Selections from the Writings of Kierkegaard
those who saw the Lord and walked in His blessed company is but a
sentimental, and fatal, delusion. On the other hand, to found one's
faith on the glorious results, now evident, of Christ's appearance in
the world is sheer thoughtlessness and blasphemy. With ineluctable
cogency it follows that "there can be no disciple at second hand."
Now, as well as "1800 years ago," whether in Heathendom or in
Christendom, faith is born of the same conditions: the resolute
acceptance by the individual of the absolute paradox.
In previous works Kierkegaard had already intimated that what
furnished man the impetus to rise into the highest sphere and to
assail passionately and incessantly the barrier of the paradox, or else
caused him to lapse into "demonic despair," was the consciousness of
sin. In the book _Begrebet Angest_ "The Concept of Sin," he now
attempts with an infinite and laborious subtlety to explain the nature
of sin. Its origin is found in the "sympathetic antipathy" of
Dread--that force which at one and the same time attracts and
repels from the suspected danger of a fall and is present even in the
state of innocence, in children. It finally results in a kind of
"dizziness" which is fatal. Yet, so Kierkegaard contends, the "fall"
of man is, in every single instance, due to a definite act of the will,
a "leap"--which seems a patent contradiction.
To the modern reader, this is the least palatable of Kierkegaard's
works, conceived as it is with a sovereign and almost medieval
disregard of the predisposing undeniable factors of environment and
heredity (which, to be sure, poorly fit his notion of the absolute
responsibility of the individual). Its somberness is redeemed, to a
certain degree, by a series of marvelous observations, drawn from
history and literature, on the various phases and manifestations
of Dread in human life.
On the same day as the book just discussed there appeared, as a
"counter-irritant," the hilariously exuberant _Forord_ "Forewords,"
a collection of some eight playful but vicious attacks, in the form of
prefaces, on various foolish manifestations of Hegelianism in Denmark.
They are aimed chiefly at the high-priest of the "system," the poet
Johan Ludvig Heiberg who, as the _arbiter elegantiarum_ of the
times had presumed to review, with a plentiful lack of insight,
Kierkegaard's activity. But some of the most telling shots are fired at
a number of the individualist Kierkegaard's pet aversions.
His next great work, _Stadier paa Livets Vei_ "Stages on
Life's Road," forms a sort of resume of the results so far gained.
The three "spheres" are more clearly elaborated.
The æsthetic sphere is represented existentially by the incomparable
_In Vino Veritas_, generally called "The Banquet," from a purely
literary point of view the most perfect of Kierkegaard's works, which,
if written in one of the great languages of Europe, would have procured
him world fame. Composed in direct emulation of Plato's immortal
Symposion, it bears comparison with it as well as any modern composition
can.[6] Indeed, it excels Plato's work in subtlety, richness, and
refined humor. To be sure, Kierkegaard has charged his creation with
such romantic super-abundance of delicate observations and rococo
ornament that the whole comes dangerously near being improbable;
whereas the older work stands solidly in reality.
It is with definite purpose that the theme of the speeches of the
five participants in the banquet is love, i.e., the relation of the two
sexes in love; for it is there the main battle between the æsthetic and
the ethical view of life must be fought out. Accordingly, Judge William,
to whom the last idyllic pages of "The Banquet" again introduce us, in
the second part breaks another shaft in defense of marriage, which in
the ethical view of life is the typical realization of the "general
law." Love exists also for the ethical individual. In fact, love and no
other consideration whatsoever can justify marriage. But whereas to the
æsthetic individual love is merely eroticism, viz., a passing
self-indulgence without any obligation, the ethical individual attaches
to himself the woman of his choice by an act of volition, for better or
for worse, and by his marriage vow incurs an obligation to society.
Marriage is thus a synthesis of love and duty. A pity only that
Kierkegaard's astonishingly low evaluation of woman utterly mars
what would otherwise be a classic defense of marriage.
The religious sphere is shown forth in the third part,
_Skyldig--Ikke-Skyldig_ "Guilty--Not-Guilty," with the apt subtitle
"A History of Woe." Working over, for the third time, and in the most
intense fashion, his own unsuccessful attempt to "realize the general
law," i.e., by marrying, he here presents in the form of a diary the
essential facts of his own engagement, but in darker colors than in
"Repetition." It is broken because of religious incompatibility
and the lover's unconquerable melancholy; and by his voluntary
renunciation, coupled with acute suffering through his sense of guilt
for his act, he is driven up to an approximation of the religious
sphere. Not unjustly, Kierkegaard himself regarded this as the richest
of his works.
One may say that "Guilty--Not-Guilty" corresponds to Kierkegaard's
own development at this stage. Christianity is still above him. How
may it be attained? This is the grand theme of the huge book
whimsically named "Final Unscientific Postscript to the Philosophical
Trifles," _Afsluttende Uvidenskabelig Efterskrift_ (1846): "How
shall I become a Christian, I, Johannes Climacus, born in this city,
thirty years of age, and not in any way different from the ordinary
run of men"?
Following up the results gained in the "Trifles," the subjectivity
of faith is established once for all: it is not to be attained by
swearing to any set of dogmas, not even Scripture; for who will vouch
for its being an absolutely reliable and inspired account of Christ?
Besides, as Lessing had demonstrated conclusively: historic facts never
can become the proof of eternal verities. Nor can the existence of the
Church through the ages furnish any guarantee for faith--straight
counter to the opinion, held by Kierkegaard's famous contemporary
Grundtvig--any more than can mere contemporaneousness establish
a guarantee for those living at the beginning. To sum up: "One who has
an objective Christianity and nothing else, he is _eo ipso_ a
heathen." For the same reason, "philosophic speculation" is not the
proper approach, since it seeks to understand Christianity objectively,
as an historic phenomenon--which rules it out from the start.
It is only by a decisive "leap," from objective thinking into
subjective faith, with the consciousness of sin as the driving power,
that the individual may realize (we would say, attain) Christianity. Nor
is it gained once for all, but must ever be maintained by passionately
assailing the paradox of faith, which is, that one's eternal salvation
is based on an historic fact. The main thing always is the "how,"
not the "what." Kierkegaard goes so far as to say that he who with
fervency and inwardness prays to some false god is to be preferred
to him who worships the true god, but without the passion of devotion.
In order to prevent any misunderstanding about the manner of
presentation in this remarkable book, it will be well to add
Kierkegaard's own remark after reading a conscientious German review of
his "Trifles": "Although the account given is correct, every one who
reads it will obtain an altogether incorrect impression of the book;
because the account the critic gives is in the _ex cathedra style_
(docerende), which will produce on the reader the impression
that the book is written in a like manner. But this is in my eyes the
worst misconception possible." And as to its peculiar conversational,
entertaining manner which in the most leisurely, legère fashion and in
an all but dogmatic style treats of the profoundest problems, it is well
to recall the similarly popular manner of Pascal in his _Lettres
Provinciales._ Like him--and his grand prototype Socrates--Kierkegaard
has the singular faculty of attacking the most abstruse matters with
a chattiness bordering on frivolity, yet without ever losing dignity.
For four and a half years Kierkegaard had now, notwithstanding
his feeble health, toiled feverishly and, as he himself states,
without even a single day's remission. And "the honorarium had been
rather Socratic": all of his books had been brought out at his own
expense, and their sale had been, of course, small. (Of the "Final
Postscript," e.g., which had cost him between 500 and 600 rixdollars,
only 60 copies were sold). Hardly any one had understood what the
purpose of this "literature" was. He himself had done, with the utmost
exertion and to the best of his ability, what he set out to do: to show
his times, which had assumed that being a Christian is an easy enough
matter, how unspeakably difficult a matter it really is and what terribly
severe demands it makes on natural man. He now longed for rest
and seriously entertained the plan of bringing his literary career to
a close and spending the remainder of his days as a pastor of some
quiet country parish, there to convert his philosophy into terms of
practical existence. But this was not to be. An incident which would
seem ridiculously small to a more robust nature sufficed to inflict on
Kierkegaard's sensitive mind the keenest tortures and thus to sting
him into a renewed and more passionate literary activity.
As it happened, the comic paper _Korsaren_ "The Corsair" was then
at the heyday of its career. The first really democratic periodical
in Denmark, it stood above party lines and through its malicious,
brilliant satire and amusing caricatures of prominent personalities
was hated, feared, and enjoyed by everybody. Its editor, the Jewish
author Meir Goldschmidt, was a warm and outspoken admirer of the
philosopher. Kierkegaard, on the other hand, had long regarded
the Press with suspicion. He loathed it because it gave expression
to, and thus subtly flattered, the multitude, "the public,"
"the mob"--as against the individual, and because it worked with
the terrible weapon of anonymity; but held it especially dangerous by
reason of its enormous circulation and daily repetition of mischievous
falsehoods. So it seemed to him who ever doubted the ability of the
"people" to think for themselves. In a word, the Press is to him "the
evil principle in the modern world." Needless to say, the tactics of
"The Corsair," in particular, infuriated him.
In a Christmas annual (1845) there had appeared a blundering
review, by one of the collaborators on "The Corsair," of his "Stages on
Life's Road." Seizing the opportunity offered, Kierkegaard wrote a
caustic rejoinder, adding the challenge: "Would that I now soon appear
in 'The Corsair.' It is really hard on a poor author to be singled out
in Danish literature by remaining the only one who is not abused in
it." We know now that Goldschmidt did his best in a private interview
to ward off a feud, but when rebuffed he turned the batteries of his
ridicule on the personality of his erstwhile idol. And for the better
part of a year the Copenhagen public was kept laughing and grinning
about the unequal trouser legs, the spindle shanks, the inseparable
umbrella, the dialectic propensities, of "Either-Or," as Kierkegaard came
to be called by the populace; for, owing to his peripatetic
habits--acquired in connection with the Indirect Communication--he
had long been a familiar figure on the streets of the capital. While
trying to maintain an air of indifference, he suffered the tortures
of the damned. In his Journal (several hundred of whose pages are