of a religious potentiality. Christianity requires becoming a new creature through an act of divine grace rather than the actualization of innate potential, and requires trust in divine agency rather than reliance upon the individual’s resolution. these observations would suggest that Climacus was sharply differentiating Christianity from all other forms of religiosity. However, “religiousness a” and “religiousness b” are not absolutely separated by Climacus, for he continues to relate them in complex ways. even by saying that “subjectivity is untruth” Climacus does not retract the claim that the meanings of Christian doctrines are dependent upon their use in shaping the appropriate sorts of passions. passionate subjectivity and inward deepening are still necessary as a condition for grasping the content of Christian teachings. the pathos of “religiousness a” seems to be a necessary condition for appropriating the dialectical content of “religiousness b.”47 on the other hand, Climacus does also present Christianity as undercutting certain aspects of “religiousness a.” the gift character of grace emphasized in “Religiousness B” suggests that the individual’s quest for fulfillment must be construed as an effort at self-salvation and therefore as a failure to depend upon god absolutely. faith is not the fruit of successful efforts to cultivate the necessary amounts of resignation, suffering and guilt. Climacus confronts the reader with the ultimate offense that god bestows a blessedness that she could not achieve even through sincere acts of self-abnegation. even the earnest self-nurturing of existential

45 46 47

SKS 7, 520 / CUP1, 572. SKS 7, 121 / CUP1, 129. SKS 7, 505–6 / CUP1, 556–7.

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pathos that characterized “religiousness a” is now seen as a subtle form of spiritual self-assertion, rather than as the trust in God’s grace that typifies Christian piety. III. Conclusion Kierkegaard’s use of “the religious” and “religiousness” was certainly not uniform. sometimes he used the terms broadly to suggest the element of inward deepening and absolute seriousness about the quality of one’s life that must be an essential component of any authentic life, including a life governed by profound ethical commitments. in some contexts religiousness was presented as a unique type of pathos that involved a sense of absolute dependence, gratitude, trust, resolution, guilt, repentance, resignation, and even self-abnegation. frequently in such passages Kierkegaard treated Christianity as a form of religiousness, one that was characterized by an intensification of these passions and the introduction of a paradoxical element. at other times Kierkegaard used “religiousness” to indicate a discrete way of life whose possibility was immanent in the human spirit and which did not require any authoritative doctrines. sometimes “religiousness a” appeared to be a stage distinguishable both from the ethical life and from Christianity, succeeding ethics and preceding Christianity in a dialectical progression. Kierkegaard employed “the religious” and “religiousness” in all these divergent ways because in different texts he was pursuing different purposes. in general, Kierkegaard was not trying to provide the reader with a conceptually intriguing, empirically plausible, and intellectually satisfying theory of religion. rather, he was attempting to awaken in the reader the ability to feel the possible delights, satisfactions, anxieties, and despairs that are resident in particular strategies for pursuing happiness that could be expanded into comprehensive ways of life. He employed “the religious” and “religiousness” to awaken different concerns in different contexts. sometimes he used them to stimulate a discontent with ephemeral worldly satisfactions and pleasures. Sometimes he used them to disrupt unreflective immediacy and provoke concern about the ultimate quality of one’s own life. sometimes the terms were deployed in the attempt to arouse passion in culturally complacent and smugly orthodox Christians. in some of Climacus’ passages, “religiousness a” signals the imperative that the Christian life must be pathos-filled. In yet other contexts Kierkegaard sought to highlight the uniqueness of Christian pathos, particularly its conviction that blessedness should be regarded as a gracious gift rather than as a personal achievement, and used the terms to accentuate Christianity’s dissimilarity to other forms of spirituality. because his rhetorical purposes were multiple and complex, the meanings of “the religious” and “religiousness” in his corpus cannot be reduced any one univocal sense. See also Aesthetic/Aesthetics; Ethics; Immediacy/Reflection; Inwardness/Inward deepening; Life-View; stages.

repentance sean anthony turchin

Repentance (Anger—noun; angre—verb) from the old danish and old norse angr, the lexical meaning of the modern danish is a sense of sorrow, pain, grief, or remorse, especially over the commitment of a sin.1 in descending order of frequency, the concept of repentance is discussed in Stages on Life’s Way, Either/Or, The Concept of Anxiety, Edifying Discourse in Various Spirits, and in “on the occasion of a Confession” from Three Discourses on Imagined Occasions. to a lesser extent the concept is discussed in Philosophical Fragments and the journals and notebooks. the word Anger (repentance) is not to be confused with another word that can convey the same meaning and is often found translated throughout the Hongs’ edition as “repentance,” namely, Fortrydelse. whereas both words signify feelings of regret or repentance, the word Anger points to a redirection or change of the human will in relation to how one is living, especially in the light of one’s religious convictions. in this context, to repent is to make a change in how one lives in contrast to how one was living. This act of repenting emerges when one reflects on past actions that are deemed unethical or irreligious in nature and denotes the change of heart that leads to an existential reorientation of the human subject. it is thus more of an existential notion, while regret is more a (merely) psychological notion. Fortrydelse usually denotes merely the feeling of regret about something past that need not be ethical or religious. thus, as Kierkegaard writes, “to be a villain can be repented [lader sig angre], not to have meant a word of what one has said can be regretted [lader sig fortryde].”2 so the concept of repentance moves within a religious context of repentance of one’s sins, that is, contrition or penitence. regardless of where this concept appears within Kierkegaard’s corpus, its explication remains consistent as one that operates as a religious category within, specifically, the Christian narrative. Moreover, as a religious category, the concept of repentance is found often in conversation with other Christian themes or categories such as sin, salvation, anxiety, guilt, and revelation.

Ordbog over det danske Sprog, vols. 1–28, published by the society for danish Language and Literature, Copenhagen: gyldendal 1918–56, vol. 1, columns 592–3 (Anger) and 600–2 (angre). 2 SKS 6, 51 / SLW, 49. see also SKS 6, 437 / SLW, 474. 1

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what is repentance? Kierkegaard says that “[s]orrow [Sorgen], according to god, is essentially repentance.”3 Specifically, repentance is a sorrow over sin.4 one becomes remorseful of one’s sins only in the recollection of guilt.5 thus, the act of recollection is significant for engendering guilt whereby one feels sorrow for one’s sins. But to recollect and reflect on one’s past or present way of life is not merely to recall one’s past or present ethical status. nothing by way of existential redirection (repentance) can come from merely remembering. this is because “memory is immediate and recollection is reflective.”6 in Stages on Life’s Way, Kierkegaard considers how these two factors of memory and recollection operate within the context of repentance by means of discussing how conducive the social justice system is to reforming the criminal from a degenerate member of society to a contributor to the social good. He writes: from a purely psychological point of view, i really believe that the police aid the criminal in not coming to repent [angre]. by continually recounting and repeating his life experiences, the criminal becomes such a memory expert at rattling off his life that the ideality of recollection is driven away. really to repent [angre], and especially to repent at once, takes enormous ideality; therefore nature also can help a person, and delayed repentance (Anger), which in regard to remembering is negligible, is often the hardest and the deepest.7

but outside of the act of recollection does repentance require more than remorse over one’s sin? for Kierkegaard, to repent is to acknowledge the criterion with which one judges the ethical or religious nature of one’s life. this criterion is god, and this remorse betrays a love of god whereby the individual repents. thus, at its core, the act of repentance is an act of love towards god.8 However, it is not the mere love of the individual for god that initiates the individual’s repentance but rather god’s love for the individual that begins this work. Kierkegaard writes, “as soon as i love freely and love god, then i repent. and if there were no other basis for repentance as the expression of my love of God, it is this—that he has loved me first.”9 so repentance is an act that reveals a spirit of attrition. repentance thus serves to illustrate not only that we love God, but that God first loves us. But this does not take away the significance of how repentance relates to the individual with regard to arriving at this point of remorse in relation to god. the individual’s movement towards god in the act of repentance is an act of love for both god and the self.10 when the individual declares himself guilty, by means of a penitent conscience, he chooses a self in relation to god, which is the designation of a true self.11 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11

SKS 21, 121, nb7:86 / JP 3, 3788. SKS 4, 227 / PF, 18–19. SKS 6, 21 / SLW, 13. SKS 6, 20 / SLW, 12. SKS 6, 21 / SLW, 14. SKS 19, 218, not7:49 / JP 3, 2390. see also SKS 3, 208–9 / EO2, 216–17. SKS 3, 208 / EO2, 216. SKS 3, 208 / EO2, 216–17. ibid.

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thus, Kierkegaard writes, “[h]is self is, so to speak, outside him, and it has to be acquired, and repentance is his love for it, because he chooses it absolutely from the hand of the eternal god.”12 in the context of the Christian notion of sin and grace, repentance reveals the individual’s remorsefulness over sin as he or she seeks to begin anew in breaking away from it. as sin continues to conquer, anxiety is strengthened until, in desperation, the individual’s anxiety “throws itself despairingly into the arms of repentance.”13 but repentance does not release the individual from the burden, consequences, or judgment that sin may bring.14 “repentance cannot cancel sin, it can only sorrow over it.”15 thus the category of repentance is naturally related to that of forgiveness. in this relation of repentance and forgiveness, it is the individual’s inability to grasp the thought, impossible (for reason), yet possible (for faith), that god will have mercy on the penitent one. but with the realization of grace there comes repentance, a humble relinquishing, before god, of the idea that one can do anything to deserve forgiveness.16 thus, repentance in and of itself, without relying on the atonement whereby it assumes its worth as a response to grace rather than the means to earn grace, is empty. Kierkegaard writes, [i]f by repenting, a person can remain in a relationship of love to god, it is still essentially the human being himself who does everything, even if the repentance [Angeren] is defined in its extremity as suffering. Repentance [Angeren] is no paradox. but when repentance is the result of the individual’s realizing that god is merciful, then the paradox begins. therefore the person who believes in the atonement is greater than the most profoundly repentant person.17

in short, although repentance is a responsive act on behalf of the contrite, its acceptance as such (god’s forgiveness) is one of grace, not reward.18 repentance demands the individual’s acceptance that he or she is guilty; it demands both recognition of guilt and decision in relation to how one addresses that guilt. if one cannot do this, then the individual gives way to the demonic, which is a state of rebellion and a rejection of grace.19 furthermore, against the notion that the individual is able to procure grace in the act of repentance, Kierkegaard maintains that it is this very act which needs to be made known to the individual, signifying that not only the act, but the ability to even be aware that one must act is one that is also made known by grace. according to Kierkegaard, “Christianity teaches that humanity must first of all find out from God or by revelation how deeply it has sunk [and] what repentance [Anger] means.”20 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20

SKS 3, 208 / EO2, 217. SKS 4, 417 / CA, 115. SKS 4, 418 / CA, 116. SKS 4, 417 / CA, 115. SKS 18, 139, HH:25 / KJN 2, 129. SKS 18, 181, jj:123 / KJN 2, 167–8. SKS 18, 67, ee:192 / JP 1, 450. SKS 6, 417 / SLW, 451–52. SKS 21, 108, nb7:65 / JP 3, 3031 (translation modified).

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repentance always presents the individual who seeks to repent with a dialectical tension of both the need to repent through recollection of one’s guilt and yet to let go of repentance lest attachment to it become demonic, as in the case of Quidam.21 “if healing is to begin for the existing person, the moment must come when he lets the act of repentance go. for one single moment this has a deceptive similarity to forgetfulness. But to forget guilt is a new sin. This is the difficulty.”22 repentance must always remain within the sphere of recollection and negativity, in the sense that repentance itself remains a constant task for the individual. but this is where grace comes into the picture: “a person’s highest inward action is to repent [angre]. but to repent is not a positive movement outwards or off to, but a negative movement inwards, not a doing but by oneself letting something happen to oneself.”23 the act of repentance is one that requires both god and the individual to act. it is god who makes known, by revelation, both the individual’s need to repent as well as the means in which repentance assumes its significance as an act of love towards god. moreover, it is the individual’s responsibility to act in response to god’s grace. this response consists in the individual’s act of recollection of guilt from which comes the remorse needed to repent. the individual’s remorse reveals the inability to begin anew by means of human ability alone. thus, the individual’s awareness of grace becomes a decisive factor in allowing repentance to come to full fruition. Without grace, the individual may become fixed on recollection, unable to move forward anew, existentially reoriented. thus, it is important that the individual accept grace, all the while never forgetting the guilt that had brought repentance. see also atonement/reconciliation; Christ; demonic; dialectic; faith; god; grace; Guilt; Immediacy/Reflection; Paradox; Sin.

21 22 23

SKS 6, 415–17 / SLW, 450–2. SKS 6, 417 / SLW, 451–2. SKS 6, 438–9 / SLW, 476.

repetition ryan Kemp

Repetition (Gjentagelse—noun; gjentage—verb; Repetition—noun; repetere—verb) from the older new danish, Gjentagelse means the repeating of something, or occurring for a second or subsequent time.1 the danish words Repetition and repetere are more or less synonymous with Gentagelse and gentage and are derived from the Latin repetere.2 though the idea of repetition plays an implicit role throughout Kierkegaard’s corpus, the term is most explicitly discussed in Either/Or, Repetition, The Concept of Anxiety, and A Literary Review of Two Ages. repetition also receives sustained treatment in several unpublished works, most prominently in Johannes Climacus, or De omnibus dubitandum est and two essays written in response to johan Ludvig Heiberg’s review of Repetition. the most thorough discussion of repetition is found in the eponymous (and pseudonymously authored) Repetition. billed as “a venture in experimenting psychology,” Repetition follows Constantin Constantius and a “young man” as each attempts to perform a repetition of his own. though the work fails to supply anything like a straightforward definition of the term, Constantius provides a brief description that, according to Vigilius Haufniensis (the pseudonymous author of The Concept of Anxiety), captures “the whole matter very precisely.”3 Constantius writes: “repetition is the interest [Interesse] of metaphysics, and also the interest upon which metaphysics gets stranded; repetition is the solution [Løsnet]4 contained in every life-view [ethisk Anskuelse];5 repetition is conditio sine qua

Ordbog over det danske Sprog, vols. 1–28, published by the society for danish Language and Literature, Copenhagen: gyldendal 1918–56, vol. 6, columns 879–81. note that Kierkegaard’s spellings are Gjentagelse and gjentage. 2 ibid., vol. 17, columns 801–5. 3 SKS 4, 324 / CA, 18. 4 following walter Lowrie, Løsnet is translated as “solution.” though sometimes translated as “watchword,” the latter (understood as a “motto” or a “mantra”) does not adequately capture the sense in which a repetition resolves the “binding power” (bindende Magt) of all (non-religious) life-views. for this sense of the term, see Vigilius Haufniensis’ helpful commentary in the The Concept of Anxiety: SKS 4, 324 / CA, 18. 5 following walter Lowrie, enhver ethisk Anskuelse is translated as “every life-view.” the presence of enhver suggests that Kierkegaard is referring to a range of views, not merely the “ethical view,” a term that—for Kierkegaard—typically refers to something singular. 1

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non for every issue of dogmatics.”6 in what follows, each of these aspects will be discussed in turn. I. The Interest of Metaphysics, and also the Interest upon which Metaphysics Gets Stranded for Kierkegaard, metaphysics is a discipline that pursues truth within a strictly immanent framework.7 though Kierkegaard sometimes attributes this method broadly to the “greeks,” plato’s theory of recollection is his preferred example. platonic metaphysics is immanent because it assumes that knowledge can be gained through mere self-reflection, a person’s rational faculties being sufficient in themselves to “recollect” the truth. one implication of this model is that any particular instance of learning does not technically involve a transition from ignorance to knowledge; on the platonic model, there is never a time in which the student does not already—at least implicitly—possess the truth in question. thus, we see a second (and for our purposes) important sense in which plato’s theory is immanent: the knower (insofar as he never really acquires knowledge) is incapable of moving from one state of being to another. Kierkegaard understands this in an ontological register, as an inability to self-transcend.8 in Repetition, Constantius furthers this problematic by considering the shortcomings of the Heraclitean and eleatic positions, two greek frameworks that provide an analogue to what Kierkegaard elsewhere terms “aesthetic” and “ethical” consciousness respectively. Constantius suggests that both the eleatics’ emphasis on unity and Heraclitus’ emphasis on multiplicity preclude a plausible account of becoming. if all is one, then nothing can become anything other than what it already is. By contrast, if nothing is one, then there is no unified ground from which a thing can become something else. it is amidst this seeming antinomy that Hegel emerges with a proposed solution: mediation. Hegel’s theory of mediation represents modern philosophy’s attempt to account for movement, something that becomes pressing as Hegel endeavors to explain the historical transitions of world spirit. in johan Ludvig Heiberg’s review of Repetition, Hegel’s account is compared with Kierkegaard’s own. Heiberg (representing Hegel) suggests that though repetition (understood as a literal repeating) exists only in the sphere of nature, meditation upon nature’s fixed cycles can serve as an edifying reminder of the “ceaseless progress”9 of world-spirit, which (unlike nature) manifests genuine development.10 Kierkegaard’s response to Heiberg is twofold: first, he argues that genuine becoming requires genuine possibility;11 second, he argues that becoming only occurs at the level of individual existence.12 Kierkegaard’s first point concerns 6 7 8 9 10 11 12

SKS 4, 25–6 / R, 149. SKS 4, 329 / CA, 21. SKS 15, 73–4 / R, supplement, 308. R, translators’ note 14, p. 80. see R, explanatory notes, 379–83. SKS 15, 73–4 / R, supplement, 308–9; SKS 4, 317–19 / CA, 9–12. Cf. SKS 15, 76 / R, supplement, 312.

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Hegel’s assumption that movement (a concept proper to the realm of existence) can be accommodated by logic (the realm of the necessary). according to Kierkegaard, a necessary movement—that is, the “ceaseless progress” of spirit—is no movement at all; like platonic recollection, it is a mere unfolding of what has come before. Kierkegaard’s second point is related to the first: since the notion of becoming is out of place in the logical domain of historical spirit, it can apply only to the self-becoming of an individual consciousness. insofar as Hegel’s system fails to accommodate either of these points, it remains firmly entrenched within the Greek framework. metaphysics remains “stranded.” II. The Solution Contained in Every Life-View while repetition is the folly of metaphysics, it is the solution of every life-view. each of Kierkegaard’s three stages (or life-views) represents a unique balance between possibility and necessity as embodied by an individual consciousness. aesthetic consciousness represents possibility; ethical consciousness necessity; and religious consciousness a conjunction of the two. just as Heraclitus and the eleatics fail to explain movement by overemphasizing diversity and unity respectively, the aesthete and the ethicist manifest an imbalance that prevents them from performing a repetition. insofar as this imbalance is cause for despair, the life-views of the aesthete and ethicist can be re-solved by a repetition, understood as both an act of self-transcendence and the achievement of one’s normative goal. in Either/Or, part one, the aesthetic exemplar is mozart’s don giovanni. don giovanni embodies the aesthetic ideal because—conquest after romantic conquest— he remains entirely in the moment; every love is his first. This ability to flit seamlessly from possibility to possibility is what the aesthetic stage understands as a repetition.13 the problem with this formulation is that it is practically unrealizable: an aesthete, no matter how thoroughly he invests himself in eluding actuality, cannot indefinitely stave off the formation of a historical identity. the latter eventually takes shape and casts a pall on every future possibility, ultimately undermining the aesthete’s ability to sustain giovanni’s weightlessness. in Either/Or, part two, judge william is presented as the model of ethical consciousness. though the judge presents the ethical stage as capable of transcending mere habit, his own goal (whether he realizes it or not) consists in sacrificing possibility at the altar of world spirit, qua Hegelian Sittlichkeit. for the judge, this requires embracing a diverse assortment of bourgeois values, chief among them, getting married and finding a vocation. The imbalance of the ethical lies precisely in this attempt to translate particularity (and with it possibility) into a sympathetic reflection of world spirit.14 once one becomes a mere moment in the ceaseless progress of history, genuine openness toward the future becomes impossible. in keeping with this ideal, the judge’s notion of repetition reduces to mere sameness: if one returns to the same subject (or spouse or job) continually, one is bound to SKS 2, 62 / EO1, 54. Kierkegaard discusses this misunderstanding at length in his response to Heiberg’s review of Repetition. see Pap. iV b 111, p. 268 / R, supplement, 292. 13 14

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discover that which can only be unfolded in time.15 However, a repetition of this sort does not depend on genuine possibility as much as it depends on the intrinsic limitations of finite knowers. understood as an act of self-transcendence, repetition is the “solution” for both of these life-views. first, repetition describes the transition each consciousness makes when it moves from its current state to a more developed one: the aesthete’s transition to the ethical or the ethical’s transition to the religious.16 insofar as this transition counts as a genuine instance of becoming, it cannot be rational, where a rational transition is understood as a change motivated by a desire to satisfy the governing principle that defines the antecedent stage. Consider, for example, the following account of aesthetic to ethical conversion. the governing principle of the aesthetic stage might (if only spuriously) be understood as approximating something like: “do all one can to maximize aesthetic pleasure.” in turn, judge william’s appeal to the aesthete might be framed as: “the ethical stage is the best way to realize aesthetic pleasure.” on this picture, the “transition” from the aesthetic to the ethical is reduced to a mere exercise in coherence, the ethical stage representing the natural and logical conclusion of aestheticism. this fails as a genuine instance of movement, thinks Kierkegaard, because the agent does not acquire, and therefore is not motivated by, any new reasons. He remains essentially the same. the second sense in which repetition serves as the solution of the aesthetic and ethical life-views is by representing the normative fulfillment of each. Understood in this sense, repetition involves achieving a state of consciousness that unites possibility and necessity in a way that simultaneously captures the openness of the aesthetic and the concrete historicity of the ethical. this ability to synthesize each is captured in Constantius’ claim that repetition “precisely explains the relation between the eleatics and Heraclitus.”17 though framing repetition as a synthesis of aesthetic and ethical consciousness provides a way to understand the relationship between the stages, it also seems to introduce certain “greek” elements that Kierkegaard is keen to reject (consider, for example, Hegel’s account of becoming as a synthesis of being and nothing in the Science of Logic). while the rational commensurability of the stages is a much debated issue, Kierkegaard’s portrayal of the religious stage strongly recommends its incommensurability with the others. III. Conditio sine Qua non for Every Issue of Dogmatics in the previous two sections we saw how Kierkegaard employs “repetition” to refer to both a movement of self-transcendence and the human normative ideal (religious consciousness). in this section, the latter will be visited in further detail as we examine the relationship between repetition and dogmatics. repetition (qua normative ideal) is ultimately a religious category because it depends on at least SKS 3, 47 / EO2, 39. Kierkegaard also discusses this sense of repetition in his response to Heiberg’s review. see SKS 15, 76–7 / R, supplement, 311–12. 16 SKS 15, 76 / R, supplement, 307. 17 SKS 4, 25 / R, 148. 15

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three theological concepts: sin, faith, and atonement.18 by incorporating each into his account, Kierkegaard reinforces the sense in which repetition is transcendent: it cannot be adequately described without borrowing from the conceptual resources of the theologian. according to Kierkegaard, the Christian theological picture breaks with the greek model by positing an ontological gap that separates human beings from the source of truth, in this case, god. the name given to this gap is “sin,” a condition that radically dislodges the individual from the rational necessity that dominates the platonic and Hegelian pictures. taken by itself, however, this break with necessity is one-sided. unless the individual trusts that he can enter into a relationship with the truth, he lapses into despair. this is where faith and atonement become important. Christian atonement represents the possibility of being restored to truth, what johannes Climacus calls receiving the “condition.” a prerequisite for receiving the condition is faith, which (depending on the pseudonym) is described variously as belief in the absurd or the paradoxical. though the precise sense in which faith is absurd or paradoxical is debated, the above analysis of repetition suggests that one’s relationship to the condition must escape the economy of reason that defines the greek metaphysical model. it is only insofar as faith transcends the domain of immanent rationality that religious consciousness can maintain its balance between necessity and possibility. in Repetition, the old testament character job is offered as the model of religious repetition. as the story goes, job becomes an object of worldly pity after god allows satan to destroy all his earthly goods. job’s peers—armed with the age’s best wisdom—suggest that god is merely exacting justice for job’s sin, a hypothesis that job rejects, choosing instead to wait for god’s judgment. in the end, god hears job and honors his faith by restoring to him what had been lost. note how each moment of repetition is reflected in Job’s tale: Job encounters a conceptual framework that attempts to translate his private experience into the idiom of the universal; job rejects the universal and places his faith in a personal bond with God; and, finally, Job’s faith is honored, and his finite concerns redressed. This complex series of movements represents the fulfillment of Kierkegaard’s philosophical anthropology and a genuine religious repetition. IV. Concluding Summary framed as an answer to the problem of motion and the psychological phenomenon of repeated experience, repetition is Kierkegaard’s attempt to explain both the possibility of self-becoming and a self’s normative goal: Christianity. with respect to self-becoming, Kierkegaard argues that genuine development is precluded by any framework that construes growth as a rational unfolding. to the contrary, genuine spiritual development is an act of self-transcendence where a person moves from one state of being to another (rationally discrete) state of being. in developing the second sense of repetition (the self’s normative goal), Kierkegaard suggests that 18

SKS 15, 77 / R, supplement, 313.

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the imbalances of aesthetic and ethical consciousness make repeated experience impossible, the latter requiring both a fixed character from which to move (lacked by the aesthetic) and the possibility of genuine movement (lacked by the ethical). only in religious consciousness, represented as a balanced tension of necessity and possibility, can a true repetition occur. see also absurd; atonement/reconciliation; being/becoming; Contingency/possibility; double movement; mediation/sublation; moment; movement/motion; progress; transition.

resignation geoffrey dargan

Resignation (Resignation—noun; resignere—verb) from the Latin resignare, meaning “to remove a seal.” for example, one might open, remove, and destroy the seal on an important document to prevent another from reusing it. in danish, the verb refers to one’s abandoning of demands, goals, or hopes, and accepting the situation, since there is no conceivable possibility of changing it. the noun describes the feeling or emotion one has upon resigning oneself to an unalterable situation. the danish adjectival form, resigneret, similarly expresses the awareness of having resigned and knowing this to be the case.1 but resignation, as Kierkegaard understands it, is not merely passivity, wherein one simply gives up hope, and with it all effort. rather, resignation is a purposeful decision that requires intense commitment on the part of the individual.2 the vast majority of Kierkegaard’s references to resignation are found in Fear and Trembling. additional elucidation takes place in, among other works, the Concluding Unscientific Postscript and The Sickness unto Death. However, the term is already present in From the Papers of One Still Living and The Concept of Irony. in the latter, he writes that romanticism is not a genuinely poetic movement, “because true inward infinity comes only through resignation, and only this inner infinity is… truly poetic.”3 The Romantic error, says Kierkegaard, is to think that the infinite is attained by embracing the “flesh” and rejecting the “spirit.” But, commenting on friedrich von schlegel’s Lucinde, Kierkegaard argues that the flesh never leads to the infinite: “inasmuch as this erotic liaison has no deeper foundation than a mental sensuousness, since it has no element of resignation—in other words, since it is no marriage…here once again ethics [Sædelighed] is negated.”4 Kierkegaard, then, relates resignation with ethical commitment (marriage) and takes it to be genuinely bound to the infinite, unlike sensuousness, which, unattached to any ethical telos, merely seeks finite pleasure. He builds upon this theme in Fear Ordbog over det danske Sprog, vols. 1–28, published by the society for danish Language and Literature, Copenhagen: gyldendal 1918–56, vol. 17, columns 826–7. 2 the Hongs note: “ ‘resignation’ [Resignation] and ‘resign’ [resignere]…denote an act, a movement (not apathetic acquiescence), presupposing a concentration of the person in an integrating choice of an encompassing goal or purpose.” see FT, explanatory notes, 344, note 19. 3 SKS 1, 324 / CI, 289. 4 SKS 1, 333 / CI, 300. for more on the relation between marriage and resignation see SKS 2, 43–4, 66–7, 74, 98–9, 110 / EO2, 36, 61, 69, 96–7, 109. 1

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and Trembling, where the pseudonym johannes de silentio metaphorically describes the “movement” of infinite resignation: “A young lad falls in love with a princess, and this love is the entire substance of his life, and yet the relation is such that it cannot possibly be realized, cannot possibly be translated from ideality into reality.”5 This is just one possible scenario; de silentio makes clear that any finite interest “in which an individual has concentrated the whole reality [Realitet] of actuality [Virkelighedens] can, if it proves to be unrealizable, prompt the movement of resignation.”6 resignation thus becomes an option when a person commits his or her entire existence to something or someone, only to find that there is no hope of that situation becoming actualized. the person then redirects his or her existence towards the idea. Having carefully examined the situation, he or she reflects on every possible response, managing thoughts like “well-trained doves” which are “dispatched” in the hope that even one might return with a resolution to the dilemma.7 but, “when they all come back…like messengers of grief, and explain that it is an impossibility… [the person] becomes very quiet, he dismisses them, he becomes solitary, and then he undertakes the movement.”8 it is an admission, not of failure, but of powerlessness. resignation is so demanding that de silentio refers to the one who makes the movement as a “knight.” yet, “every person who wills it…can discipline himself to make this movement.”9 in fact, “anyone who imagines that he cannot do it is a coward.”10 The knight of infinite resignation dedicates his existence to faithfully preserving an idea that is actually impossible. the lad in the story, for instance, “does not give up the love, not for all the glories of the world.”11 since he cannot by any means actualize his love for the princess, he honors that love by using every ounce of his strength to preserve its infinite ideality. The knight makes the impossible possible “by expressing it spiritually, but he expresses it spiritually by renouncing it…he needs no finite occasion for its growth.”12 in other words, because of the knight’s infinite commitment to the idea, the ideal—in this case, love—continues to blossom. the knight’s faithfulness thus outstrips any earthly commitment. Such commitment, says de silentio, requires “passion,” since “no reflection can produce a movement.”13 philosophical speculation never leads to resignation. it must be an existential commitment. the knight must “concentrate the whole substance of his life and the meaning of actuality into one single desire” and “one act of SKS 4, 136 / FT, 41. ibid. 7 SKS 4, 137 / FT, 42. 8 ibid. 9 SKS 4, 140 / FT, 45. 10 SKS 4, 145 / FT, 52. 11 SKS 4, 136 / FT, 41. 12 SKS 4, 138 / FT, 44. elsewhere, de silentio states: “by my own strength i can give up the princess…but by my own strength i cannot get her back again” (SKS 4, 143 / FT, 49). Many scholars have pointed to the clear similarity between de silentio’s account of infinite resignation and Kierkegaard’s own impossible situation vis-à-vis his former fiancée, Regine olsen. 13 SKS 4, 137n / FT, 42n. 5 6

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consciousness.”14 one who lacks passion never reaches resignation; rather, his or her soul is “dissipated in multiplicity.”15 such a person is constantly “running errands in life and will never enter into eternity.”16 the inability to commit singularly to the idea short-circuits the entire movement. in the Concluding Unscientific Postscript, Johannes Climacus affirms that resignation “gives notice that the individual must not have his life in [immediacy]” and offers itself as an alternative.17 “[i]f the individual flinches at this point,” Climacus continues, “he is not relating himself to an eternal happiness.”18 some may consider such faithfulness to an idea to be irresponsible and empty. De silentio disagrees: “The knight of infinite resignation…is no fool.”19 resignation is not an unreflective task; the knight first “assures himself” that the commitment “actually is the substance of his life.”20 if it is not, resignation cannot occur. the knight has likewise dealt with the rational dimension and is “convinced of the impossibility, humanly speaking” of reaching the infinite.21 However, explains de silentio, “in the infinite sense it was possible, that is, by relinquishing it [resignere derpaa].”22 In other words, the giving up of the finite results in the receiving of the infinite. But “the understanding continues to be right in maintaining that in the finite world…this having was and continues to be an impossibility.”23 Commitment to the idea, as we have said, does not take place in thought but in passion. neither is the knight a coward, for “he does not lack the courage to attempt and to risk everything.”24 resignation is not a movement that can be made for a while and then abandoned or reconsidered. A knight of infinite resignation must remain constant, regardless of external circumstances. those who waver reveal their lack of commitment: “there was one who also believed that he had made the movement; but look, time passed…and his soul lost the resilience of resignation. He thereby demonstrated that he had not made the movement properly, for one who has resigned infinitely is sufficient to oneself.”25 The infinite is only gained by continual and complete commitment. the one who makes the movement gains “eternal consciousness,”26 that is, his or her selfhood is directed toward a single goal, and this, says de silentio, is a singularly human achievement: “i make this movement all by myself, and if I do not make it, it is because I…do not feel the significance of the high dignity assigned to every human being.”27 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27

SKS 4, 137 / FT, 43. ibid. ibid. SKS 7, 359 / CUP1, 395. SKS 7, 360 / CUP1, 395. SKS 4, 137 / FT, 42. ibid. SKS 4, 141 / FT, 46–7. SKS 4, 141 / FT, 47. ibid. SKS 4, 136 / FT, 42. SKS 4, 139 / FT, 44. SKS 4, 142 / FT, 48. ibid.

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resignation is not a barrier against suffering—far from it. first, there is the pain of facing the impossible situation. but for the knight, there is an additional sorrow: “from the moment he has made the movement, the princess is lost.”28 in other words, once the movement has occurred, there is no going back. if, somehow, the impossible were miraculously to become possible, it would be too late. resignation demands complete commitment; this is both its great strength and its arduous task. It is “the specific sign that one relates oneself to the absolute…that not only is there no reward to expect but suffering to endure.”29 de silentio therefore declares that resignation is “that shirt mentioned in an old legend. the thread is spun with tears… but then it also gives protection better than iron or steel….the secret in life is that each person must sew it himself.”30 Still, there remains one consolation. Like the “tragic hero,” the knight of infinite resignation finds rest in the universal.31 Recognizing the necessity of sacrifice and suffering, the tragic hero “nobly conceal[s] his agony.”32 but by virtue of resignation, this agony becomes a source of rest: “The tragic hero is soon finished, and his struggles are soon over; he makes the infinite movement and is now secure in the universal.”33 Reassured that the sacrifice is made for the sake of the infinite, resignation becomes a source of comfort. thus, de silentio can say, “knights of infinite resignation are easily recognizable—their walk is light and bold.”34 it is not that they abandon their pain; rather, they learn to live through their pain, and their actions are validated by the idea, which provides comfort by reminding them of that on behalf of which they made the sacrifice. said differently, resignation involves the willingness to “starve myself into submission until i make the movement, for my eternal consciousness is my love for god, and for me that is the highest of all.”35 as a knight i “can put up with everything…as long as my concern that my love of god conquer within me is greater than my concern that i achieve earthly happiness.”36 again, having made this movement, the knight no longer has any strength left to sustain a commitment to the finite. But the knight is sustained by the infinite: “In…resignation there is peace and rest.”37 this peace comes from knowing that one has dedicated one’s existence

SKS 4, 137 / FT, 42. SKS 7, 366 / CUP1, 402. Climacus refers here to worldly rewards and sufferings; it is not as though there is no value in resignation whatsoever. rather, the reward is spiritual or infinite, instead of finite. 30 SKS 4, 140 / FT, 45. 31 SKS 4, 130 / FT, 34. jephthah and agamemnon—two examples of the tragic hero— were required to sacrifice what they loved most for the sake of the universal; in both cases it was a beloved daughter. 32 SKS 4, 152 / FT, 57. 33 SKS 4, 169 / FT, 78. 34 SKS 4, 133 / FT, 38. 35 SKS 4, 142–3 / FT, 48. De silentio explains that, for him, “love of God” is the infinite idea. 36 SKS 4, 143 / FT, 49. 37 SKS 4, 140 / FT, 45. 28 29

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to the universal. However, the knight admits that “it must be wonderful to get the princess.”38 to say otherwise is dishonest and reveals a lack of commitment. what of the suggestion that all of this might be overcome by a kind of ethical “mediation,” involving a recommitment of one’s existence to a new and potentially even higher form of the infinite? This seems reasonable; for instance, I might say, “Look—here is another woman you may love, and she is equally wonderful. move past your resignation and you will discover a love even better than the first.” But the true knight will not be persuaded. in fact, according to Climacus, mediation is a movement backward, away from the infinite, and should be rejected as lower than resignation. He accuses mediation of being a “forgery,” and exclaims, “what, then, is mediation when it wants to force its way into the ethical and the ethicalreligious? it is a wretched invention by a person who became untrue to himself and to resignation.”39 mediation is inferior, argues Climacus, because resignation causes the individual to “face…toward an eternal happiness as the absolute τέλος,” whereas mediation attempts to negotiate between multiple commitments in an attempt to find the highest.40 but the absolute τέλος “is not an element among other elements.”41 in other words, the infinite toward which resignation points, and in which it rests, is not something that can be related to other desires; thus, there is no room for negotiation between the infinite and anything else. We tend to want to make all our desires equal in priority. However, “the absolute τέλος has the remarkable quality of wanting to be the absolute τέλος at every moment.”42 that is, either one’s commitment is infinite, or it is not. If someone tells the knight that his love for the princess is not infinite, clearly, if the knight is convinced of the opposite, there is no possibility of mediation. Climacus repeats that the task of the knight is “to express that he continually has the absolute orientation toward the absolute τέλος.”43 moreover, he must express it “existentially.”44 just as “in the great moment of resignation one does not mediate but chooses,” so also the existential task of resignation involves “repeating the impassioned choice and, existing, to express it in existence.”45 thus, the knight of infinite resignation continues to live what appears to be a normal life. However, upon closer inspection, we see that the knight maintains a sure stance, which respects and values the infinite above all else. Resignation becomes, for the knight, “the direction chief of existence.”46 if the person begins to drift away from eternal faithfulness, then resignation will, like an “angel of death,” position itself “outside this individual… because there the absolute τέλος vanished from the individual’s dimmed vision.”47 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47

SKS 4, 144 / FT, 50. SKS 7, 361 / CUP1, 396. SKS 7, 364 / CUP1, 400. ibid. SKS 7, 365 / CUP1, 401. SKS 7, 369 / CUP1, 406. ibid. SKS 7, 373 / CUP1, 410. SKS 7, 370 / CUP1, 406. SKS 7, 370 / CUP1, 406–7.

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But this is not all. Infinite resignation, says de silentio, is the final movement, prior to faith.48 what is more, it is necessary for the unfolding of faith: “anyone who has not made this movement does not have faith, for only in infinite resignation do i become conscious of my eternal validity, and only then can one speak of grasping existence by virtue of faith.”49 In order to have faith, one must first recognize the infinite element of one’s personhood, and this takes place in resignation. The astonishing thing about so-called “knights of faith” is that they go beyond resignation, overcoming it just as the knight of infinite resignation overcomes the finite. The knight of faith “makes one more movement even more wonderful than all the others, for he says: nevertheless, i have faith that i will get her [that which is lost]—that is, by virtue of the absurd, by virtue of the fact that for god all things are possible.”50 This is not only astonishing, for the knight of infinite resignation, it is impossible. Speaking as a knight of infinite resignation, de silentio admits, “I can perceive that it takes strength and energy and spiritual freedom to make the infinite movement of resignation; i can also perceive that it can be done. the next [movement] amazes me, my brain reels.”51 unlike faith, which is willing, by virtue of the absurd, to hope in impossibilities, resignation sees in these impossibilities only “the paltriness of life” and has “already infinitely disdained them.”52 de silentio emphasizes this point, saying, “to get the least little bit more than my eternal consciousness requires faith, for this is the paradox. the movements are often confused.”53 thus, while every dedicated person has the power to become a knight of infinite resignation, “[f]aith is another matter.”54 abraham, the archetype of faith, makes this double-movement: “he knows the blessedness of infinity, he has felt the pain of renouncing everything…and yet the finite tastes just as good to him as the one who never knew anything higher….He resigned everything infinitely, and then he grasped everything again by virtue of the absurd.”55 de silentio then tries to explain what faith entails using a second biblical example: “by virtue of resignation, that rich young man should have given away everything, but if he had done so, then the knight of faith would have said to him: by virtue of the absurd, you will get every penny back again—believe it!”56 this absurd faith, paradoxically, brings true happiness: “[t]he knight of faith is the only happy man, the heir to the finite, while the knight of resignation is a stranger and an alien. To get the princess this way…to find joy by virtue of the absurd—this is wonderful.”57

48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57

SKS 4, 132, 140 / FT, 37, 45. SKS 4, 140 / FT, 46. ibid. SKS 4, 142 / FT, 47. SKS 4, 132 / FT, 37. SKS 4, 142 / FT, 48. SKS 4, 145 / FT, 52. SKS 4, 135 / FT, 40. SKS 4, 143 / FT, 49. Cf. mark 10:17–27. SKS 4, 144 / FT, 50.

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as for himself, de silentio states, “i am able to swim in life, but i am too heavy for this mystical hovering.”58 He imagines that a foolish person might “want to delude himself and me into believing that…my immense resignation [Resignation] would be far more ideal and poetic than abraham’s small-mindedness. but this is utterly false…I would not be able to do more than make the infinite movement in order to find myself and again rest in myself.”59 as we have seen, once the knight gives up the beloved in infinite resignation, he or she cannot do anything further. So if, by God’s mercy, that which has been given up is returned to this finite world, the knight of infinite resignation has no capacity to receive back that which he or she has lost. just as the tragic hero “comes to the end of the story,” so does the knight of infinite resignation.60 It is this inability to regain the finite through faith that leads Anti-Climacus, in The Sickness unto Death, to say, “much of what in the world is dressed up under the name of resignation is a kind of despair…in despair to will to make the eternal suffice, and thereby to be able to defy or ignore suffering in the earthly and the temporal.”61 that is, one relinquishes this ever-changing world, in order to avoid the pain and loss inhabiting it, and then dedicates one’s existence to the infinite idea, which can never disappoint precisely because it does not change. “the dialectic of resignation,” argues anti-Climacus, is “to will to be one’s eternal self and then, when it comes to something specific in which the self suffers, not to will to be oneself, taking consolation in the thought that it may disappear in eternity and therefore feeling justified in not accepting it in time.”62 the self in resignation, he suggests, cannot submit humbly to earthly sufferings, but neither can it find the joy that comes in overcoming earthly sufferings through faith—thus it is in despair. See also Actuality; Despair; Ethics; Faith; Immediacy/Reflection; Movement/Motion; passion/pathos; tragic/tragedy.

58 59 60 61 62

ibid. SKS 4, 130 / FT, 35. SKS 4, 203 / FT, 115. SKS 11, 184n / SUD, 70n. ibid.

revelation sean anthony turchin

Revelation (Aabenbarelse, Aabenbaring—noun; aabenbare—verb) from old danish opænbaræ, borrowed from medieval Low german openbaren, the lexical meaning in danish is to bring to light or to make known. it can also denote a manifestation or expression of an idea, emotion or thought. it can further convey a sense of surprise or a strange occurrence, specifically with regard to the revelation of the supernatural.1 Kierkegaard’s 1833 edition of molbech’s Danish Dictionary offers several different nuances for Aabenbaring. in addition to the above, it can express the idea of a messenger who brings a divine doctrine or teaching, such as an apostle, or it can refer to a supernatural messenger of divine truth. it can also refer to the teachings found in the Christian scriptures.2 the concept is found predominately in Kierkegaard’s journals and notebooks, as well as in “the difference between a genius and an apostle” in his work Two Ethical-Religious Essays. in addition, brief mentions of the word are scattered throughout various other works, for example, Either/Or, Fear and Trembling, Stages on Life’s Way, A Literary Review of Two Ages, The Sickness unto Death, Philosophical Fragments, and Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments. However, despite these frequent occurrences, most do not discuss the concept itself, as with Philosophical Fragments, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, Two Ethical-Religious Essays, and Practice in Christianity. in these works, Kierkegaard uses either Aabenbaring or Aabenbarelse. However, when he concerns himself with the Christian idea of god’s revelation in Christ, Aabenbaring is used exclusively. on the other hand, Aabenbarelse is always used in the general sense of manifestation or expression such as of an emotion, idea, thought, concept, or phenomenon. for example in A Literary Review of Two Ages, “revelation” (Aabenbarelse) is used to convey the idea of manifestation or expression. in this particular instance, it is an expression “of the times.”3 in the Concluding Unscientific Postscript, “revelation” is used in terms of disclosure, as an expression of marriage “as the most profound form of life’s disclosure [Aabenbarelse].”4 in other texts, such Ordbog over det danske Sprog, vols. 1–28, published by the society for danish Language and Literature, Copenhagen: gyldendal 1918–56, vol. 1, columns 10 (aabenbare) and 13–14 (Aabenbarelse, Aabenbaring). 2 Christian molbech, Dansk Ordbog indeholdende det danske Sprogs Stammeord, vols. 1–2, Copenhagen: gyldendal 1833, vol. 1, p. 1. 3 SKS 8, 64 / LR, 22. 4 SKS 7, 230 / CUP1, 254. 1

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as the Four Upbuilding Discourses from 1843, the concept of revelation is used in the sense of manifesting an emotion.5 in Either/Or, part one, Aabenbarelse refers to the disclosing of an idea in various forms such as art or music.6 in Practice in Christianity, Aabenbarelse is used in reference to Christ’s return when he will appear to mankind in his “glorious revelation.”7 Here, the concept of revelation connotes a manifestation or appearing (Aabenbarelse). but concerning any real conceptual development or consideration it is Aabenbaring that is used. for Kierkegaard, although revelation is itself straightforward with regard to what it espouses within the lexicon of Christian teaching, as god’s unveiling of himself, the nature of revelation is both complex and pregnant with implication for Christians. thus, the concept of revelation (Aabenbaring) performs several different functions in relation to humanity which are discussed below: (i) revelation is necessary for humanity’s knowledge of god; (ii) revelation exists in a paradoxical or indirect manner in order to be received in faith, not knowledge; (iii) revelation informs humanity of its condition in relation to god; (iV) revelation provides the means of reconciliation between god and humanity; (V) revelation is authoritative and is thus the sole criterion for Christian knowledge. I. Revelation as Necessary for Knowledge of God because of sin, the ideal Christian pseudonym anti-Climacus posits that “god and man are two qualities separated by an infinite qualitative difference.”8 one implication of this separation is that the individual is unable to relate to god by means of his or her own rational powers and moral disposition. in fact for human understanding, according to johannes Climacus, god’s existence is “this unknown against which the understanding in its paradoxical passion collides and which even disturbs man and his self-knowledge.”9 the transcendent god is beyond the capacity of human thought, which nevertheless wants “to discover something that thought itself cannot think.”10 thought is therefore impelled to seek what transcends it, but always falls short. nor can god’s existence be demonstrated from his works. on the face of it, there might be a necessary relation between god and His works, if “god is not a name but a concept,”11 as spinoza had argued.12 but Climacus criticizes spinoza for failing to distinguish between “factual being and ideal being,”13 and therefore falling into tautology, “for the difficulty is to grasp factual being and to bring God’s ideality into

5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13

SKS 5, 171 / EUD, 172. SKS 2, 62 / EO1, 55. SKS 12, 158 / PC, 154. SKS 11, 237 / SUD, 126. SKS 4, 244–5 / PF, 39. SKS 4, 244 / PF, 37. SKS 4, 246 / PF, 41. SKS 4, 246n / PF, 41n. ibid.

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factual being.”14 god’s works “do not immediately and directly exist”;15 rather, they exist only as an “ideality i have presupposed.”16 whenever human reason argues for god’s existence, it actually presupposes it. this is why Kierkegaard thinks apologetics ultimately fails.17 given god’s transcendence and the limitations of human reason, revelation is therefore left as the only means for coming to know god. this knowledge is given in the person of jesus Christ. at the center of Christianity is the belief that in jesus Christ god has revealed himself to humanity, that god has entered history as a human being.18 in this revelation, Christ is both god and man, the god-man.19 since in Christ “eternity is the fullness of time,”20 through him existing human beings are exposed to the absolute truth in time. II. Revelation as Indirect Communication to be Received in Faith although revelation offers us knowledge of god, this knowledge is provided indirectly.21 because revelation is the entering into time of eternity, it is a paradox. as such, Kierkegaard maintains that revelation (Aabenbaring), in the strictest sense, must be a mystery in order that one relates to it in faith and not with the understanding.22 the mystery (Hemmelighed) that envelops revelation exists by virtue of the form that god takes in revealing himself, namely, as a mere human being. god could have directly revealed himself in some extraordinary way whereby we could recognize him.23 but “since god is unwilling to deceive, the spiritual relation in truth specifically requires that there be nothing at all remarkable about his form.”24 and yet, dialectically, Kierkegaard maintains that in Christ the mystery of god has been revealed.25 in comparison to natural knowledge of god, Kierkegaard contends that the incarnation, although offering us knowledge of god, serves our cognitive faculties no better than natural theology in claiming knowledge of the divine. for Kierkegaard, “god cannot be an object for man, since god is subject.”26 therefore, for Kierkegaard, the deus revelatus is also the deus absconditus, the hidden and the revealed god. because “god is pure subjectivity,”27 He must make himself known 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27

SKS 4, 246n / PF, 42n. SKS 4, 246 / PF, 42. SKS 4, 247 / PF, 42. SKS 4, 245 / PF, 40. SKS 26, 42, nb31:57 / JP 2, 1647. SKS 18, 83, ff:36 / KJN 2, 76. SKS 18, 31, ee:78 / KJN 2, 27. SKS 12, 139 / PC, 136. SKS 7, 195–6 / CUP1, 213–14. SKS 7, 223 / CUP1, 245–6. SKS 7, 223 / CUP1, 246. SKS 18, 113, ff:197 / KJN 2, 104. SKS 20, 74, nb:88 / JP 2, 1349. SKS 26, 337, nb34:25 / JP 3, 2576.

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in a way that nevertheless guards his divine subjectivity. god’s veiling and unveiling of himself is achieved in his taking on of human flesh in order to be an object for human knowing, all the while remaining hidden in human flesh. It is the taking on of human flesh whereby God remains “incognito” within time. Kierkegaard writes, “He is god but chooses to become this individual human being. this…is the most profound incognito or the most impenetrable unrecognizability that is possible, because the contradiction between being god and being an individual human being is the greatest possible, the infinitely qualitative contradiction.”28 insofar as the human being bears no relation to the concept “god,” the incarnation expresses both a conceptual and ontological contradiction, and hence constitutes a paradox. in fact, Kierkegaard thinks the incarnation offers “the sign of contradiction…between being god and being an individual human being.”29 in the most empirical and rational sense, the notion “that an individual human being is god, that is, claims to be god, is indeed the offense…[in an eminent sense],”30 because it “conflicts with all (human) reason.”31 for Kierkegaard, the conflict emerges “by placing the eternal, essential truth together with existing.”32 insofar as revelation remains undetected by human reason it follows that revelation also remains beyond the confines of historical investigation. Historical knowledge can at best provide an approximation.33 thus, to those who would seek to prove the incarnation by historical means, history can only offer that Christ “was a great man, perhaps the greatest of all.”34 and yet, Kierkegaard is appalled that “history is the very thing that people have wanted to use to demonstrate that Christ was god.”35 therefore, only faith, whereby the individual enters into a personal god-relation, is able to come to terms with the hidden god in Christ. III. Revelation Informs Humanity of its Condition in Relation to God revelation also serves to provide the individual with an understanding of his condition of being in sin, or of separation from god.36 indeed, “god and man are two qualities separated by an infinite qualitative difference.”37 However, because of sin, the infinite qualitative difference between God and humanity is not only ontological but also relational insofar as humanity is, before regeneration, out of relation with god.38 The force of the infinite qualitative difference is felt, first, in the self’s awareness of its separation from god. with the coming of this knowledge, the 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38

SKS 12, 135 / PC, 131. SKS 12, 130 / PC, 125. SKS 12, 40 / PC, 26. ibid. SKS 7, 191 / CUP1, 209. SKS 7, 30 / CUP1, 23. SKS 12, 41 / PC, 27. SKS 12, 45 / PC, 31. SKS 11, 207–8 / SUD, 95–6. SKS 11, 237 / SUD, 126. SKS 11, 233 / SUD, 122.

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self despairs over this abyss separating it from god. the self despairs insofar as this separation serves in revealing that it is not a true self, for a true self is one that exists in relation to god, or as Kierkegaard maintains, one can only truly come to know oneself before “the mirror of the word….to stand before the mirror means to stand before god.”39 in that the self lacks the truth of its own fragmented condition as well as the power to establish itself, its existence is shrouded in despair.40 this distinction in the dialectical nature of sin is, on one hand, not to will to be the true self over against the self conditioned by sin or, on the other hand, to want to be one’s true self and be unable to do so by human effort alone. in Philosophical Fragments johannes Climacus seeks to outline the difference between the Christian and pagan conceptions of the self. in differentiating these two positions, plato’s socrates taught that the self needs only to recollect the truth, the eternal forms, that it experienced before birth. incarnation, then, results in separation from the divine, which can only be reclaimed by means of philosophical contemplation.41 thus, in contrast to the socratic view, “Christianity,” Climacus states, “begins in another way: man has to learn what sin is by revelation from god; sin is not a matter of a person’s not having understood what is right but of his being unwilling to understand it, of his not willing what is right.”42 in light of the human condition as being in untruth, Climacus introduces the concept of the teacher who, in addition to being “the god” and the savior, becomes synonymous with revelation.43 it is the teacher who provides the individual with not only the truth but also the condition for receiving the truth. 44 IV. Revelation Provides the Means for Reconciliation between God and Humanity Although there is an infinite qualitative difference between God and humanity, both ontologically and morally, revelation includes the message of divine forgiveness of sin, which restores the relationship and reduces the difference to the ontological only. when Kierkegaard endorses the view that sin has resulted in the individual’s separation from god, he presupposes that there is intended to be a relationship between God and humanity. The self is defined as spirit, which connotes an eternal nature within the self, which exists, ideally, in proper relation to god.45 therefore, in light of this ideal description, “[a] human being is a synthesis of the infinite and the finite, of the temporal and the eternal.”46 However, insofar as every human being exists before God as a sinner, the self is infinitely qualitatively distinct from God.47 The infinite distance that separates us from God therefore disrupts the self from 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47

SKS 24, 425, nb24:159 / JP 4, 3902. SKS 11, 194 / SUD, 81. SKS 4, 221–4 / PF, 11–14. SKS 11, 207 / SUD, 95. SKS 4, 224–6 / PF, 15–17. SKS 4, 224 / PF, 14. SKS 11, 133 / SUD, 17. SKS 11, 129 / SUD, 13. SKS 11, 232 / SUD, 121.

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obtaining true selfhood insofar as, according to Kierkegaard, only in relationship to god can the self obtain true selfhood.48 yet, if in faith the individual can accept the revelation that god has forgiven his sinfulness, then he can be open to embracing his true self. V. Revelation is the Criterion for Christian Knowledge according to Kierkegaard, revelation is what distinguishes the authority of the apostle paul from that of a genius.49 paul’s authority is neither immanent in reason, nor based on social institutions. non-divine authority, such as that of a king, comes and goes with time and is derived solely from social or political constructs.50 by contrast, paul met the resurrected Christ on the road to damascus, and his authority is divine because it is grounded in divine revelation.51 from this encounter with revelation (Aabenbaring), paul was entrusted with the teaching of revelation. in conclusion, the concept of revelation in Kierkegaard’s works refers to the Christian teaching that god was made man, historically and physically. this not only provides us with knowledge of god but also reveals our relationship to god as one of separation due to sin. but revelation also provides the means of reconciliation through forgiveness. from this, the relationship between god and humanity can only be re-established by faith, insofar as the revelation of god in Christ is the absolute paradox and thus foils any attempt to be known by human reason. see also absurd; appropriation; approximation; Christ; Communication/indirect Communication; despair; faith; History; individual; Leap; paganism; Qualitative difference; reason; self; sin; speculation/science/scholarship; truth.

48 49 50 51

SKS 11, 145 / SUD, 29–30. SKS 11, 100 / BA, 177. SKS 11, 98–9, 103 / BA, 175, 180. SKS 18, 53, ee:151 / JP 2, 2266.

revolution gabriel guedes rossatti

Revolution (Revolution—noun) the word “revolution” stems from the Latin noun revolutio, which is a derivative of the Latin verb revolvere, meaning to revolve.1 as such, it is an exact translation of polybius’ notion of ἀνακύκλωσις, originally an astronomical term devised to designate recurring, cyclical movements2 (and as such it implies a repetition, somewhat in the sense of a “taking back” as understood in the Kierkegaardian idea of Gjentagelse).3 eventually, the term “revolution” was transposed to the political realm in the seventeenth century, however, still with the meaning of “restoration.”4 among the various meanings that the political actors themselves gave to the term as the french revolution unfolded,5 one, linked to the jacobins’ understanding of it, would later settle itself as its quintessential acceptation, namely, the attempt to bring about a “wholly new social order”6 through the attainment of control of the state by means of violence.7 thus, according to molbech, a revolution is a “complete and general change in the order, connections [or] course of things; upheaval [Omvæltning].”8 it is worth noting the semantic ambivalence of the word in molbech’s mind and, consequently, 1 Cf. raymond williams, “revolution,” in his Keywords, A Vocabulary of Culture and Society, new york: oxford university press 1983, p. 270. 2 Cf. Hannah arendt, On Revolution, London: penguin books 2006, p. 32. 3 i use the equivocal adverb “somewhat” because Kierkegaard’s notion of “repetition” implies a qualitative difference which takes place in the process of going from an “a” stage to a “b” one; cf. Pap. iV b 111, pp. 261ff. / R, supplement, 286ff. 4 For as Hannah Arendt put it, “In the seventeenth century, where we find the word for the first time as a political term, the metaphoric content was even closer to the original meaning of the word, for it was used for a movement of revolving back to some pre-established point and, by implication, of swinging back into a preordained order…the word ‘revolution’ meant originally ‘restoration’….” (arendt, On Revolution, p. 33). 5 in this sense see mona ozouf, “révolution,” in Dictionnaire Critique de la Révolution Française, ed. by françois furet and mona ozouf, paris: flammarion 1988, pp. 847–59. 6 williams, “revolution,” in his Keywords, p. 273. 7 the story goes that on the night of july 14, 1789, when the french King Louis XVi heard from the duc de La rochefoulcauld-Liancourt of the fall of the bastille, the king is supposed to have exclaimed “C’est une révolte,” receiving then as a reply: “Non, Sire, c’est une révolution.” the dialogue is recounted, among others, by Hannah arendt. arendt, On Revolution, pp. 37–8. 8 Christian molbech, Dansk Ordbog indeholdende det danske Sprogs Stammeord, vols. 1–2, Copenhagen, gyldendal 1833, vol. 2, p. 247.

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in Kierkegaard’s time, for right after the last word molbech mentions the following instances of its possible use: “revolutions in nature. especially in relation to such an alteration in the constitution of states; a revolution of a state [Statsomvæltning]. the french revolution.”9 This, in turn, confirms at least two different things: (1) that at least around the decade of the 1830s the word “revolution” (at least in denmark) could still be used to describe both natural as well as political processes; and (2) that in Kierkegaard’s time there were two different words available in order to designate such phenomena, namely, Revolution and Omvæltning (not to mention other related terms such as Oprør, meaning “rebellion,” “revolt,” or “insurrection”); thus, what we nowadays understand as revolution was at times described by Kierkegaard using the term Revolution, and at other times using the term Omvæltning.10 now, the word Revolution appears very few times in the published writings of Kierkegaard, the same being true with regard to his private annotations. in terms of the former, the most frequent occurence of the term is to be found in Either/Or, part Two (more specifically in the section entitled “The Esthetic Validity of Marriage”) and A Literary Review of Two Ages, both with only two mentions each.11 all in all, Kierkegaard’s employment of the term is so scant (with seven different passages in which the term appears in his published writings,12 eight in his private annotations,13 and one in a letter14) that it allows one to affirm that, in a narrow sense, if there was something that Kierkegaard was not, it was precisely a “revolutionary.”15 and if Kierkegaard obviously did not witness the french revolution, he nevertheless ibid. The difficulty increases when one takes into consideration that Kierkegaard sometimes writes—seldom, it is true—Omveltning instead of Omvæltning, as in the following passage, which is also quite instructive on account of the wrenching of the term from its political connotation to its use in a religious one. indeed, highlighting the otherworldliness of Christianity, he claims that “in a certain sense it does not help to speak to a person about the highest, because an entirely different upheaval [Omveltning] than any talk can produce must take place” (SKS 9, 107 / WL, 102; translation slightly modified—the Hongs render Omveltning as “revolution”). in any event, due to the limitations of this article i shall strictly pursue Kierkegaard’s use of the term Revolution understood foremost as a political phenomenon. 11 with respect to A Literary Review of Two Ages the rubric “the age of revolution” (Revolutions-Tiden) is not being taken into consideration. 12 it should be highlighted that the term itself may appear more than once in these single passages. in any event, these are, in chronological order: SKS 14, 9 / EPW, 4; SKS 1, 48 / EPW, 92; SKS 1, 298 / CI, 260; SKS 3, 97 / EO2, 95; SKS 3, 116 / EO2, 115; SKS 8, 55 / TA, 56 and SKS 8, 68 / TA, 70. 13 in chronological order they are: SKS 27, 192ff., papir 254 / EPW, 39ff.; SKS 18, 166, jj:85 / JP 5, 5638; SKS 20, 348, nb4:122 / JP 4, 4136; SKS 21, 310, nb10:105 / JP 6, 6372; SKS 25, 443, nb30:71 / JP 1, 1003; SKS 26, 332, nb34:21 / JP 3, 3625 and SKS 26, 389, nb35:26 / JP 3, 3005. 14 Cf. SKS 28, 399–400, brev 266 / LD, 260–2, Letter 186. 15 indeed, out of the three related terms mentioned above—Omvæltning, Oprør and Revolution—it is the middle term that Kierkegaard employs most frequently, which, in turn, betrays his theological perspective inasmuch as “rebellion,” apart from political connotations, also has obvious religious ones. 9

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did witness as well as comment on two other revolutions, the first one being the so-called july revolution of 1830 in france and which had direct impact on many european countries (denmark among them),16 and later the 1848 revolutions, these constituting the largest, the most widespread, and the most violent political movement of nineteenth-century europe.17 as such, one should ask oneself how Kierkegaard interpreted and described each one of these successive revolutions in their historical contexts, and also whether Kierkegaard, based on these three major socio-political events, came to develop either a concept or a theory of revolutions, and if so, what they look like. these, then, are the questions to guide my reading of the concept here. Kierkegaard’s first mention of the term occurs in his first publication, namely in the newspaper article ironically entitled “another defense of woman’s great abilities,” published in late 1834. there he mentions the fact that “many centuries elapsed before woman’s great abilities were properly recognized. this was reserved for france…reason in the french revolution was represented by a female and… the saint-simonists placed them on a totally equal footing with the men.”18 this means that Kierkegaard, in his very first mention of the French Revolution, equated it foremost with the quest for equality.19 almost a year later he would highlight an altogether different aspect of the latter, as well as sketch the rudiments of a theory of revolutions. for before the student association on november 28, Kierkegaard enigmatically commented that “[r]evolutions follow the same course as illness. when cholera was endemic in europe, the attacks were not very violent.”20 He then went on to compare the socalled july revolution of 1830 in france with the older one from 1789: the july revolution was distinguished by, among other things, its elegance and refinement; it was a successful operation by an experienced surgeon. All the violent episodes that accompanied the revolution of [17]89 were not present here, and thus

although Kierkegaard was only 17 years old when the revolution broke out in france, in his very first writings he would comment on its later influence in Danish affairs. In any event, it should not go unnoticed that his brother peter Christian happened to be in paris at the very moment when the revolution broke out, and he wrote to his family concerning one of the trois glorieueses, that is, the three days in which there was fighting on the streets between the revolutionaries and the forces of the government. during this time “a passerby with a knowing smile put two musket balls in my fist” for the approching battle (cf. Joakim Garff, Søren Kierkegaard: A Biography, trans. by bruce Kirmmse, princeton: princeton university press 2005, p. 26). 17 Cf. jonathan sperber, The European Revolutions, 1848–1851, Cambridge: Cambridge university press 2004, p. 2. 18 SKS 14, 9 / EPW, 3–4. 19 that is to say, he could have highlighted, from among the various metamorphoses, phases and different interpretations of the term “revolution” offered by the actors present in the very making of the french revolution, other aspects of it such as its violence. in this sense, see ozouf, “révolution,” p. 857. 20 SKS 27, 192, papir 254 / EPW, 39. 16

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thus, if, on the one hand, Kierkegaard now acknowledges the violent aspect of the french revolution as well as the somewhat erroneously attributed cleanness of the july revolution in relation to its predecessor,22 on the other hand, he briefly sketches a broader understanding of the inner dynamics of revolutions, comparing them to the spreading of diseases. in this sense, he also developed in his speech further considerations which, albeit fleeting, are interesting on account of one specific term he employed, for he mentions in passing “one of those vibrations by which the french revolution set human beings in motion [Bevægelse] all around.”23 this means he recognizes that revolutions function as acoustic reverberations of one another—the gjenlydende Echo (resounding echo) mentioned at another point of his speech24—so much that the effects of the july revolution in denmark (felt much later), so he argues, had had to pass through the effects of the former in poland, via the so-called polish revolution of 1830.25 in sum, Kierkegaard acknowledges in his speech that revolutions were creators of movement, and that they were all interconnected. in chronological fashion, the next mention of the term is once again quite interesting, for it offers not only an evaluation of revolutions as an illegitimate way of attaining power, but also an implicit parallel between politics and aesthetic production according to which the “true poet”26 (or author) is the “monarch” in control of his kingdom. therefore, when reviewing Hans Christian andersen’s novel in From the Papers of One Still Living, Kierkegaard rather jokingly comments that the mass of information that andersen has gradually acquired has little by little conspired against him and started a revolution, with the result that, instead of deciding from his poet stall what shall or shall not be included, andersen has been obliged to grant this mass of information a consultative vote. the mass of information has, of course, simply looked upon this as the initiative for constituting itself as the sovereign power and making andersen its proxy, who, obeying orders, puts its particular elements into print.27

the next substantial discussions of the concept occur in judge william’s “the esthetic Validity of marriage,” in Either/Or, Part Two. One finds there both a brief comment that maintains the view expressed above, that is, of a “revolution” being

ibid. it must be said that if the july revolution of 1830 was indeed in many ways a much less violent revolution than its predecessor, that does not mean, however, that it was a clean, in the sense of an utterly bloodless, revolution, for with regard to the revolutionaries 211 people were killed and another 1,327 were wounded in the barricades that took place between july 27 and 29 (see H.a.C. Collingham, The July Monarchy: A Political History of France, London and new york: Longman 1988, p. 20). 23 SKS 27, 193, papir 254 / EPW, 40 (my emphasis; translation slightly modified). 24 Cf. ibid. 25 Cf. SKS 27, 194, papir 254 / EPW, 41. 26 SKS 1, 30 / EPW, 75. 27 SKS 1, 48 / EPW, 92. 21 22

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a way of conquering power by illegitimate means,28 as well as a somewhat more elaborate discussion in which judge william, commenting on the age’s “enthusiasm of despair,”29 mentions the formula of “destroy[ing] everything lock, stock and barrel in order to build anew.”30 He adds: “it has really made me uneasy to hear the jubilation with which younger men, just like the terrorists [Rædselsmændene] in the french revolution, shout: de omnibus dubitandum.”31 on the one hand it may seem that judge william displays in this single passage a rather limited or unfair comprehension of the french revolution as a historical event, for he seems to lump all of its different stages of development and more particularly its actors together with the later period of the “terror,” therefore implying that all of the latter were nothing but “terrorists.” on the other hand, he also seems to offer an interesting “idealist” reading of it in that he links specifically Descartes’ and more generally the seventeenth-century’s ideas to the concrete event of the revolution, an interpretation which would place him among the nineteenth-century historians or theoreticians who envisaged in the revolution the outcome of a long chain of politico-philosophical ideas, of a “mentality” therefore, de-emphasizing thus more precise historico-politico-economical events as its “causes.” still in 1843, but from a more personal perspective, Kierkegaard, in a private annotation, writes ironically to himself: “that woman who was worshipped during the french revolution as ‘the goddess of reason’ would be a good subject for a drama. it is well-known that she died sometime later in the most pitiable state in a hospital.”32 in a sense, one could say Kierkegaard was declaring the revolution dead with such a project; but not only would the latter remain unfulfilled, but there would also be, in accordance with Molbech’s definition of “revolution,” a “complete and general change in the order of things” in Kierkegaard’s private life, due to the “revolution” later known as the Corsair affair.33 indeed, the next treatment of the concept of “revolution” in Kierkegaard’s writings occurs in A Literary Review of Two Ages, written and published in the watershed year, for Kierkegaard’s career, of 1846. this work was a review of a novel published in october 1845 by thomasine gyllembourg entitled Two Ages. the subject matter of the novel was “not the great events that so violently shook the close of the previous century and still agitate our present day…but only what I would call the domestic reflection of it, the effect it has had in family life, in the personal relations, in the ideas and views of individuals.”34 with that in mind, gyllembourg set out to depict the lives and ideals of two different generations from Cf. SKS 3, 116 / EO2, 115. SKS 3, 97 / EO2, 95. 30 ibid. 31 ibid. 32 SKS 18, 166, jj:85 / JP 5, 5638. 33 for a thorough treatment of the “Corsair affair,” see Howard V. and edna H. Hong, “Historical introduction,” in COR, vii–xxxiii. 34 thomasine gyllembourg quoted by alastair Hannay, “translation’s introduction,” in søren Kierkegaard, A Literary Review, trans. by alastair Hannay, London: penguin books 2001, pp. xv–xvi. 28 29

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the same family, the first generation having as its background the immediate postrevolutionary age, and the second one contemporary denmark (that is, the 1840s). and yet, curiously as it may seem, Kierkegaard’s review, while being entirely built on gyllembourg’s concept, idea or general notion of—as her words make it clear, social—revolution, tells us surprisingly little of his own concept of “revolution” proper. accordingly, the concept itself is mentioned only twice throughout the entire review, and even then these two single passages do not offer much in terms of the problematization one would expect on such a key issue with regard to the internal economy, so to speak, of the original novel. in other words, Kierkegaard’s A Literary Review of Two Ages presents a problem exegetes should not forget lest they confuse what belongs to the original novel and what belongs to Kierkegaard’s own views on the subject of “revolution” proper.35 Precisely in this sense, then, one finds at one point in this work the rather fleeting, unsubstantial, and fundamentally poor remark on “playing at revolution,”36 and a couple of pages later, when developing the idea that the “present age…is an age of publicity, the age of miscellaneous announcements,” Kierkegaard more substantially this time envisages a “political virtuoso” who would issue invitations to a general meeting for the purpose of deciding on a revolution [Revolution], wording the invitation so cautiously that even the censor would have to let it pass. on the evening of the meeting, he would so skillfully create the illusion that they had made an uprising [Oprør] that everyone would go home quietly, having passed a very pleasant evening.37

beyond this aside on the banality of revolutions (predicted formerly by burke),38 produced from above and through publicity, there is absolutely nothing else that directly engages the concept of “revolution” in Kierkegaard’s most explicit work on socio-political issues. yet one closes the book with the strange feeling that, in the end, Kierkegaard paradoxically evaluates “revolutions” as rather interesting happenings, if only they get to be compared with the “deathly stillness”39 or “prudential apathy”40 characteristic of the overtly reflective or secularized modernity described in A Literary Review of Two Ages. but then: “in the year 1848 the threads of sagacity broke; the shriek that announces chaos was heard!”41 with these dramatic words, Kierkegaard described my point is that if the original novel was built on a social notion of “revolution” rather than on a more strictly political understanding of the concept, then Kierkegaard’s perception of “the age of revolution” seems to follow such an understanding, leaving aside a more precise connotation of “revolution” as a political phenomenon. Cf. note 10 above. 36 SKS 8, 55 / TA, 56. 37 SKS 8, 68 / TA, 70, translation slightly modified (the Hongs render the second term also as “revolution”). 38 for he had already urged the french revolutionaries “to make the revolution a parent of settlement, and not a nursery of future revolutions” (edmund burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France, ed. by j.C.d. Clark, stanford: stanford university press 2001, p. 177). 39 SKS 8, 81 / TA, 84. 40 SKS 8, 68 / TA, 73. 41 SKS 13, 26 / PV, 19. 35

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the first forceful contact he would ever have with a veritable revolution. Misquoting rimbaud, one could say that after the briefest of honeymoons with the idea of “revolution” (although one gets the impression that Kierkegaard’s infatuation with it remained at the level of a rhetorical facade only), he then sat it on his lap, and found it sour. and so he went back to cursing it.42 in truth, denmark did not experience a proper revolution in 1848, but rather demonstrations, uprisings, as well as the first signs of war against Prussia occasioned by the fight for control over the duchies of Schleswig and Holstein.43 although such tensions subsided by the end of august after diplomatic efforts on the part of the british and the russian governments,44 the political agitation that had spread throughout denmark led it to be the only european country to maintain after 1848 the political changes that were brought about by the pressure exercised over the government by the people at large.45 thus, from an absolute monarchy, it steered towards a constitutional monarchy, based on universal male suffrage.46 there was also, understandably, a strong feeling of nationalism in the air; so Kierkegaard, caught amidst all this turmoil,47 went back to discussing “revolution” in his private annotations as well as in discussions with certain prominent people such as his favorite walking companion in 1847–48, Conferentsraad Kolderup-rosenvinge (1792–1850).48 on the basis of one of their conversations Kierkegaard formulated a letter in august 1848 in which he comments profusely on a recent newspaper article Cf. j.n.a. rimbaud, “une saison en enfer,” in his Œuvres Complètes, ed. by antoine adam, paris: gallimard 1972, p. 93. 43 Kierkegaard confides in a letter to Kolderup-Rosenvinge from July–August 1848 that “[w]e have not been at war for a long time, but it has never impressed me as a real war. to me the whole thing seems more like a lecture (such as Ørsted’s on physics) during which experiments are conducted, or during which the presentation is illustrated with experiments. to my way of thinking this war has really always been some sort of peace making or making of peace—the most peculiar sort of war i have ever known” (SKS 28, 392, brev 264 / LD, 253, Letter 184). 44 Cf. sperber, The European Revolutions, 1848–1851, p. 213. 45 Cf. bruce Kirmmse, Kierkegaard in Golden Age Denmark, bloomington: indiana university press 1990, p. 12. 46 Cf. bruce Kirmmse, “Kierkegaard and 1848,” History of European Ideas, vol. 20, nos 1–3, 1995, p. 167. 47 for as he put it in the same letter cited above: “no, politics is not for me. to follow politics, even if only domestic politics, is nowadays an impossibility, for me, at any rate… whenever something fluctuates back and forth, up and down and down and up, and then comes to a halt, and around and up and down and back again, then i am incapable of voluntarily following. if necessary i should prefer going to war as a ‘coerced volunteer’ to sitting at home—following it” (SKS 28, 392, brev 264 / LD, 253, Letter 184). 48 another eminent person was anton tscherning (1795–1874), appointed minister of war in late march 1848. reminiscing on a conversation he had had with him the night before he was appointed minister, Kierkegaard writes that he and tscherning had both agreed that “the french revolution…was like an engagement made at a ball in a giddy moment when one did not know what he was doing” (SKS 20, 348, nb4:122 / JP 4, 4136). by writing this Kierkegaard was actually criticizing tscherning for engaging the next day with a government based on popular sovereignty, something the latter had condemned precisely the night before. 42

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in which it was reported that some carpenter named Øigaard had died in an accident on account of his not knowing how to use the brake (Bremse) of a train49—Bremse also happens to be the danish word for gadfly. this lexical ambiguity then leads Kierkegaard to comment on the relationship between movement and the need for either a stopping point or a stopping device, for, as he put the matter to his friend, now back to the gadfly [Bremsen] and to wanting to stop by means of a gadfly, and you will see that this is related to what we spoke of last time. for is this not the law of confusion that governs recent european events? they wish to stop by means of a revolution and to stop a revolution by means of a counterrevolution [Contra-Revolution]. but what is a counterrevolution if it is not also a revolution? and to what can we compare a revolution if not to a gadfly? Thus they want to stop by means of a gadfly? I am sure you will agree that i am right in considering the whole development in europe as an enormous skepticism or as a vortex. What does a vortex seek?—A fixed point where it can stop. (therefore, you see, i seek—said in parenthesi—“that single individual.”)… yet throughout europe nothing is really established at this moment—everything is movement…although i suppose france tired of revolutions long ago, they have not yet stopped for that reason. alas, it will not be easy. there is a nemesis over europe.50

if Kierkegaard, still playing with the meanings of the word gadfly in this same letter, calls socrates a “revolutionary [Revolutionair]…in the sense of awakening,” he is quick to add: “but yet in another sense it is clear that he was also a person who stopped, for he stopped a sophist vortex.”51 after such mentions in 1848, and apart from a very brief subjective interpretation of the term in 1849,52 only 1854 would witness the term “revolution” in Kierkegaard’s annotations again. In one of them, he briefly links it to “the transformation of concepts by numbers.”53 in another comment, it is protestantism that is considered “indefensible. it is a revolution occasioned by proclaiming ‘the apostle’ (paul) at the expense of the master (Christ).”54 finally, in yet another private annotation, Kierkegaard comments that with the abolition of Christianity by “these rascally preachers…it is no longer a question of a revolution once in a while, but underneath everything is a revolution which can explode at any moment…and for this reason human life is a whirlpool.”55 This passage confirms that Kierkegaard had arrived at the “secret” of the nineteenth century, namely, that it was founded upon the notion

the news report is given in SKS K28, 397. SKS 28, 399–400, brev 266 / LD, 260–2, Letter 186. 51 SKS 28, 401, brev 266 / LD, 262, Letter 186. 52 the passage is interesting, however, on account of the dichotomy that Kierkegaard presents between the term and his inner constitution, for he confesses that “there is something which runs against the constitution of my whole personality, is really a revolution in relation to it, and that is to be obliged to speak about my interior life, about my relationship to god” (SKS 21, 310, nb10:105 / JP 6, 6372, translation slightly modified). 53 SKS 26, 389, nb35:26 / JP 3, 3005. 54 SKS 26, 332, nb34:21 / JP 3, 3625. 55 SKS 25, 443, nb30:71 / JP 1, 1003. 49 50

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of “revolution,”56 though obviously not in its seventeenth-century connotation of “restoration” or “repetition,” but rather in the sense of a “total happening.”57 to summarize, although Kierkegaard came to acknowledge that the idea of revolution has become the very condition for human life within modernity, he himself did not get to the point of developing fully either a concept or a theory of revolutions and, in this sense, he cannot in any sense be strictly called (a) “revolutionary.” indeed, in A Literary Review of Two Ages, addressing the issue of “the demand of the times,” he, in a “thought-experiment,” put himself for a fleeting moment in that role, saying: “have i not become an agitated party leader at the head of a revolt [Opløb], stamping in the parterre and shouting the demand of the times? fortunately not, and fortunately there is still something that eo ipso instantly becomes nonsense when it is made the demand of the times.”58 see also authority; Crisis, Crowd/public; Leveling; politics; present age; race; Voting; Vortex; worldliness/secularism.

or in the words of ortega y gasset: “the nineteenth-century was essentially revolutionary” (ortega y gasset, La Rebelión de las Masas, ed. by Domingo H. Sánchez, madrid: editorial tecnos 2008, p. 183; my emphasis). 57 according to ozouf, the french revolution inaugurated the notion of “revolution” as a “total happening….there is revolution when men [sic] intend to solve by means of it all of their problems simultaneously, political, social as well as moral ones, [this being accompanied by] a complete change in themselves” (ozouf, “révolution,” p. 851). 58 SKS 8, 24 / TA, 21 (translation slightly modified). 56

rhetoric gerhard thonhauser

Rhetoric (Rhetorik—noun) from the Latin Rhetorica, taken from the greek, ἡ ῥητορική (τέχνη). Kierkegaard spells the word consistently with “rh,” while in modern danish it is without an “h.”1 there are two corresponding danish terms, Talekunst and Veltalenhed. they have approximately the same meaning; however, Veltalenhed could also be translated as “eloquence.” besides rhetorik Kierkegaard uses two other nouns of the same origin. The first is rhetor (same spelling in Latin and in danish), which has a danish equivalent in Talekunstner; the second is “rhetorician” (Rhetoriker), from the Latin rhetoricus. in only one instance does Kierkegaard use the verb rhetoriserer.2 Kierkegaard mainly uses the adjective “rhetorical” (rhetorisk) and its nominalized form “the rhetorical” (Det Rhetoriske). the noun Rhetor(er) appears only in his late journals, beginning in 1849. the term Rhetorik occurs mainly in references to aristotle. there is almost no appearance of the term in the discourses,3 and it is barely used in the pseudonymous authorship. the most frequent and relevant uses can be found in Kierkegaard’s journals and loose papers, starting from 1845, where Kierkegaard begins using the term in connection with his reflections on his work as an author, especially as the writer of upbuilding and Christian discourses. I. before discussing Kierkegaard’s rhetoric, in the context of his self-understanding as a religious author, the use of the term “rhetoric” in his pseudonymous works should be briefly mentioned. In those early works rhetoric appears to be consistently used as a pejorative term. the following short quotations from Either/Or, A Literary Review of Two Ages, the Concluding Unscientific Postscript, and Practice in Christianity serve as examples. about the Christian message he writes that “it is no rhetorical expression,”4 Ordbog over det danske Sprog, vols. 1–28, published by the society for danish Language and Literature, Copenhagen: gyldendal 1918–56, vol. 17, columns 890–1. 2 SKS 24, 96; nb21:159 / JP 3, 2531. 3 the only exception is in the early upbuilding discourses, where Kierkegaard writes, in line with the use of the term in the pseudonymous works: “it is not, then, just a rhetorical expression to say that love hides a multitude of sins, but it is truly so, and this is the power of Christian love” (SKS 5, 71 / EUD, 62). 4 SKS 3, 211 / EO2, 221. 1

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it “is not rhetorical balderdash.”5 it is stated that “the rhetorical address distracts by intimidating the dialectician.”6 and something might have “an incomparable rhetorical effect,”7 but that is all it has. in the Postscript, Climacus argues against the “confusion of categories in the rhetorical stupidities of ecclesiastical speakers.”8 an argument is critiqued for being spoken “more with rhetorical flourish than with truth.”9 and in another instance, the interjection that it is “nothing but rhetorical and sham definitions”10 seems almost like a self-critique.11 in two instances, johannes Climacus uses the term in a more pronounced way: first, in the chapter “the evidence of the Centuries for the truth of Christianity”;12 second, in the context of the issue in Philosophical Fragments and the discussion of the paradox. regarding the historical evidence for the truth of Christianity, Climacus states that such an “argument can…be treated only rhetorically,”13 because the argument “seeks to impress.”14 He continues: what has been intimated here has been emphasized in Fragments frequently enough, namely, that there is no direct and immediate transition to Christianity, and that therefore all those who in that way want to give a rhetorical push in order to bring one into Christianity or even help one into it by a thrashing—they are all deceivers—no, they know not what they do.15

this leads directly to the second context, the discussion of the issue in Philosophical Fragments. Climacus concludes: “philosophy leads directly to Christianity; the historicizing and rhetorical introduction does likewise, and it is successful—because the introductions are to a doctrine, but not to becoming a Christian.”16 a rhetorical argument SKS 8, 105 / TA, 111. SKS 7, 24 / CUP1, 14. see also SKS 7, 307 / CUP1, 336. 7 SKS 12, 243 / PC, 251. 8 SKS 7, 37 / CUP1, 31. 9 SKS 7, 284 / CUP1, 312. 10 SKS 7, 554 / CUP1, 611. 11 another longer passage from Postscript, in which the “rhetorical” is criticized, is the following: “in order to indicate how illusive the rhetorical can be, i shall show here how one could perhaps produce an effect upon a listener rhetorically, even though what was said would be a dialectical retrogression. suppose a pagan religious orator says that here on earth the god’s temple is actually empty, but (and here the rhetorical begins) in heaven, where everything is more perfect, where water is air, and air is ether, there are also temples and shrines for the gods, but the difference is that the gods actually dwell in these temples—that the god actually dwells in the temple is dialectical retrogression, because his not dwelling in the temple is an expression for the spiritual relation to the invisible. but rhetorically it produces the effect. —Incidentally, I had in mind a specific passage by a Greek author, but i shall not quote him” (SKS 7, 223n / CUP1, 245n). the author and text Kierkegaard had in mind are plato and his dialogue the Phaedo. 12 SKS 7, 52–4 / CUP1, 46–9. 13 SKS 7, 53 / CUP1, 47. 14 SKS 7, 53 / CUP1, 48. 15 SKS 7, 54 / CUP1, 49. 16 SKS 7, 349 / CUP1, 384. 5 6

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or introduction might be able to justify or explain a doctrine, but it will never be able to make someone become a Christian, in Kierkegaard’s understanding of the term. The related issue, whether an explanation or justification of crucial Christian doctrines, for example, the paradox, is possible, is already discussed in Chapter ii of section ii in part two of the Postscript. Here, Climacus raises a series of more or less rhetorical questions17 in order to draw the same conclusion: explaining the Christian doctrine might achieve certain things, but one thing it will certainly never achieve is turning someone into a Christian.18 as we will presently see, it is no coincidence that these reflections can be found in the Postscript, because it was at about the same time as the composition of this work, in 1845, that Kierkegaard began his reflections on the rhetorical implications of being a religious author. II. in the journal entry with the heading “something about my punctuation,” Kierkegaard declares that “with respect to spelling,” he submits “unconditionally to authority [sc. molbech].”19 with regard to punctuation, however, the situation is very different: Here i yield to absolutely no one, and i very much doubt that any author can compete with me here. my whole make-up as a dialectician with an unusual sense for rhetoric, all the silent conversation with my own thoughts, and my practice of reading aloud must necessarily make me superior in this field.20

Kierkegaard states that it is his “unusual sense for rhetoric” that entitles him to see himself as superior to all authorities when it comes to punctuation; provided that the punctuation of a text is constitutive of its rhetorical dimension, especially its rhythm, which establishes and reveals itself particularly when reading aloud, most adequately in the somewhat odd situation of reading aloud to oneself.21 it becomes the questions are: “does explaining the paradox mean to turn the expression ‘paradox’ into a rhetorical expression, into something the honorable speculative thinker indeed says has its validity—but then in turn does not have its validity? in that case, the summa summarum [sum total] is indeed that there is no paradox” (SKS 7, 201 / CUP1, 220). “to explain the unutterable joy––what does that mean? does it mean to explain that it is this and that? in that case, the predicate ‘unutterable’ becomes just a rhetorical predicate, a strong expression, and the like” (SKS 7, 202 / CUP1, 221). “does explaining what is decisive mean to transform the expression into a rhetorical locution, so that one does not, like the light-minded person, deny all decision, but assumes it, yet assumes it only to a certain degree?” (SKS 7, 202 / CUP1, 221). 18 the last use of the term “rhetorical” in the Postscript is in the discussion of the tragic and the comic (SKS 7, 469 / CUP1, 517). in two of these instances, Climacus does so with reference to aristotle’s Rhetoric (SKS 7, 473 / CUP1, 521; SKS 7, 475 / CUP1, 523). 19 SKS 20, 98, nb:146 / JP 5, 5981. 20 ibid. 21 this peculiar practice of reading aloud to oneself is precisely what Kierkegaard suggests as the adequate approach to reading his discourses (SKS 5, 63 / EUD, 53; SKS 8, 121 / UD, 5; SKS 13, 33 / FSE, 3). 17

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immediately clear that “rhetoric” in this context is no longer used in a pejorative sense, as throughout the published authorship, but as an affirmative category for his self-understanding as an author. in the following sentence, Kierkegaard explains: “i make distinctions in my punctuation. i punctuate differently in a scholarly work than in a rhetorical work.”22 to make sense of this distinction, it seems necessary to assume that Kierkegaard refers to his discourses as his “rhetorical works.” we will presently see that this assumption corresponds with Kierkegaard’s self-reflections on his role as an author of upbuilding and Christian discourses in relation to and differentiation from a priest’s role as a preacher. Good examples of this self-reflection are the journal entries related to the composition of The Sickness unto Death.23 When the idea for this book first began to take shape, Kierkegaard notes in his journal: “now i must work out the idea of the forgiveness of sins, in rhetorical form.”24 after Kierkegaard completed the manuscript, he writes a “report on ‘the sickness unto death,’ ” which he begins with the statement: “There is one difficulty with the book: it is too dialectical and stringent for the proper use of the rhetorical, the soul-stirring, the gripping. the title itself seems to indicate that it should be discourses––the title is lyrical.”25 we can see here that in distinction from the use of the term “rhetorical” in the published works, where it is used in a solely pejorative sense to describe that which lacks the earnestness of becoming a Christian, Kierkegaard, in his journals, develops his own genuine understanding of the rhetorical, which he sees not in contradiction, but in line with the task of communicating the Christian message. the decisive progression took place in 1845 and can be traced in Kierkegaard’s journals and loose papers. in a journal entry from that year, Kierkegaard states: “a new science must be introduced: the Christian art of speaking, to be constructed ad modum [in the manner of] aristotle’s Rhetoric. dogmatics as a whole is a misunderstanding, especially as it now has been developed.”26 it is no coincidence that Kierkegaard is referring to aristotle’s Rhetoric in order to shape his own outline of a Christian rhetoric, since aristotle’s Rhetoric is one of the standard reference works about rhetoric.27 Hence, the thoughtfully chosen contrast with the aristotelian SKS 20, 98, nb:146 / JP 5, 5981. Similar reflections can also be found in the context of the writing process of other texts, interestingly enough also from the years 1846–48. Most important, such a reflection also took place in the context of the work on The Book on Adler (SKS 20, 42, nb:39 / JP 5, 5939). Kierkegaard also reflects on the punctuation in the Bible (SKS 20, 111, nb:179 / JP 5, 5993). 24 SKS 20, 84, nb:109 / JP 5, 5963. it is interesting to note that this entry is from about the same time as the remarks on punctuation. 25 SKS 20, 365–6, nb4:160 / JP 5, 6136. 26 SKS 18, 236, jj:305 / JP 1, 627. on a loose paper with suggestions for titles of projected texts, Kierkegaard mentions: “something about the art of religious address with some reference to aristotle’s Rhetoric by johannes de silentio” (SKS 27, 325, papir 317 / JP 5, 5786). according to the editors of Søren Kierkegaards Skrifter it is impossible to determine which of these notes was written first (SKS K27, 703). 27 Kierkegaard does not exclusively consider aristotle as reference point for his rhetorical project. In a margin to the crucial passage in which he first notes the idea to write a Christian art of speaking, he also refers to Carneades (SKS 18, 236, jj:305 / KJN 2, 217). 22 23

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text shows the intended status and range of Kierkegaard’s rhetorical project, even though he never developed more than a rough draft.28 the distinguishing feature between the aristotelian, pagan rhetoric and a Christian art of speaking is that whereas the former aims to convince on the basis of probability, the latter cannot be based on probability, since that would corrupt the Christian message it is concerned with. nevertheless, there is a crucial similarity since both are concerned with possibility or capability rather than knowledge.29 in the context of this outline of a Christian art of speaking in the manner of aristotle’s Rhetoric, three sources are pivotal: first, an excerpt from Kierkegaard’s reading of aristotle’s Rhetoric in 1845;30 second, a portfolio of loose papers, most likely from 1845 as well;31 and third, drafts of a preface to Three Discourses on In later journal entries, he refers to other figures as well in connection with his reflections on rhetoric; for example to john Chrysostom (SKS 24, 179, nb22:129 / JP 3, 3161). Kierkegaard’s first reference to Aristotle’s Rhetoric is in the Journal JJ from 1845: “it is clear that the place politics occupied in greece has been taken in Christianity by religion (genuine folk Christianity), which is a subject for discussion and is influenced by discussion. Therefore, in a purely formal way aristotle’s Rhetoric will throw much light on religious issues” (SKS 18, 232, jj:290 / JP 4, 4107). 28 in 1847, Kierkegaard notes in his journal: “a more rigorous, scholarly work about the art of religious address with constant reference to aristotle’s Rhetoric. see journal jj—and what is in a portfolio lying in the top drawer of the lone tall cupboard” (SKS 20, 187, nb2:115 / JP 5, 6037). thus, when investigating Kierkegaard’s outline of a Christian art of speaking, we also need to investigate this portfolio. Kierkegaard refers again to this theme in journal entries from 1849 and 1850, showing that he was thinking about this issue over a significant period of his authorship: “a new practical training course ought to be introduced for theologians (something i have noted in one of the earliest journals): practice in the Christian art of address, specifically not in the art of preaching, rhetoric, and everything belonging to it, but in the art of being able to preach—Christianity” (SKS 21, 325, nb10:135 / JP 1, 669). “in an earlier journal or in loose papers from an earlier time (when i read aristotle’s Rhetoric) i was of the opinion that a Christian art of speaking should be introduced in place of dogmatics. it ought to relate itself to πίστις. Πίστις in the classical greek means the conviction (more than δόξα, opinion) which relates itself to probability. but Christianity, which always turns the concepts of the natural man upside down and gets the opposite meaning out of them, relates πίστις to the improbable” (SKS 23, 23, nb15:25 / JP 1, 7). 29 Kierkegaard notes in the margin of his journal: “aristotle places the art of speaking and the media for awakening faith (πίστις) in relation to probability so that it is concerned (in contrast to knowledge) with what can happen in a different way. Christian eloquence will be distinguished from the greek in that it is concerned only with improbability, with showing that it is improbable, in order that one can then believe it. Here probability is to be rejected just as much as improbability in the other, but both have in common the distinction from knowledge” (SKS 18, 236, jj:305 / JP 1, 628). 30 SKS 27, 338–40, papir 326:1–3 / JP 5, 5779–82. Kierkegaard owned two separate editions of aristotle’s Rhetoric, and the text is included in several editions of aristotle’s collected works, which Kierkegaard possessed. for further information one should consult SKS K27, 728. 31 SKS 27, 332–8, papir 319–25. only parts of this are in the Hong translation. papir 322 correlates with a deleted passage from the Postscript (from division 1 of Chapter iV of section ii in part two). on the basis of this correlation and a reference to the journals in papir

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Imagined Occasions.32 unfortunately, these sources are scattered all over Søren Kierkegaards Papirer and Søren Kierkegaard’s Journals and Papers, making it very difficult to consider Kierkegaard’s reflections on the art of religious address––and the Christian art of speaking, respectively, since both phrases are translations of the almost synonymous terms gudelige or christelige Talekunst––as a coherent whole. The first and second of the named sources have now appeared in a collected form in volume 27 of Søren Kierkegaards Skrifter.33 it should also be mentioned that Kierkegaard’s “rhetoric” corresponds with his notion of indirect communication, since both are a necessary features of an adequately Christian communication of what it means to be a Christian. therefore, Kierkegaard’s draft of a lecture on “the dialectic of ethical and ethical-religious Communication” is another important source for a more extensive investigation of this topic.34 III. finally, i will summarize some key elements of Kierkegaard’s rhetorical project as they are outlined in his journals and loose papers. this is in large part a reconstruction, first of all because Kierkegaard’s remarks never exceeded the status of a rough draft and secondly because most of his remarks are written in order to distinguish his own practice from conventional rhetoric and from examples of what he considered inadequate preaching.35 in the draft of the preface by johannes de silentio, the following division is established: “(1) subject of the address (2) the Listener

324, the editors of SKS conclude that this text must have been written no later than march 9, 1846, and most likely in the second half of 1845 (SKS K27, 722). 32 SKS K5, 401–2. the entire text is printed in Søren Kierkegaards Papirer (Pap. Vi b 128–37). parts of it are also in the Hong translation. this planned preface originally had the title “noget om geistlige Leilighedstaler af johannes de silentio.” with a pencil Leilighedstaler (occasional discourses) was changed into Veltalenhed and med et stadigt Hensyn til Aristoteles Rhetoric was added, thus turning the title into “something about the spiritual art of speaking with a Continual reference to aristotle’s Rhetoric by johannes de silentio” (Pap. VI B 133). This is more or less the formulation that we can find in Papir 317 and the Journal JJ. it is therefore reasonable to assume that Kierkegaard copied it in both cases from this draft. in a so-called report Kierkegaard explains why he did not actually use the text as a preface: “this was laid aside for the present. would get to be too discursive to serve as a kind of introduction to my few discourses. must be worked out separately and deal essentially with religious address” (Pap. Vi b 132 / JP 5, 5785). 33 tim Hagemann collected all the mentioned sources and translated them into german. the translation is published in tim Hagemann, Reden und Existieren. Kierkegaards antipersuasive Rhetorik, berlin: philo 2001. to the best of my knowledge, Hagemann was also the first one to point out the coherence and importance of these texts as well as the connection with Kierkegaard’s reflections on indirect communication. 34 SKS 27, 387–434, papir 364–71 / JP 1, 648–57. 35 in his journals Kierkegaard frequently refers to his observations of such instances when attending church service in Copenhagen.

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(3) the speaker.”36 I will follow this division but reorder it and first consider the listener, then the speaker and, finally, the subject of the address. (1) Kierkegaard concludes from his reading of aristotle’s Rhetoric: “in his Rhetoric aristotle does not consider the ‘listener’ at all.”37 in contrast with that, Kierkegaard emphasizes the role of the listener when it comes to an upbuilding discourse. even a mediocre speaker or a mediocre speech can have an upbuilding effect as long as the listener decides to let himself or herself be built up. Hence, “it is of equal merit to be a good speaker and a good listener”38 and maybe, in the context of the upbuilding, it is even more important to be a good listener than to be a good speaker. (2) regarding the speaker, Kierkegaard is convinced that in order to be able to communicate the Christian message the main criterion is that the orator must actually live and act out what he or she says or teaches: “Christianity can be communicated only by witnesses: that is, by those who existentially express what is said, actualize it.”39 “the law is this: if the proclamation is to be true, it must produce what it proclaims. for example, if the proclamation is that the Christian suffers in this world, then the proclaimer must also suffer.”40 “it is easy to see that when the proclaimer of the essentially Christian is not in the character of the essentially Christian his proclamation evokes just the opposite effect.”41 we can see here that Kierkegaard, even when formulating his own rhetorical project, in a certain way still expresses an anti-rhetorical impulse: “the rhetorical ‘discourse’ completely confuses the essentially Christian. We hear, we read a discourse which shows and finds fault with the fact that so many declare the highest but do not do it.”42 this is because he emphasizes the difference between an orator and an existential thinker: a speaker, an orator…talks about how the truth is scoffed at—and becomes honored and esteemed himself. an existential thinker produces the effect he talks about. when he says the truth is persecuted—he hits so hard that he is hit in return, and he can point to himself and say: you can see it on me.43

Along these lines, Kierkegaard is very critical of the leading figures of the Danish state Church, especially mynster and martensen;44 and even Luther is not safe from his criticism.45 (3) Concerning the subject of the address, Kierkegaard marks the main difference between his project and the traditional, non-Christian rhetoric by insisting that Pap. Vi b 131 / JP 5, 5784. SKS 27, 340, papir 326:3 / JP 5, 5782. 38 SKS 27, 338, papir 324 / JP 1, 630. 39 SKS 23, 262, nb18:16 / JP 3, 3499. 40 SKS 24, 388, nb24:110 / JP 3, 3524. 41 SKS 24, 487–9, nb25:69 / JP 3, 3525. 42 SKS 21, 309, nb10:104 / JP 3, 3483. 43 SKS 23, 143, nb16:72 / JP 3, 3673. 44 for the criticism of mynster see, for example, SKS 20, 386, nb5:39 / JP 6, 6150 and SKS 21, 216, nb9:33 / JP 6, 6305; for martensen SKS 22, 154, nb12:18 / JP 1, 508. 45 SKS 24, 96, nb21:159 / JP 3, 2531. 36 37

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faith does not belong to the sphere of the intellectual: “in the greek view, faith is a concept which belongs in the sphere of the intellectual (it is all splendidly presented, especially in plato’s Republic; however, aristotle’s Rhetoric also deserves notice). thus faith is related to probability, and we get the progression: faith—knowledge.”46 just as a religious address is no intellectual matter, it is not based on probability either. in Kierkegaard’s view, this marks the sharpest contrast to the rhetorical tradition: “all the ancients (plato—many places in Phaedrus, Gorgias, etc.; aristotle in the Rhetoric; the later ancients after plato and aristotle) were unanimous, as were other later ones who thought about the matter, that the potency of eloquence is based upon probability.”47 in contrast, Kierkegaard sees arguing for the truth of Christianity in terms of probability as a kind of category mistake or contradiction. examples of further contradictions or category mistakes in a rhetorical address include presenting faith as a result of experience or worldly wisdom,48 or arguing for the superiority of Christianity in aesthetic categories.49 when trying to determine positive characteristics of an adequate religious address, we can say that it should always present a concrete truth: “a religious discourse should never be abstract truth, for all understand it and yet understand nothing. the task of the religious discourse is to deal with this thing and that, with this one…in order to lead it all (in concreto) to the absolute.”50 accordingly, it has to be presented “existentially in the realm of actuality”51 and not, for instance, in the medium of imagination, because “faith is at home in the existential.”52 to summarize, Kierkegaard uses the term “rhetoric” solely in a pejorative sense in his pseudonymous work, and it is hardly ever used in his discourses. However, there is a lively use of rhetorical categories in his reflection on his work as an author of upbuilding and Christian discourses that has not yet been sufficiently explored–– likely due to the inadequate textual basis––and is certainly worth further research. see also Communication/indirect Communication; punctuation.

46 47 48 49 50 51 52

SKS 25, 432, nb30:57 / JP 1, 180. SKS 25, 83, nb26:80 / JP 1, 824. SKS 27, 338, papir 325 / JP 2, 1116. Pap. Vi b 129 / JP 1, 635. SKS 27, 333, papir 321 / JP 3, 3470. SKS 24, 107–8, nb22:6 / JP 2, 1828. SKS 25, 432, nb30:57 / JP 1, 180.

rigorism roe fremstedal

Rigorism (Rigorisme—noun; Rigorist—noun; rigoristisk—adjective) from Latin rigor through the french rigorisme and german Rigorismus. english derivative, “rigorism.” the lexical meaning in danish is hardness or strictness in a way of thinking and a way of feeling (Følemaade); unyieldingness and mercilessness when carrying out or actualizing moral principles.1 the concept of rigorism is used most explicitly in Either/Or, part two and The Concept of Anxiety.2 in Either/Or, part two, Kierkegaard’s pseudonym judge william introduces rigorism after discussing the ethics of immanuel Kant. william states that he does not “assume a radical evil” and that he is “no ethical rigorist, enthusiastic about a formal abstract freedom.”3 by saying this, william distances himself from Kant’s theory of evil—the so-called doctrine of radical evil. it is as part of this doctrine that Kant himself introduced rigorism as a technical philosophical term: it is of great consequence to ethics [der Sittenlehre] in general, however, to preclude as far as possible, anything morally intermediate, either in actions (adiaphora [morally indifferent]) or in human characters; for with any such ambiguity [Doppelsinnigkeit] all maxims run the risk of losing their determination and stability [Festigkeit]. those who adhere to this strict way of thinking [Denkungsart] are commonly called rigorists (a name intended to carry reproach, but in fact a praise); so we call latitudinarians those at the opposite extreme.4 Ordbog over det danske Sprog, vols. 1–28, published by the society for danish Language and Literature, Copenhagen: gyldendal 1918–56, vol. 17, columns 1028–9. 2 the Concluding Unscientific Postscript mentions rigorism four times in a passage that discusses a rigorous ethics which confuses thought and existence. However, one of these spells it regoristisk in SKS but rigoristisk in earlier editions. SKS 7, 310 / CUP1, 339. also, rigorism is mentioned a few times in the journals and once in The Concept of Irony. when contrasting the Christian person with the greek, The Concept of Irony criticizes the Greek very briefly for rigorism (SKS 1, 135 / CI, 77). a journal entry (SKS 18, 49, ee:142 / JP 3, 3275) associates rigorism with strict (strenge) systems (Rigorisme is translated “rigor” in JP). another entry (SKS 22, 14, nb11:13 / KJN 6, 10) speaks of an exaggeration, a rigorism, something that might refer to a “poem that fancies itself as being serious.” yet another entry (SKS 24, 115, nb22:20 / JP 3, 3113) refers to a passage that contrasts rigorism with a lax morality (see SKS K24, 150–1). 3 SKS 3, 170 / EO2, 174; SKS 3, 173 / EO2, 178. 4 immanuel Kant, “Über das radikale böse in der menschlichen natur,” Berlinische Monatsschrift, april 1792, pp. 323–85; pp. 329–30. reprinted as part 1 of Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der bloßen Vernunft, Königsberg: friedrich nicolovius 1793 and 1794. translated 1

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for Kant, moral rigorism precludes the possibility that man is neither good nor evil. additionally, it precludes the possibility that man is good in some respects and evil in other respects, or partially good and partially evil—both when it comes to actions and the character (disposition) of man. rigorism implies that it is impossible to be morally indifferent, for both actions and characters (dispositions) are either good or evil. furthermore, Kant claims that any case of prioritizing sensuousness above morality implies either that one’s actions are evil or that one’s character is evil.5 judge william’s critique of Kant’s rigorism seems to suggest that he is a latitudinarian—that is, someone who holds that there is something morally intermediate, either in the sense of moral indifference or relativity (being good in one respect or evil in another). However, it seems clear that william would not accept that one’s fundamental attitude towards life can be morally indifferent—after all, he famously advises the aesthete “a” to choose himself by choosing the ethical. any attempt to avoid this choice results in what william describes as an aesthetic way of life. furthermore, william does not appear to allow for the possibility of living with one foot in the ethical and the other in the aesthetic. this suggests that although william was critical of Kant’s doctrine of radical evil, he tacitly accepts Kant’s rigorism at the level of one’s basic attitude, disposition or character.6 However, this does not necessarily mean that william accepts rigorism on the level of actions. this is because some actions could be morally indifferent, or they could possibly be moral in one respect and immoral in another. william’s two other comments on rigorism suggest that he wants to distance himself from rigorism. first, william associates rigorism with giving up the entertaining (forlystende) multiplicity of life when despairing.7 Here rigorism represents a type of moral strictness in which one has to renounce the entertaining multiplicity of life. william seems to distance himself from this rigorism since he believes that he who chooses the ethical will get the aesthetic back. second, william refers to the “childish rigorism” with which he earlier “distinguished between rule and exception, in life as well as grammar.” He says that this rigorism has been “mitigated,” but he still maintains the distinction between rule (the universal) and exception.8 Here william seems to interpret rigorism as an almost pedantic commitment to rules. this could be another criticism of the “formal abstract freedom” often associated with Kant’s ethics, or it could be a more general critique of formalism and pedantism. when discussing original sin, The Concept of Anxiety states that ethical rigorism “overlooked the limit of the ethical and was honest enough to believe that men as Religion Within the Boundaries of Bare Reason, in immanuel Kant, Religion and Rational Theology, trans. and ed. by allen w. wood and george di giovanni, Cambridge: Cambridge university press 2001 [1996], pp. 71–2 (vol. 6, p. 22 in the german academy edition of Kant’s works). 5 on Kant’s account, following inclinations involves freely incorporating these into one’s maxim. thus, any case of following inclinations, rather than the moral Law, implies active resistance to the moral incentive. see Religion Within the Boundaries of Bare Reason, pp. 72–3 (vol. 6, pp. 23–4). 6 on this point i am indebted to a discussion with Christoph schulte. 7 SKS 3, 219 / EO2, 229. 8 SKS 3, 256–7 / EO2, 270.

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would not avail themselves of the opportunity to slip away from the whole thing.”9 given the context, this statement can be read as saying that rigorism overlooks the reality of sin, genuinely believing that men would not forfeit their innocence by choosing evil. this suggests that although rigorism stresses the choice between good and evil, it does not take into account the inevitability of sin (claimed in the doctrine of original sin). the “introduction” to The Concept of Anxiety sketches out two different types of ethics: the so-called first and second ethics.10 first ethics is a philosophical ethics that does not appeal to divine grace. since it is claimed that any failure or wrongdoing whatsoever implies that man is infinitely guilty,11 first ethics presupposes rigorism, but not latitudinarianism. whereas latitudinarianism presents man as partially good and partially evil (or even as morally indifferent), rigorism represents man as fully good or fully evil. The Concept of Anxiety simply describes being fully evil as being infinitely guilty, meaning that there is no limit to one’s guilt, since one’s most fundamental attitude or principle is corrupted. The Concept of Anxiety assumes the validity of first ethics (and, implicitly, rigorism) but goes on to show that this type of ethics collapses due to guilt (and sin). The upshot is that the collapse of first ethics motivates the transition to second ethics, a specifically Christian ethics based on the existence of sin and divine grace. This argument only works if the validity of first ethics (and rigorism) is presupposed in the first place.12 if the preceding analysis is correct, then we may assume that there are two opposing tendencies at work in Kierkegaard’s authorship: on the one hand, he and the pseudonyms tend to distance themselves from rigorism in the lexical meaning of the word (that is, strictness, hardness, or even pedantry). on the other hand, there is a tendency to endorse rigorism in the technical sense of the term found in Kant. for the most part, however, Kierkegaard and the pseudonyms presuppose rigorism in this technical sense only implicitly. to illustrate this consider the following passage: “the ethical begins straightaway with this requirement to every person [Menneske]: you shall be perfect; if you are not, it is immediately charged to you [regnes det Dig] as guilt.”13 on this rigorist view, ethics demands perfection; anything else implies that one fails completely and is infinitely guilty. there also exist a few passages which somewhat more explicitly endorse rigorism. in the journals Kierkegaard writes:

SKS 4, 342 / CA, 36. the commentators of SKS refer to Kant when commenting on rigorism (SKS K4, 401). reidar thomte’s and a.b. anderson’s translation of ethisk Rigorisme and Den ethiske Rigorisme as “ethical rigor” here and elsewhere (SKS 4, 375 / CA, 71) is inaccurate, since it overlooks the fact that Haufniensis refers not just to any type of ethical rigor, but to the concept of rigorism. 10 SKS 4, 323–31 / CA, 16–24. 11 Cf. SKS 4, 459–60 / CA, 161. 12 The Concept of Anxiety also mentions that the monastic view can be seen as ethical rigorism, something which appears to be a reference to asceticism, self-induced suffering, torment, etc. (SKS 4, 375 / CA, 71). see SKS K4, 440–1. 13 SKS 24, 390, nb24:112 / JP 1, 998. 9

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Roe Fremstedal Christianly the emphasis does not fall so much upon to what extent or how far a person succeeds in meeting or fulfilling the requirement, if he is actually striving, as it is upon his getting an impression of the requirement in all its infinitude that he rightly learns to be humbled and to rely upon grace. To pare down the requirement in order to fulfill it better...to this Christianity in its deepest essence is opposed. No, infinite humiliation and grace, and then a striving born of gratitude—this is Christianity.14

as in several other passages,15 the ethical requirement is presented here as infinite and as something we fail to realize. However, this failure is not interpreted in latitudinarian terms as a partial failure, but in rigorist terms as a total failure that leads to the need for grace. a similar rigorist point is also made in the Concluding Unscientific Postscript: a person can be both good and evil, just as it is quite simply [eenfoldigt] said that a human has a disposition [Anlæg] to both good and evil, but one cannot simultaneously become good and evil. esthetically, the poet has been required not to depict these abstract models of virtue or diabolic characters but to do as goethe does, whose characters are both good and evil. and why is this a legitimate requirement?…we want the poet to depict human beings as they are, and every human being is both good and evil....but take the individual out of this medium of imagination [belonging to the poet], out of this being, and place him in existence—then ethics immediately confronts him with its requirement, whether he now deigns [vil behage] to become, and then be becomes— either good or evil...that all human beings are good and evil, is of no concern at all to ethics, which does not have the medium of being but of becoming and therefore denounces every explanation…that deceitfully wants to explain becoming with being, whereby the absolute decision of becoming is essentially revoked.16

the pseudonym Climacus says that in existence the individual is immediately confronted with the (unconditional) ethical requirement. this confrontation leads to “the absolute decision” in which one chooses between good and evil. instead of being good or evil in himself, man becomes good or evil by virtue of performing this choice. this means that evil consists of an active opposition to the good, rather than a mere lack of good. under the subheading “that sin is not a negation but a position,” Kierkegaard (anti-Climacus) later makes it clear that sin is not merely something negative—it is not simply weakness, sensuousness, finitude, or ignorance. Quite the opposite, sin is something positive: a position, something posited by man through a deed.17 most post-augustinian theories of hereditary sin and original sin have distinguished original sin from sinful acts themselves. Kierkegaard’s different analyses of evil typically follow this augustinian distinction. The Concept of Anxiety distinguishes between peccatum originale (the original sin, the first sin, 14 15 16 17

SKS 24, 163–4, nb22:112 / JP 1, 993. for example, see SKS 25, 175, nb27:63 / JP 2, 1492 and SKS 6, 439 / SLW, 476. SKS 7, 383 / CUP1, 420–1. SKS 11, 209 / SUD, 96; SKS 11, 212 / SUD, 99–100.

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hereditary sin) and actual sin (sin as real or realized, that is, as a specific sinful act).18 this distinction (from melanchton) corresponds to the traditional augustinian distinction between peccatum habituale (habitual sin, that is, sin as a state, attitude or property) and peccatum actuale (sinful acts).19 Kierkegaard (and anti-Climacus) elsewhere distinguishes between essential sin and different sinful acts, suggesting that the former makes the latter possible.20 Corresponding to this is the distinction between total guilt and particular wrongdoings in the Concluding Unscientific Postscript. Climacus makes it clear that rather than being an empirical qualification (Bestemmelse) that refers to particular wrongdoings or acts,21 total, infinite, or essential guilt makes particular wrongdoings possible. essential guilt is a qualitative concept of guilt that makes quantitatively different burdens of debt possible in the same way that essential or original sin makes different sinful acts possible. Climacus says that it is “this totality of guilt that ultimately makes it possible for someone to be guilty or not guilty in the particular [i det Enkelte].”22 However, this presupposes rigorism, since otherwise the smallest wrongdoing does not necessarily imply infinite guilt. The result is that any evil deed is indicative of an evil character. this point can be seen clearly in Kant’s twin doctrines of rigorism and radical evil. according to Kant, all that is needed to establish the existence of an evil character (supreme maxim) is some act that is incompatible with morality (for example, lying or killing). once the existence of such an act has been established, rigorism implies that the character must be evil as well, since otherwise any deviation from morality, however occasional, would be impossible. Climacus radicalizes this Kantian point by claiming that i can only understand whether i am guilty in the particular (i det Enkelte) if i am already essentially guilty.23 that is, the question of guilt in a particular instance (for example, “were you late for your appointment?”) only gives meaning if essential guilt is presupposed as its condition of possibility. accordingly, there is no need for wrongful acts in order to deem someone guilty, since essential guilt can be attributed to anyone who understands questions about guilt. by denying guilt in the particular (for example, “i did not come too late”), you thereby show that you are essentially guilty—the latter is the condition of possibility of understanding the question in the first place. The Concept of Anxiety makes an equally extreme claim about sin: you can only understand sin if you are a sinner.24 if i were neither guilty nor a sinner, then i would understand neither guilt nor sin. this goes beyond the Kantian idea that you need empirical evidence in order to show that evil exists, though it does not deny that evil is something that contingent man has brought upon himself. to summarize, Kierkegaard does not explicitly deal with rigorism in a detailed manner. when he mentions the term “rigorism,” Kierkegaard can be seen as 18 19 20 21 22 23 24

SKS 4, 333–4 / CA, 27–8. SKS K4, 390–1. SKS 8, 380–1 / UD, 285–6. Cf. SKS 11, 218–20 / SUD, 106–8. SKS 7, 481 / CUP1, 529–30. SKS 7, 480–1 / CUP1, 529. SKS 7, 480–1 / CUP1, 528–9. SKS 4, 355 / CA, 50.

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distancing himself from rigorism in the sense of exaggerated or unnecessary strictness. However, a closer analysis suggests that Kierkegaard nevertheless tends to make use of “rigorism” in a technical, Kantian sense. so although Kierkegaard tends to be critical of rigorism in the ordinary sense of the word, he seems to be sympathetic towards Kantian rigorism. this is perhaps most clearly shown in Kierkegaard’s discussion of infinite or total guilt and the claim that any evil deed is indicative of an evil character. see also Choice; duty; ethics; evil; freedom; good; grace; guilt; personality; repentance; salvation/eternal Happiness; self; sin; spirit; will.

romanticism Nassim Bravo Jordán

Romanticism (Romantik—noun) from the german Romantik, the danish term refers to events or situations that stimulate fantasy and feeling. in this sense, it can also be a mood characterized by feeling and longing or by unrealistic fantasizing. finally, the term makes reference to the movement in art, poetry, and philosophy that took place at the beginning of the nineteenth century.1 the most frequent appearance of the word “romanticism” in the published works is in The Concept of Irony, followed by Stages on Life’s Way. the former was Kierkegaard’s master’s dissertation of 1841, while the latter was published in 1845 under the pseudonym “Hilarius bogbinder.” in its adjectival form, “romantic” (romantisk), the term appears most frequently in Either/Or, published in 1843 under the pseudonym “Victor eremita.” However, the most important comments on the concept of romanticism appear in Kierkegaard’s loose papers from 1836. some of these scattered fragments on romanticism were inspired by the work by Christian molbech, Forelæsninger over den nyere danske Poesie,2 to which Kierkegaard makes reference in his Journal BB.3 in this regard, Kierkegaard was especially interested in the relation between the romantic and the classical, and between romanticism and Christianity. during this period, he became increasingly engaged in the analysis of german romantics, such as friedrich von schlegel and Ludwig tieck. Later on, Kierkegaard would identify romanticism with irony.4 Kierkegaard sometimes refers to romanticism as an aesthetic movement and sometimes as an existential position. nevertheless, there are some features that are common to both approaches. (1) romanticism cannot be defined. it is impossible to capture romanticism within a definition because it lacks any distinguishable limits and its essence consists in “flowing over all boundaries.”5 the romantic is in a constant process of transforming itself. It is a continuous flowing, and thus it prevents any kind of Ordbog over det danske Sprog, vols. 1–28, published by the society for danish Language and Literature, Copenhagen: gyldendal 1918–56, vol. 17, columns 1242–3. 2 Christian molbech, Forelæsninger over den nyere danske Poesie, særdeles efter Digterne Evalds, Baggesens og Oehlenschlägers Værker, vols. 1–2, Copenhagen: C.a. reitzel 1832. 3 Cf. SKS 17, 59–62, bb:1 / KJN 1, 53–6. 4 Cf. SKS 1, 312n / CI, 270n. 5 SKS 27, 162, papir 219 / JP 3, 3796. 1

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conceptualization. Since there is no standardized criterion, any attempt at definition is, in fact, contradictory. from a purely aesthetic point of view, Kierkegaard claims that manifoldness “is the dominant feature of romantic artistic perception,”6 and thus it could be argued that this is what defines the romantic. However, not even multiplicity can be considered as a regular standard of romanticism, inasmuch as the romantic can also be present in the opposite, that is, in emptiness; Kierkegaard suggests as examples of “empty” romantic images “the north african desert” and “the jutland heath.”7 furthermore, romanticism is usually connected with “absolute solitude,” a characteristic that is seemingly opposed to superabundance and variety.8 therefore, the underlying feature of romanticism is its boundlessness, not the manifold. Taking into account that Romanticism cannot be grasped in a definition, Kierkegaard tries to illustrate the romantic through metaphors and by comparing it to the position that is considered to be its opposite: Classicism. (2) romanticism has a longing for an ideal that cannot be found or fulfilled in this world. the romantic is characterized by a “longing gaze into an eternity.”9 it looks about outside this world, because the romantic has become aware that its ideal (namely, an inner desire of infinity) does not correspond to given actuality. Naturally, everyday life cannot satisfy this urge. Contrary to the classical, which disapproves “every endeavor which goes beyond the world of actuality,”10 romanticism is constantly striving for an ideal that is not from this world. accordingly, Kierkegaard notes that the necessity of illusion is “a question relative to romanticism,”11 and that while Classicism “is the division of the ideal into the actual without a remainder, romanticism always yields a fraction.”12 this means that the classical ideal is always attainable within the contemporary conventions and that the only possible perfection is to be found in “the realm of actuality,”13 whereas the romantic needs to go beyond the actual. the ideal is constantly eluding the romantic; he can only grasp “the image of the shadow.”14 in other words, the only way in which the romantic can reach the ideal is through allegory and metaphor.15 in this respect, the classical has no allegory. another consequence of the incompatibility between the ideal and actuality is that romanticism is usually at odds with the established order, which is negated and substituted for romantic fantasizing. nonetheless, Kierkegaard suggests that in his age the romantic has started to reconcile with the world. the sign of this is the emergence in Denmark of a figure such as Bertel Thorvaldsen,16 who as a sculptor

6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

SKS 17, 61, bb:1 / KJN 1, 55. SKS 27, 129, papir 125:1 / JP 3, 3797. Cf. SKS 18, 90, ff:70 / KJN 2, 83. SKS 27, 132, papir 133 / JP 3, 3802. SKS 27, 163, papir 224 / JP 1, 852. SKS 27, 140, papir 158 / JP 2, 1232. SKS 27, 130, papir 127 / JP 1, 16. SKS 27, 163, papir 224 / JP 1, 852. SKS 18, 81, ff:29 / KJN 2, 74. Cf. SKS 27, 108, papir 77 / JP 1, 3807. Cf. SKS 27, 138, papir 154:1 / JP 3, 3805.

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“belongs to the classical.”17 thus a new classical stage has commenced. Kierkegaard compares this historical change of paradigms with the monastic movement, which also had “romantic” and “classical” periods. the medieval monks ran away from the world in order to seclude themselves in monasteries; they wore special habits to become recognizable and as a sign of their nonconformity with worldly life—but “finally they lived in the world, reconciled with it (Jesuits, etc.).”18 (3) romanticism is restlessness. The romantic cannot find his place in given actuality and is constantly struggling to find its ideal. As a result of this, the unsatisfied desire of romanticism becomes restlessness. once again, the opposite is the serenity of Classicism. “even the most classical restlessness (for example, Laocoön crushed by serpents) is still serene,” while “the most romantic serenity is restless.”19 Kierkegaard also compares the classical with “a fully matured person,” and romanticism with a man who writes “with hands that tremble so much that one fears the pen will run away from him any moment and make some grotesque stroke.”20 We can find yet another image of romantic restlessness in the Middle Ages, with “all the wandering about that went on: wandering knights, travelling scholars, itinerant singers, musicians, monks, etc.”21 (4) romanticism experiments with possibility. the desire of romanticism cannot be satisfied by given actuality. Insofar as the actual fails to fulfill the needs of the romantic, he finds an alternative solution in the possible. thus the romantic engages in a game of possibilities. to illustrate this point, Kierkegaard observes that while the ancients (the classical) practiced gymnastics and the discus, sports that require discipline and physical harmony, the romantics prefer hunting and fishing, because of “all the dreaming about what one might possibly catch.”22 discontent with reality as it is, the romantic enjoys the excitement of playing with the possible. in this sense, “the romantic is aorist,”23 an ambiguous tense that can refer both to the past and the future, but not the present, which in this metaphor corresponds to the classical. in a similar way, it is the romantic’s unsatisfied need that evokes multiplicity.24 However, both possibility and multiplicity ultimately fail to give the romantic any permanent satisfaction because they prove to be poor and ephemeral substitutes for the true ideal. therefore, the romantic remains restless. finally, Kierkegaard was also interested in the relations between Romanticism and Christianity. the similarity (or dissimilarity) resides in the notion of the ideal and its link with reality. as we have said, in romanticism the ideal cannot be found in given actuality. insofar as Christianity poses an ideal “which is so great that all others disappear alongside it,”25 it could be argued that Christianity is romantic, because in this case the ideal remains as something incommensurable. However, 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25

ibid. ibid. SKS 27, 139, papir 156 / JP 3, 3806. SKS 17, 45, aa:27 / KJN 1, 39. SKS 27, 146, papir 179:7 / JP 3, 3814. SKS 27, 129, papir 125:2 / JP 3, 3798. SKS 27, 130, papir 128:2 / JP 1, 17. Cf. SKS 27, 136, papir 143 / JP 3, 3803. SKS 17, 141, bb:50 / KJN 1, 134.

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if we take into account the doctrine of the god-man, which implies that the ideal (god) becomes actual (Christ), then in this sense Christianity is different from romanticism.26 To summarize, Romanticism is impossible to define, because it has no fixed standard and is boundless. it looks for an ideal that cannot be found in given actuality, and as a consequence the romantic negates reality and becomes restless. in order to quench his frustrated desire, the romantic engages in an endless game of diversity and possibilities. See also Actuality; Aesthetic/Aesthetics; Allegory; Classicism; Finitude/Infinity; imagination; irony; middle ages; mood/emotion/feeling; necessity; poetry; wit.

26

SKS 27, 141, papir 165 / JP 1, 421.

Sacrifice deidre nicole green

Sacrifice (Offer—noun; ofre—verb) Although sacrifice may refer to the slaughter of an animal as an offering to a deity, it is more broadly construed as submission to God. The primary example of sacrifice in Christianity is Christ’s self-offering in the crucifixion for propitiation of human sin.1 the danish Offer is derived from the old danish ofær and old norse offr via the middle Low german and old saxon offer.2 the lexical meaning of ofre in Danish is to give up selflessly or to abandon in favor of something else.3 the concept of sacrifice preoccupies Kierkegaard’s thought, appearing primarily in Fear and Trembling, Works of Love, Practice in Christianity, and Christian Discourses. in The Concept of Irony Kierkegaard distinguishes the ironist from the prophet. a prophet has a presentiment of the future, “walks arm in arm with his age,”4 and can glimpse what is coming; he is lost to his age only insofar as he is concerned with his visions. Conversely, an ironist, who negates actuality, steps out of line with his age to turn around and confront it. His back is to what is coming, and so it is hidden from him; however, he antagonistically faces what he must destroy. the ironist serves as the necessary sacrifice in the world-historical process that allows a new actuality to emerge. Not unlike the prophet, the ironist is a “sacrifice that the world process demands, not as if the ironist always needed in the strictest sense to fall as a sacrifice, but his fervor in the service of the world spirit consumes him.”5 socrates was such an ironist.6 in Repetition Constantin Constantius posits a relation between sacrifice and love. If a girl’s love is not sacrificing love, then she is masculine rather than feminine and mistaken about love’s task.7 Constantius condones sacrificing erotic love for the idea. although the young man’s love entails suffering, this is positive because in his love the idea is in motion. as the most important thing, the idea is the life-principle in erotic love; one must be willing to sacrifice life and even erotic love itself for the The Compact Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary, vols. 1–2, oxford: oxford university press 1971, vol. 2, p. 2617. 2 Ordbog over det danske Sprog, vols. 1–28, published by the society for danish Language and Literature, Copenhagen: gyldendal 1918–56, vol. 15, columns 336–40. 3 ibid., vol. 15, columns 349–52. 4 SKS 1, 299 / CI, 261. 5 ibid. 6 SKS 1, 307 / CI, 271. 7 SKS 4, 20 / R, 143. 1

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idea. Constantius writes, “but to want to serve the idea—which in regard to erotic love is not to serve two masters—is in fact a strenuous service, for no beautiful woman can be as exacting as the idea.”8 The theme of sacrificing oneself for the idea recurs in Stages on Life’s Way, where Frater Taciturnus confesses: “I am not qualified to be a hero, for it is not my victory i am seeking; it is the victory of the idea, and i am willing to be annihilated.”9 Although this form of self-sacrifice remains abstract, the authorship upholds more concrete notions of sacrifice. one of the most notable is johannes de silentio’s dialectical lyric, Fear and Trembling, a protracted exposition on the divine command for Abraham to sacrifice his son isaac. silentio explores whether there can be a teleological suspension of the ethical, which makes room for faith. faith is the paradox that the single individual is higher than the universal.10 from an ethical perspective, abraham’s act can only be understood as murder, but from the religious perspective, it is a sacrifice. The anxiety produced by this contradiction makes abraham who he is.11 abraham’s willingness to sacrifice Isaac involves a double movement: the movement of infinite resignation, in which he relinquishes isaac to god, and the movement of faith, in which he believes he will receive isaac back. this latter movement is one he makes at every moment.12 one resembles abraham not by murder, but by faith.13 silentio notes the activity of sacrifice: Abraham is not to bring Isaac to Moriah so that God can take him, rather, he must sacrifice Isaac.14 Kierkegaard highlights the volition of Abraham’s, Christ’s, and the apostles’ sacrifices.15 Silentio explains that aesthetics can understand that one sacrifices oneself, but cannot understand, and is even offended by, sacrificing another for one’s own sake.16 as a knight of faith, abraham does nothing for the universal, unlike the tragic hero who sacrifices himself for it.17 Key to johannes de silentio’s understanding of Abraham’s act as one of sacrifice is that Abraham loves Isaac “with his whole soul”18 and that when god calls for isaac, abraham loves him even more—this love is definitive in demarcating the act as sacrifice rather than murder—it is sacrifice by virtue of its “paradoxical contrast to his love for god.”19 silentio underscores sacrifice for the other by deeming Sarah from the Book of Tobit a “heroine” because she allows tobias to die for her, to risk death for their marriage, rather than resigning herself to a tragic life of loneliness.20

8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20

SKS 4, 17–18 / R, 140–1. SKS 6, 331 / SLW, 356. SKS 4, 149 / FT, 55. SKS 4, 126 / FT, 30. SKS 4, 203 / FT, 115. SKS 4, 126 / FT, 31. SKS 4, 207 / FT, 119. SKS 12, 117 / PC, 109. SKS 4, 200 / FT, 112. ibid. SKS 4, 165 / FT, 74. ibid. SKS 4, 191–4 / FT, 102–4.

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For Kierkegaard, self-sacrifice defines Christian love. Works of Love deems selfdenial Christianity’s essential form. it is the means by which an individual becomes sober in the sense of eternity: self-denial sets the task, commanding the individual to love the neighbor.21 self-denial drives out preferential and self-love with the eternal duty to love the neighbor.22 this self-denial is not arbitrary, but teleological, aimed at helping the beloved to love god. “the essentially Christian is this: truly to love oneself is to love God; truly to love another person is with every sacrifice (also the sacrifice of becoming hated oneself) to help the other person to love God or in loving god.”23 Praising love requires inward self-denial and outward self-sacrificing unselfishness.24 this self-denial courageously abolishes the categories of “mine” and “yours” in order to lose itself, thereby gaining god.25 one becomes instrumental to divine love, so that god is an omnipotent co-worker with the individual in performing works of love.26 divine love demands everything: “the world cannot take everything, simply because it cannot give everything. that can be done only by god, who takes everything…in order to give everything.”27 Through sacrifice, one gains God’s love and receives everything else in addition. Christian love must be willing to be hated in return for its self-denying love.28 this involves a double danger: to love God more than human beings is the first danger; mockery from others is the second.29 worldly opposition is in an essential relationship to the inwardness of Christianity.30 A truly loving self-sacrifice must be willing to be outside the world, misunderstood by others, lest it stop halfway.31 selfdenial must be a free choice: one knows ahead of time that one will be rejected by the world and chooses it anyway. following Christ, the apostles “resolved to love, to suffer, to endure all things, to be sacrificed in order to save this unloving world. and this is love.”32 Acts of self-sacrifice must be motivated by love: “no work can be pleasing unless it is a work of love.”33 an apostle wants to win others not for himself, but wants to win them for the truth with every sacrifice.34 truly to love is to be willing to sacrifice everything for the truth and not to sacrifice any part of the truth.35 Simultaneously, Kierkegaard qualifies the extent to which sacrifice ought to be expressed in Christian life. At times, self-sacrifice merely makes one self-reflective or feel magnanimous, but this is a form of self-love. He writes: “we praise it as a 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35

SKS 9, 62 / WL, 56. SKS 9, 61–2 / WL, 55. SKS 9, 118 / WL, 114. SKS 9, 367 / WL, 374. SKS 9, 267 / WL, 268–9. SKS 9, 356–7 / WL, 362. SKS 9, 107 / WL, 103. SKS 9, 133 / WL, 130. SKS 9, 88 / WL, 82. SKS 9, 193 / WL, 194. SKS 9, 133 / WL, 130. SKS 13, 105 / FSE, 85. SKS 9, 12 / WL, 3. SKS 9, 360 / WL, 367. SKS 9, 364 / WL, 366.

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characteristic of true love—the more sacrifices a person makes, the more he loves the object of his love. But this, too, is still a form of self-love, for the sacrifices remind a person of himself.”36 To the extent that sacrifice is self-reflexive, it opposes love, which is out of its element when it dwells on itself.37 yet, neighbor love is not a possibility until one has died to the world—the neighbor does not even exist until one in self-denial renounces earthly life.38 The atonement of Jesus Christ epitomizes love’s self-sacrifice for Kierkegaard: Christ’s life was sheer love and the fulfilling of the law.39 the prayer opening Works of Love states that Christ as savior and redeemer reveals what love is by giving himself in order to save humanity; therefore, no one can speak properly of love without remembering Christ who reminds human persons of “that love-sacrifice.”40 Christ, who was love, brings the sacrifice of the Atonement in order to save anyone willing to be saved. Christ performs the atonement out of love for the entirety of humanity.41 Later, Kierkegaard emphasizes the singularity and inimitability of Christ’s atonement even more. in “an occasional discourse” Kierkegaard writes that ostensibly, Christ accomplishes nothing through the Atonement although it is his greatest sacrifice: “no one has ever, in the sense of the moment, accomplished as little by a life solely committed to sacrifice as did Jesus Christ.”42 He contrasts assessing Christ’s life from an eternal Christian perspective from that of the moment: “yet, in the eternal sense, at that same moment he had accomplished everything.”43 Vigilius Haufniensis writes in The Concept of Anxiety that the sacrifice of atonement occurs once: it is only with sin that the Atonement is posited, and its sacrifice is not repeated—the perfection of the sacrifice corresponds to the fact that the actual relation of sin is posited.44 one can only find rest in the Atonement.45 Kierkegaard echoes this.46 on the cross, Christ performs love’s miracle and through his suffering moves every person who has a heart.47 the atonement is as inimitable as it is crucial: at the communion table an individual can do nothing because it is Christ who makes satisfaction.48 this implies that it is wrong to think that Christ is a prototype in terms of ultimate self-sacrifice. Instead, Christ is a prototype in the sense that he passed his life’s test at every moment until his death on the cross. in a human sense, Christ has passed his test and is the prototype helping the individual to pass his or her own

36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48

SKS 22, 194, nb12:95 / JP 3, 2426. SKS 9, 182 / WL, 181–2. SKS 20, 202, nb2:155 / KJN 4, 201. SKS 9, 105 / WL, 100–1. SKS 9, 12 / WL, 3. SKS 9, 115 / WL, 111–12. SKS 8, 196 / UD, 91. ibid. SKS 4, 406 / CA, 104. SKS 4, 461 / CA, 162. SKS 10, 282 / CD, 265. SKS 10, 300 / CD, 280. SKS 10, 323–4 / CD, 298–9.

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test—an examination in becoming a Christian—distinct from his.49 Kierkegaard writes of Christ, “in one respect no one can imitate him…cannot even think of wanting to imitate him (it would be blasphemy), inasmuch as the prototype is the atoner and the atonement.”50 One must be divine for his suffering to be efficacious for others: “no human being has the right to think that his sufferings will be atoning or beneficial for others….this would make him more than human.”51 Human persons must seek divine guidance and use their own reason to determine the extent to which their sacrifices can prove efficacious in each case.52 in Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits Kierkegaard writes that the Christian must follow Christ in self-denial by becoming a servant: “to follow Christ means, then, to deny oneself and means to walk the same road Christ walked in the lowly form…not loving the world and not loved by it.”53 this isolated self “renounces every connection that ordinarily tempts and captures,”54 yet human beings cannot determine what this entails. because Christ was self-denial, he is uniquely qualified to judge human persons on this matter.55 Kierkegaard asks his reader whether he or she is eternally aware of being a single individual, since becoming aware of being a single individual with eternal responsibility before God will require sacrifice.56 in Christian Discourses Kierkegaard reiterates that volitional self-sacrifice is essentially Christian.57 Although it is a blessing to sacrifice for another, it can be harmful to obey another human being; however, this is not the case when it is a matter of obedience to god, since obeying god’s will is the only and highest good. this is true even when one does not understand divine command.58 one can infer that individuals are to trust divine command to sacrifice because Christ is more concerned for an individual’s welfare than he or she is for herself.59 in The Sickness unto Death anti-Climacus discusses the comic situation in which one acts in contradiction to one’s understanding of the truth, moving momentarily from hearing an exposition on the nobility of sacrificing one’s life for the truth in self-denial to helping untruth to be victorious.60 Christ’s sacrifice is double, risking rejection by human beings and posing risk for the beloved since offense and the moment of decision remain: “god cannot remove the possibility that this act of love reverses itself for a person and becomes the most extreme misery…even though it makes a person more miserable than he otherwise would ever have been!”61 Humanly speaking, there are two foreseeable consequences to sacrificing everything 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61

SKS 12, 182–3 / PC, 183. SKS 21, 285, nb10:56 / KJN 5, 296. SKS 25, 201, nb27:86 / JP 2, 1921. ibid. SKS 8, 324 / UD, 223. ibid. SKS 8, 325 / UD, 224. SKS 8, 234–6 / UD, 135–7. SKS 10, 190 / CD, 179. SKS 10, 94 / CD, 86. SKS 12, 88 / PC, 76. SKS 11, 204 / SUD, 91. SKS 11, 237 / SUD, 126.

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for the sake of love so that it becomes the greatest unhappiness for another. first, one’s love would lose its resilience and vitality so that one would renounce love and sacrifice. Second, one would continue to sacrifice but would feel grief over it. Both are problematic because sacrifice performed out of love ought to be joyous.62 anti-Climacus asserts in Practice in Christianity that Christianity came into the world, not for comfort, but to teach Christians that they must suffer and how to endure sufferings they could avoid by not becoming Christian.63 although it is madness to commit one’s whole life to sacrifice without personal gain,64 volition and the possibility of offense are decisive in Christian suffering.65 Christian existence amounts to suffering. asking not for admirers, but for imitators, Christ seeks those who are willing to make their lives a suffering.66 to make Christ an object of admiration evinces an erroneous evasion of Christianity’s requirement. Christ’s life was dedicated to inviting imitation and preventing admiration.67 the requirement is rigorous: it is “[i]n hidden inwardness…to make every sacrifice, to renounce the world and what is of the world.”68 for anti-Climacus, truth can be victorious only through suffering,69 which forges an intimate relation to Christ and Christianity as one always loves more that for which one suffers.70 true love for Christ entails an unconditional commitment to follow him. anti-Climacus criticizes people who are willing to practice self-denial, but want to determine the criterion, want it to be only to a certain degree.71 Love in loftiness is self-love; it is necessary but insufficient.72 He is clear: “the choice is not: either lowliness or loftiness. no, the choice is Christ.”73 god sees the source of human misery as sin, and so he offers himself and extends forgiveness of sins; humans see their misery as due to lacking the ability to make their lives pleasant, so they recoil at the invitation to give up their sins and reject the inviter.74 thus, for anti-Climacus, divine compassion comes into the world as sacrifice.75 This sacrifice entails Christ giving himself. Christ “will grant you a hiding place with himself, and hidden in him he will hide your sins. for he is the friend of sinners…[who] walked the infinitely long way from being God to becoming man.”76 as the only being who can help anyone, Christ makes no condition on those he will help. The greatest sacrifice sacrifices all of its own partiality in willingness to help 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76

SKS 11, 237–8 / SUD, 126–7. SKS 12, 75 / PC, 63. SKS 12, 124 / PC, 116. SKS 12, 117 / PC, 109. SKS 12, 227 / PC, 233. SKS 12, 233 / PC, 239. SKS 12, 245 / PC, 253. SKS 12, 192 / PC, 194. SKS 12, 190 / PC, 191. SKS 12, 72 / PC, 60. SKS 12, 174 / PC, 172. SKS 12, 164 / PC, 160. SKS 12, 72 / PC, 60–1. SKS 12, 72 / PC, 60. SKS 12, 31 / PC, 20.

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the other, completely giving of itself to the other without worrying about the other’s particularity. Human sacrifice can never approximate Christ’s sacrifice. Christ makes his condition identical with that of sufferers to diminish the contrast between him and them and invite them to him.77 Christ sacrifices everything in love, leaving it up to individuals whether or not they will be offended, if they will be saved and receive eternal happiness or not. as Christ’s entire life was suffering, a Christian must be willing to suffer for a lifetime as well. this suffering only occurs once, and the victory, which follows is an eternal one.78 as the prototype, Christ is a promise. in continually coming to resemble the prototype by holding fast to god, Christians move beyond self-effacement to become themselves more and more.79 Out of love, Christians sacrifice their own will to do God’s will, and through the love of God that obeys and sacrifices, one becomes unified with God and as a self.80 while suffering is absolutely essential to Christian life, it is the means of self-fulfillment over and above self-annihilation. In The Point of View for My Work as an Author Kierkegaard describes himself as a sacrifice to bring others to Christianity: “for me there was no comfort or help to be sought in others….I, who sadly love people, wanted to be helpful to them, to find comfort for them, above all clarity in thought…about Christianity.”81 He continues that “in each generation there are two or three who become sacrificed for the others, are used to find out in frightful sufferings what is beneficial for others….I was designated for this.”82 He records that his self-understanding as a sacrifice affected his relationship to regine olsen from the beginning.83 Kierkegaard interprets his melancholy as a sacrifice to gain insight: “I conceived of myself as sacrificed because I understood that my sufferings and torments made me inventive in ascertaining the truth.… I stand at the point where…in an outward sense…there are men who are sacrificed for the others.”84 This self-understanding as sacrifice for others is manifest further in his role as a philosopher of love: he can only be a dash. In his self-sacrifice, he is willing to perish, be an instrument in the hands of god, and work invisibly to help others to become their own masters.85 Kierkegaard reflects that to be Christian is to be sacrificed. Christianity is the unconditioned and when one relates oneself absolutely to the unconditioned, one is eo ipso sacrificed to the conditioned. Even without becoming a sacrifice for others, the Christian becomes a sacrifice in the unconditional relation to the unconditioned. Kierkegaard uses Christ’s metaphor of salt to depict how the Christian is to be a sacrifice: “To be salt means not to exist for oneself but to exist for others, that is, to be sacrificed. Salt has no being in itself but is purely teleological, 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85

SKS 12, 23–4 / PC, 13–14. SKS 10, 109 / CD, 97. SKS 10, 51–4 / CD, 40–2. SKS 10, 92–3 / CD, 84. SKS 16, 60 / PV, 81. ibid. SKS 20, 421, nb5:126 / KJN 4, 422. ibid. SKS 9, 277 / WL, 279.

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and to be qualified wholly in a teleological way means to be sacrificed.”86 individuals destined to be sacrifices for the human race are qualitatively different from other human beings. they are beings of spirit who discover that quality in themselves only through rejection and suffering.87 Kierkegaard’s writings are consumed with the concept of sacrifice. Sacrifice defined Christ’s earthly existence, and because Christ calls for imitators, sacrifice is essential to the individual Christian’s existence as well. proper love for god, self, and the neighbor require self-sacrifice, yet love places important limits on self-sacrifice. individuals, who must not qualify their commitment to Christ, cannot impose these limits themselves; instead, they must seek divine help and insight to distinguish what is truly self-sacrifice. Although Kierkegaard strongly advocates sacrifice, a nuanced reading demonstrates that he also sets limits on its role in Christian life. see also apostle; atonement/reconciliation; Christ; dying to/renunciation; faith; forgiveness; imitation; Love; martyrdom/persecution; salvation/eternal Happiness; suffering.

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SKS 25, 269, nb28:62 / JP 4, 4906. SKS 25, 458, nb30:90 / JP 2, 2059.