Creditable as have been the contributions of Scandinavia to
the cultural life of the race in well-nigh all fields of human
endeavor, it has produced but one thinker of the first magnitude,
the Dane, Sören Å. Kierkegaard[1]. The fact that he is virtually
unknown to us is ascribable, on the one hand to the inaccessibility
of his works, both as to language and form; on the other, to the
regrettable insularity of English thought.
It is the purpose of this book to remedy the defect in a measure,
and by a selection from his most representative works to provide a
stimulus for a more detailed study of his writings; for the present
times, ruled by material considerations, wholly led by socializing,
and misled by national, ideals are precisely the most opportune to
introduce the bitter but wholesome antidote of individual responsibility,
which is his message. In particular, students of Northern literature
cannot afford to know no more than the name of one who exerted a
potent and energizing influence on an important epoch of Scandinavian
thought. To mention only one instance, the greatest ethical poem of our
age, "Brand"--notwithstanding Ibsen's curt statement that he
"had read little of Kierkegaard and understood less"--undeniably
owes its fundamental thought to him, whether directly or indirectly.
Of very few authors can it be said with the same literalness
as, of Kierkegaard that their life is their works: as if to furnish
living proof of his untiring insistance on inwardness, his life, like
that of so many other spiritual educators of the race, is notably poor
in incidents; but his life of inward experiences is all the
richer--witness the "literature within a literature" that came to
be within a few years and that gave to Danish letters a score of
immortal works.
Kierkegaard's physical heredity must be pronounced unfortunate.
Being the child of old parents--his father was fifty-seven,
his mother forty-five years at his birth (May 5, 1813), he had a weak
physique and a feeble constitution. Still worse, he inherited from his
father a burden of melancholy which he took a sad pride in masking
under a show of sprightliness. His father, Michael Pedersen Kierkegaard,
had begun life as a poor cotter's boy in West Jutland, where he was
set to tend the sheep on the wild moorlands. One day, we are told,
oppressed by loneliness and cold, he ascended a hill and in a passionate
rage cursed God who had given him this miserable existence--the
memory of which "sin against the Holy Ghost" he was not able to
shake off to the end of his long life[2]. When seventeen years
old, the gifted lad was sent to his uncle in Copenhagen, who
was a well-to-do dealer in woolens and groceries. Kierkegaard
quickly established himself in the trade and amassed a considerable
fortune. This enabled him to withdraw from active life when only
forty, and to devote himself to philosophic studies, the leisure
for which life had till then denied him. More especially he seems
to have studied the works of the rationalistic philosopher Wolff.
After the early death of his first wife who left him no issue, he
married a former servant in his household, also of Jutish stock,
who bore him seven children. Of these only two survived him, the
oldest son--later bishop--Peder Christian, and the youngest son,
Sören Åbye.
Nowhere does Kierkegaard speak of his mother, a woman of simple
mind and cheerful disposition; but he speaks all the more often of his
father, for whom he ever expressed the greatest love and admiration and
who, no doubt, devoted himself largely to the education of his sons,
particularly to that of his latest born. Him he was to mould in his own
image. A pietistic, gloomy spirit of religiosity pervaded the household
in which the severe father was undisputed master, and absolute obedience
the watchword. Little Sören, as he himself tells us, heard more of the
Crucified and the martyrs than of the Christ-child and good angels. Like
John Stuart Mill, whose early education bears a remarkable resemblance
to his, he "never had the joy to be a child." Although less
systematically held down to his studies, in which religion was the
be-all and end-all (instead of being banished, as was the case with
Mill), he was granted but a minimum of out-door play and exercise. And,
instead of strengthening the feeble body, his father threw the whole
weight of his melancholy on the boy.
Nor was his home training, formidably abstract, counterbalanced
by a normal, healthy school-life. Naturally introspective and shy, both
on account of a slight deformity of his body and on account of the
old-fashioned clothes his father made him wear, he had no boy friends;
and when cuffed by his more robust contemporaries, he could defend
himself only with his biting sarcasm. Notwithstanding his early maturity
he does not seem to have impressed either his schoolmates or his
teachers by any gifts much above the ordinary. The school he attended
was one of those semi-public schools which by strict discipline and
consistent methods laid a solid foundation of humanities and mathematics
for those who were to enter upon a professional career. The natural
sciences played noddle whatever.
Obedient to the wishes of his father, Sören chose the study of
theology, as had his eldest brother; but, once relieved from the grind
of school at the age of seventeen, he rejoiced in the full liberty of
university life, indulging himself to his heart's content in all the
refined intellectual and æsthetic enjoyments the gay capital of
Copenhagen offered. He declares himself in later years to be "one who
is penitent" for having in his youth plunged into all kinds of excesses;
but we feel reasonably sure that he committed no excesses worse than
"high living." He was frequently seen at the opera and the theatre,
spent money freely in restaurants and confectionary shops, bought
many and expensive books, dressed well, and indulged in such
extravagances as driving in a carriage and pair, alone, for days
through the fields and forests of the lovely island of Zealand. In
fact, he contracted considerable debts, so that his disappointed
father decided to put him on an allowance of 500 rixdollars
yearly--rather a handsome sum, a hundred years ago.
Naturally, little direct progress was made in his studies. But
while to all appearances aimlessly dissipating his energies, he showed
a pronounced love for philosophy and kindred disciplines. He lost no
opportunity then offered at the University of Copenhagen to train his
mind along these lines. He heard the sturdily independent Sibbern's
lectures on æsthetics and enjoyed a "privatissimum" on the main issues
of Schleiermacher's Dogmatics with his later enemy, the theologian
Martensen, author of the celebrated "Christian Dogmatics."
But there was no steadiness in him. Periods of indifference to these
studies alternated with feverish activity, and doubts of the truth of
Christianity, with bursts of devotion. However, the Hebraically stern
cast of mind of the externally gay student soon wearied of this
rudderless existence. He sighs for an "Archimedean" point of support for
his conduct of life. We find the following entry in his diary, which
prophetically foreshadows some of the fundamental ideas of his later
career: "...what I really need is to arrive at a clear comprehension of
what I am to do, not of what I am to grasp with my understanding,
except insofar as this understanding is necessary for every action. The
point is, to comprehend what I am called to do, to see what the Godhead
really means that I shall do, to find a truth which is truth for me, to
find the idea for which I am willing to live and to die..."
This Archimedean point was soon to be furnished him. There came a
succession of blows, culminating in the death of his father, whose
silent disapprobation had long been weighing heavily on the conscience
of the wayward son. Even more awful, perhaps, was a revelation made by
the dying father to his sons, very likely touching that very "sin
against the Holy Ghost" which he had committed in his boyhood and the
consequence of which he now was to lay on them as a curse, instead of
his blessing. Kierkegaard calls it "the great earthquake, the terrible
upheaval, which suddenly forced on me a new and infallible interpretation
of all phenomena." He began to suspect that he had been chosen by
Providence for an extraordinary purpose; and with his abiding filial
piety he interprets his father's death; as the last of many sacrifices
he made for him; "for he died, not away from me, but for me, so that
there might yet, perchance, become something of me." Crushed by this
thought, and through the "new interpretation" despairing of happiness
in this life, he clings to the thought of his unusual intellectual
powers as his only consolation and a means by which his salvation
might be accomplished. He quickly absolved his examination for
ordination (ten years after matriculation) and determined on his
magisterial dissertation[3].
Already some years before he had made a not very successful debut
in the world of letters with a pamphlet whose queer title "From the
MSS. of One Still Living" reveals Kierkegaard's inborn love of
mystification and innuendo. Like a Puck of philosophy, with somewhat
awkward bounds and a callow manner, he had there teased the worthies of
his times; and, in particular, taken a good fall out of Hans Christian
Andersen, the poet of the Fairy Tales, who had aroused his indignation
by describing in somewhat lachrymose fashion the struggles of genius to
come into its own. Kierkegaard himself was soon to show the truth of
his own dictum that "genius does not whine but like a thunderstorm goes
straight counter to the wind."
While casting about for a subject worthy of a more sustained
effort--he marks out for study the legends of Faust, of the
Wandering Jew, of Don Juan, as representatives of certain basic views
of life; the Conception of Satire among the Ancients, etc.,
etc.,--he at last becomes aware of his affinity with Socrates,
in whom he found that rare harmony between theory and the conduct of
life which he hoped to attain himself.
Though not by Kierkegaard himself counted among the works bearing on
the "Indirect Communication"--presently to be explained--his
magisterial dissertation, entitled "The Conception of Irony, with
Constant Reference to Socrates," a book of 300 pages, is of crucial
importance. It shows that, helped by the sage who would not directly
help any one, he had found the master key: his own interpretation of
life. Indeed, all the following literary output may be regarded as the
consistent development of the simple directing thoughts of his firstling
work. And we must devote what may seem a disproportionate amount of
space to the explanation of these thoughts if we would enter into
the world of his mind.
Not only did Kierkegaard feel kinship with Socrates. It did not
escape him that there was an ominous similarity between Socrates'
times and his own--between the period of flourishing Attica,
eminent in the arts and in philosophy, when a little familiarity with
the shallow phrases of the Sophists enabled one to have an opinion
about everything on earth and in heaven, and his own Copenhagen in the
thirties of the last century, when Johan Ludvig Heiberg had popularized
Hegelian philosophy with such astonishing success that the very cobblers
were using the Hegelian terminology, with "Thesis, Antithesis, and
Synthesis," and one could get instructions from one's barber, while
being shaved, how to "harmonize the ideal with reality, and our wishes
with what we have attained." Every difficulty could be "mediated,"
according to this recipe. And just as the great questioner of Athens
gave pause to his more naïve contemporaries by his "know thyself,"
so Kierkegaard insisted that he must rouse his contemporaries from
their philosophic complacency and unwarranted optimism, and move,
them to realize that the spiritual life has both mountain and valley,
that it is no flat plain easy to travel. He intended to show difficulties
where the road had been supposedly smoothed for them.
Central, both in the theory and in the practice of Socrates
(according to Kierkegaard), is his irony. The ancient sage would
stop old and young and quizz them skilfully on what they regarded as
common and universally established propositions, until his interlocutor
became confused by some consequence or contradiction arising
unexpectedly, and until he who had been sure of his knowledge was made
to confess his ignorance, or even to become distrustful of the
possibility of knowledge. Destroying supposedly positive values, this
method would seem to lead to a negative result only.
Kierkegaard makes less (and rather too little) of the positive side
of Socrates' method, his _maieutic_, or midwifery, by which we
are led inductively from trivial instances to a new definition of a
conception, a method which will fit all cases. Guided by a lofty
personality, this Socratic irony becomes, in Kierkegaard's definition,
merely "the negative liberation of subjectivity"; that is, not the
family, nor society, nor the state, nor any rules superimposed from
outside, but one's innermost self (or subjectivity) is to be the
determining factor in one's life. And understood thus, irony as a
negative element borders on the ethical conception of life.
Romantic irony, on the other hand, laying main stress on subjective
liberty, represents the æsthetic conduct of life. It was, we remember,
the great demand of the Romantic period that one live poetically. That
is, after having reduced all reality to possibilities, all existence to
fragments, we are to choose _ad libitum_ one such possible existence,
to consider that one's proper sphere, and for the rest to look
ironically on all other reality as philistine. Undeniably, this license,
through the infinitude of possibilities open to him, gives the ironist
an enthusiastic sense of irresponsible freedom in which he "disports
himself as does Leviathan in the deep." Again, the "æsthetical
individual" is ill at ease in the world into which he is born. His
typical ailment is a Byronesque _Weltschmerz._ He would fain mould
the elements of existence to suit himself; that, is, "compose" not
only himself but also his surroundings. But without fixed task and
purpose, life will soon lose all continuity ("except that of boredom")
and fall apart into disconnected moods and impulses. Hence, while
supposing himself a superman, free, and his own master, the æsthetic
individual is, in reality, a slave to the merest accidents. He is not
self-directed, self-propelled; but--drifts.
Over against this attitude Kierkegaard now sets the ethical,
Christian life, one with a definite purpose and goal beyond itself.
"It is one thing to compose one's own life, another, to let one's life
be composed. The Christian lets his life be composed; and insofar a
simple Christian lives far more poetically than many a genius." It
would hardly be possible to characterize the contents of Kierkegaard's
first great book, _Enten-Eller_ "Either-Or," more inclusively
and tersely.
Very well, then, the Christian life, with its clear directive, is
superior to the æsthetic existence. But how is this: are we not all
Christians in Christendom, children of Christians, baptized and
confirmed according to the regulations of the Church? And are we
not all to be saved according to the promise of Our Lord who died for
us? At a very early time Kierkegaard, himself desperately struggling to
maintain his Christian faith against doubts, had his eyes opened to this
enormous delusion of modern times and was preparing to battle against
it. The great idea and task for which he was to live and to die--here
it was: humanity is in apparent possession of the divine truth, but
utterly perverts it and, to cap injury with insult, protects and
intrenches the deception behind state sanction and institutions. More
appalling evil confronted not even the early protagonists of
Christianity against heathendom. How was he, single-handed,
magnificently gifted though he was, to cleanse the temple and restore
its pristine simplicity?
Clearly, the old mistake must not be repeated, to try to influence
and reform the masses by a vulgar and futile "revival," preaching to
them directly and gaining disciples innumerable. It would only lead
again, to the abomination of a lip service. But a ferment must be
introduced which--he hoped--would gradually restore Christianity to
its former vigor; at least in individuals. So far as the form of his
own works is concerned he was thus bound to use the "indirect method"
of Socrates whom he regards as his teacher. In conscious opposition to
the Sophists who sold their boasted wisdom for money, Socrates not
only made no charges for his instruction but even warned people of his
ignorance, insisting that, like a midwife, he only helped people to
give birth to their own thoughts. And owing to his irony Socrates'
relation to his disciples was not in any positive sense a personal one.
Least of all did he wish to found a new "school" or erect a philosophic
"system."
Kierkegaard, with Christianity as his goal, adopted the same
tactics. By an attractive æsthetic beginning people were to be "lured"
into envisaging the difficulties to be unfolded presently, to think for
themselves, to form their own conclusions, whether for or against. The
individual was to be appealed to, first and last--the individual,
no matter how humble, who would take the trouble to follow him and
be his reader, "my only reader, the single individual. So the
religious author must make it his first business to put himself in touch
with men. That is to say, he must begin æsthetically. The more brilliant
his performance, the better." And then, when he has got them to follow
him "he must produce the religious categories so that these same men
with all the impetus of their devotion to æsthetic things are suddenly
brought up sharp against the religious aspect." The writer's own
personality was to be entirely eliminated by a system of pseudonyms;
for the effect of his teaching was not to be jeopardized by a
distracting knowledge of his personality. Accordingly, in conscious
imitation of Socrates, Kierkegaard at first kept up a semblance of his
previous student life, posing as a frivolous idler on the streets of
Copenhagen, a witty dog incapable of prolonged serious activity; thus
anxiously guarding the secret of his feverish activity during the lonely
hours of the night.
His campaign of the "indirect communication" was thus fully
determined upon; but there was still lacking the impetus of an elemental
passion to start it and give it driving force and conquering persistence.
This also was to be furnished him.
Shortly before his father's death he had made the acquaintance of
Regine Olson, a beautiful young girl of good family. There followed one
of the saddest imaginable engagements. The melancholy, and essentially
lonely, thinker may not at first have entertained the thought of a
lasting attachment; for had he not, on the one hand, given up all
hope of worldly happiness, and on the other, begun to think of himself
as a chosen tool of heaven not to be bound by the ordinary ties of
human affection? But the natural desire to be as happy as others and to
live man's common lot, for a moment hushed all anxious scruples. And
the love of the brilliant and promising young man with the deep,
sad eyes and the flashing wit was ardently returned by her.
Difficulties arose very soon. It was not so much the extreme youth
and immaturity of the girl--she was barely sixteen--as against his
tremendous mental development, or even her "total lack of religious
pre-suppositions"; for that might not itself have precluded a happy
union. Vastly more ominous was his own unconquerable and overwhelming
melancholy. She could not break it. And struggle as he might, he
could not banish it. And, he reasoned, even if he were successful
in concealing it from her, the very concealment were a deceit. Neither
would he burden her with his melancholy by revealing it to her.
Besides, some mysterious ailment which, with Paul, he terms the "thorn
in his flesh," tormented him. The fact that he consulted a physician
makes it likely that it was bodily, and perhaps sexual. On the other
hand, the manner of Kierkegaard's multitudinous references to woman
removes the suspicion of any abnormality. The impression remains that
at the bottom of his trouble there lay his melancholy, aggravated
admittedly by an "insane education," and coupled with an exaggerated
sense of a misspent youth. That nothing else prevented the union
is clear from his own repeated later remarks that, with more faith,
he would have married her.
Though to the end of his life he never ceased to love her, he
feels that they must part. But she clings to him with a rather maudlin
devotion, which, to be sure, only increased his determination. He
finally hit on the desperate device of pretending frivolous indifference
to her affections, and acted this sad comedy with all the dialectic
subtleness of his genius, until she eventually released him. Then,
after braving for a while the philistine indignation of public opinion
and the disapproval of his friends, in order to confirm her in her bad
opinion of him, he fled to Berlin with shattered nerves and a bleeding
heart.
He had deprived himself of what was dearest to him in life. For
all that, he knew that the foundations of his character remained
unshaken. The voluntary renunciation of a worldly happiness which
was his for the taking intensifies his idea of being one of the "few
in each generation selected to be a sacrifice." Thereafter, "his thought
is all to him," and all his gifts are devoted to the service of God.
During the first half of the nineteenth century, more than at any
other time, Denmark was an intellectual dependency of Germany. It
was but natural that Kierkegaard, in search for the ultimate verities,
should resort to Berlin where Schelling was just then beginning his
famous course of lectures. In many respects it may be held deplorable
that, at a still formative stage, Kierkegaard should have remained in
the prosaic capital of Prussia and have been influenced by bloodless
abstractions; instead of journeying to France, or still better, to
England whose empiricism would, no doubt, have been an excellent
corrective of his excessive tendency to speculation. In fact he was
quickly disappointed with Schelling and after four months returned
to his beloved Copenhagen (which he was not to leave thereafter
except for short periods), with his mind still busy on the problems
which were peculiarly his own. The tremendous impulse given by his
unfortunate engagement was sufficient to stimulate his sensitive mind
to a productivity without equal in Danish literature, to create a
"literature within a literature." The fearful inner collision
of motives had lit an inner conflagration which did not die down for
years. "My becoming an author is due chiefly to her, my melancholy,
and my money."
About a year afterwards (1843) there appeared his first great work,
"Either-Or," which at once established his fame. As in the case of most
of his works it will be impossible to give here more than the barest
outline of its plan and contents. In substance, it is a grand debate
between the æsthetic and the ethic views of life. In his dissertation
Kierkegaard had already characterized the æsthetic point of view. Now,
in a brilliant series of articles, he proceeds' to exemplify it with
exuberant detail.
The fundamental chord of the first part is struck in the _Diapsalmata_
aphorisms which, like so many flashes of a lantern, illuminate
the æsthetic life, its pleasures and its despair. The æsthetic
individual--this is brought out in the article entitled "The Art of
Rotation"--wishes to be the exception in human society, shirking its
common, humble duties and claiming special privileges. He has no fixed
principle except that he means not to be bound to anything or anybody.
He has but one desire which is, to enjoy the sweets of life--whether
its purely sensual pleasures or the more refined Epicureanism of the
finer things in life and art, and the ironic enjoyment of one's own
superiority over the rest of humanity; and he has no fear except that
he may succumb to boredom.
As a comment on this text there follow a number of essays in
"experimental psychology," supposed to be the fruit of the æsthete's
(A's) leisure. In them the æsthetic life is exhibited in its various
manifestations, in "terms of existence," especially as to its "erotic
stages," from the indefinite longings of the Page to the fully conscious
"sensual genius" of Don Juan--the examples are taken from Mozart's
opera of this name, which was Kierkegaard's favorite--until the
whole culminates in the famous "Diary of the Seducer," containing
elements of the author's own engagement, poetically disguised--a
seducer, by the way, of an infinitely reflective kind.
Following this climax of unrestrained æstheticism we hear in the
second part the stern demands of the ethical life. Its spokesman, Judge
William, rises in defense of the social institutes, and of marriage in
particular, against the slurs cast on them by his young friend A. He
makes it clear that the only possible outcome of the æsthetic life,
with its aimlessness, its superciliousness, its vague possibilities,
is a feeling of vanity and vexation of spirit, and a hatred of life
itself: despair. One floundering in this inevitable slough of despond,
who earnestly wishes to escape from it and to save himself from the
ultimate destruction of his personality, must choose and determine to
rise into the ethical sphere. That is, he must elect a definite calling,
no matter how humdrum, marry, if possible, and thus subject himself
to the "general law." In a word, instead of a world of vague
possibilities, however attractive, he must choose the definite
circumscription of the individual who is a member of society. Only
thus will he obtain a balance in his life between the demands of his
personality on the one hand, and of the demands of society on him.
When thus reconciled to his environment--his "lot"--all the
pleasures of the æsthetic sphere which he resigned will be his again
in rich measure, but in a transfigured sense.
Though nobly eloquent in places, and instinct with warm feeling,
this panegyric on marriage and the fixed duties of life is somewhat
unconvincing, and its style undeniably tame and unctious--at
least when contrasted with the Satanic verve of most of A's papers.
The fact is that Kierkegaard, when considering the ethical sphere, in
order to carry out his plan of contrasting it with the æsthetic sphere,
was already envisaging the higher sphere of religion, to which the
ethical sphere is but a transition, and which is the only true
alternative to the æsthetic life. At the very end of the book
Kierkegaard, flying his true colors, places a sermon as an "ultimatum,"
purporting to have been written by a pastor on the Jutish Heath. Its
text is that "as against God we are always in the wrong," and the tenor
of it, "only that truth which edifies is truth for you." It is not that
you must choose either the æsthetic or the ethical view of life; but
that neither the one nor the other is the full truth--God alone is the
truth which must be grasped with all inwardness. But since we recognize
our imperfections, or sins, the more keenly, as we are developed more
highly, our typical relation to God must be that of repentance; and by
repentance as by a step we may rise into the higher sphere of
religion--as will be seen, a purely Christian thought.
A work of such powerful originality, imposing by its very size, and
published at the anonymous author's own expense, could not but create
a stir among the small Danish reading public. And notwithstanding
Kierkegaard's consistent efforts to conceal his authorship in the
interest of his "indirect communication," it could not long remain a
secret. The book was much, and perplexedly, discussed, though no one
was able to fathom the author's real aim, most readers being attracted
by piquant subjects such as the "Diary of the Seducer," and regarding
the latter half as a feeble afterthought. As he said himself: "With my
left hand I held out to the world 'Either-Or,' with my right, 'Two
Edifying Discourses'; but they all--or practically all--seized
with their right hands what I held in my left."
These "Two Edifying Discourses[4]"--for thus he preferred to call
them, rather than sermons, because he claimed no authority to
preach--as well as all the many later ones, were published over
his own name, addressed to Den Enkelte "The Single Individual whom
with joy and gratitude he calls his reader," and were dedicated to the
memory of his father. They belong among the noblest books of
edification, of which the North has not a few.
During the following three years (1843-5) Kierkegaard, once roused
to productivity, though undoubtedly kept at his task by the exertion of
marvelous will-power, wrote in quick succession some of his most
notable works--so original in form, in thought, in content that
it is a well-nigh hopeless task to analyze them to any satisfaction.
All we can do here is to note the development in them of the one grand
theme which is fundamental to all his literary activity: how to become
a Christian.
If the second part of "Either-Or" was devoted to an explanation of
the nature of the ethical, as against the æsthetic, conduct of life,
inevitably the next task was, first, to define the nature of the
religious life, as against the merely ethical life; then, to show how
the religious sphere may be attained. This is done in the brilliant twin
books _Frygt og Baeven_ "Fear and Trembling" and _Gjentagelsen_
"Repetition." Both were published over pseudonyms.
"Fear and Trembling" bears as its subtitle "Dialectic Lyrics."
Indeed, nowhere perhaps is Kierkegaard's strange union of dialectic
subtlety and intense lyrical power and passion so strikingly in evidence
as in this panegyric on Abraham, the father of faith. To Kierkegaard
he is the shining exemplar of the religious life; and his greatest act
of faith, his obedience to God's command to slay Isaac. Nothing can
surpass the eloquence with which he depicts the agony of the father,
his struggle between the ethical, or general, law which, saith "thou
shalt no kill"! and God's specific command. In the end, Abraham by a
grand resolve transgresses the law; and lo! because he has faith,
against certainty, that he will keep Isaac, and does not merely resign
him, as many a tragic hero would have done, he receives all again, in
a new and higher sphere. In other words, Abraham chooses to be "the
exception" and set aside the general law, as well as does the æsthetic
individual; but, note well: "in fear and trembling," and at the express
command of God! He is a "knight of faith." But because this direct
relation to the divinity necessarily can be certain only to Abraham's
self, his action is altogether incomprehensible to others. Reason
recoils before the absolute paradox of the individual who chooses
to rise superior to the general law.
The rise into the religious sphere is always likely to be the outcome
of some severe inner conflict engendering infinite passion. In the
splendidly written _Gjentagelse_ "Repetition" we are shown _ad oculos_
an abortive transition into the religious sphere, with a corresponding
relapse into the æsthetic sphere. Kierkegaard's own love-story is again
drawn upon: the "Young Person" ardently loves the woman; but discovers
to his consternation that she is in reality but a burden to him since,
instead of having an actual, living relation to her, he merely
"remembers" her when she is present. In the ensuing collision of motives
his æsthetically cool friend Constantin Constantius advises him to act
as one unworthy of her--as did Kierkegaard--and to forget her. But
instead of following this advice, and lacking a deeper religious
background, he flees the town and subsequently transmutes his trials
into poetry--that is, relapses into the æsthetic sphere: rather than,
like Job, whom he apostrophises passionately, "receiving all again"
(having all "repeated") in a higher sphere. This idea of the resumption
of a lower stage into a higher one is one of Kierkegaard's most original
and fertile thoughts. It is illustrated here with an amazing wealth of
instances.
So far, it had been a question of religious feeling in general--how it
may arise, and what its nature is. In the pivotal work _Philosophiske
Smuler_ "Philosophic Trifles"--note the irony--Kierkegaard throws
the searching rays of his penetrating intellect on the grand problem
of revealed religion: can one's eternal salvation be based on
an historical event? This is the great stumbling block to the
understanding.
Hegel's philosophic optimism maintained that the difficulties of
Christianity had been completely "reconciled" or "mediated" in the
supposedly higher synthesis of philosophy, by which process religion
had been reduced to terms which might be grasped by the intellect.
Kierkegaard, fully voicing the claim both of the intellect and of
religion, erects the barrier of the paradox, impassable except by
the act of faith. As will be seen, this is Tertullian's _Credo
quia absurdum._[5]
In the briefest possible outline his argument is as follows:
Socrates had taught that in reality every one had the truth in him
and needed but to be reminded of it by the teacher who thus is
necessary only in helping the disciple to discover it himself. That is
the indirect communication of the truth. But now suppose that the
truth is not innate in man, suppose he has merely the ability to
grasp it when presented to him. And suppose the teacher to be of
absolute, infinite importance--the Godhead himself, directly
communicating with man, revealing the truth in the shape of man; in
fact, as the lowliest of men, yet insisting on implicit belief in Him!
This, according to Kierkegaard, constitutes the paradox of faith
_par excellence._ But this paradox, he shows, existed for the
generation contemporaneous with Christ in the same manner as it does
for those living now. To think that faith was an easier matter for
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
given over to reflections on this experience) we find exclamations
such as this one: "What is it to be roasted alive at a slow fire,
or to be broken on the wheel or, as they do in warm climates, to
be smeared with honey and put at the mercy of the insects--what
is that in comparison with this torture: to be grinned to death!"
There could be no thought now of retiring to a peaceful charge in
the country. That would have been fleeing from persecution. Besides,
unbeknown perhaps to himself, his pugnacity was aroused. While under
the influence of the "Corsair Feud" (as it is known in Danish
literature) he completes the booklet "A Literary Review." This was
originally intended as a purely æsthetic evaluation and appreciation
of the (then anonymous) author[7] of the _Hverdagshistorier_
"Commonplace Stories" that are praised by him for their thoughtful
bodying forth of a consistent view of life which--however different
from his own--yet commanded his respect. He now appended a series
of bitter reflections on the Present Times, paying his respects to the
Press, which he calls incomparably the worst offender in furnishing
people with cheap irony, in forcibly levelling out and reducing to
mediocrity all those who strive to rise above it intellectually--words
applicable, alas! no less to our own times. To him, however, who in a
religious sense has become the captain of his soul, the becoming a
butt of the Press is but a true test. Looking up, Kierkegaard sees in
his own fate the usual reward accorded by mankind to the courageous
souls who dare to fight for the truth, for the ideal--for Christianity,
against the "masses." In a modern way, through ridicule, he was
undergoing the martyrdom which the blood witnesses of old had
undergone for the sake of their faith. Their task it had been to
preach the Gospel among the heathen. His, he reasoned, was in nowise
easier: to make clear to uncomprehending millions of so-called
Christians that they were not Christians at all, that they did not even
know what Christianity is: suffering and persecution, as he now
recognizes, being inseparable from the truly Christian life.
First, then, the road had to be cleared, emphatically, for the
truth that Christianity and "the public" are opposite terms. The
collection of "Edifying Discourses in Diverse Spirits" is thus a
religious parallel to the polemic in his "Review." The first part
of these meditations has for its text: "The purity of the
heart consists in willing one thing"--and this one thing is
necessarily the good, the ideal; but only he who lives his life as
the individual can possibly will the good--else it is lived in
duplicity, for the world will share his aspirations, he will bid for the
rewards which the bowing before the crowd can give him. In the second
part, entitled "What we may learn from the Lilies of the Field and the
Birds of the Air"--one of Kierkegaard's favorite texts--the
greatest danger to the ethic-religious life is shown to be the
uneasiness about our material welfare which insidiously haunts our
thought-life, and, notwithstanding our best endeavors, renders us
essentially slaves to "the crowd"; whereas it is given to man, created
in the image of God, to be as self-contained, unafraid, hopeful as
are (symbolically) the lily and the bird. The startlingly new
development attained through his recent experiences is most evident
in the third part, "The Gospel of Sufferings," in which absolute stress
is laid on the imitation of Christ in the strictest sense. Only the
"individual" can compass this: the narrow way to salvation must be
traveled alone; and will lead to salvation only if the world is,
literally, overcome in persecution and tribulation. And, on the other
hand, to be happy in this world is equivalent to forfeiting salvation.
Thus briefly outlined, the contents of this book would seem to be sheer
monkish asceticism; but no synopsis, however full, can hope to give
an idea of its lyrical pathos, its wealth of tender reflections,
the great love tempering the stern severity of its teaching.
With wonderful beauty "The Deeds of Love" (_Kjerlighedens
Gjerninger_) (1847) are exalted as the Christian's help and
salvation against the tribulations of the world--love, not indeed
of the human kind, but of man through God. "You are not concerned at
all with what others do to you, but only with what you do to others;
and also, with how you react to what others do to you--you are
concerned, essentially, only with yourself, before God."
In rapid succession there follow "Christian Discourses"; "The Lily
of the Field and the Bird of the Air"; "Sickness Unto Death"
(with the sub-title "A Christian Psychological Exposition"); "Two
Religious Treatises"; "The High Priest, the Publican, the Sinner";
"Three Discourses on the Occasion of Communion on Friday."
In the course of these reflections it had become increasingly
clear to Kierkegaard that the self-constituted representative of
Christ--the Church or, to mention only the organization he was
intimately acquainted with, the Danish State Church--had succeeded
in becoming a purely worldly organization whose representatives, far
from striving to follow Christ, had made life quite comfortable for
themselves; retort to which was presently made that by thus stressing
"contemporaneousness" with its aspects of suffering and persecution,
Kierkegaard had both exceeded the accepted teaching of the Church and
staked the attainment of Christianity so high as to drive all existing
forms of it _ad absurdum._
In his _lndövelse i Christendom_ "Preparation for a Christian
Life" and the somber _Til Selvprövelse_ "For a Self-Examination"
Kierkegaard returns to the attack with a powerful re-examination of the
whole question as to how far modern Christianity corresponds to that
of the Founder. Simply, but with grandiose power, he works out in
concrete instances the conception of "contemporaneousness" gained
in the "Final Postscript"; at the same time demonstrating to all who
have eyes to see, the axiomatic connection between the doctrine of
Propitiation and Christ's life in debasement; that Christianity consists
in absolutely dying to the world; and that the Christianity which does
not live up to this is but a travesty on Christianity. We may think what
we please about this counsel of perfection, and judge what we may about
the rather arbitrary choice of Scripture passages on which Kierkegaard
builds: no serious reader, no sincere Christian can escape the searching
of heart sure to follow this tremendous arraignment of humanity false
to its divine leader. There is nothing more impressive in all modern
literature than the gallery of "opinions" voiced by those arrayed
against Christ when on earth--and now--as to what constitutes the
"offense."
Kierkegaard had hesitated a long time before publishing the
"Preparation for a Christian Life." Authority-loving as he was, he
shrank from antagonizing the Church, as it was bound to do; and more
especially, from giving offense to its primate, the venerable Bishop
Mynster who had been his father's friend and spiritual adviser, to
whom he had himself always looked up with admiring reverence, and
whose sermons he had been in the habit of reading at all times. Also,
to be sure, he was restrained by the thought, that by publishing his
book he would render Christianity well-night unattainable to the weak
and the simple and the afflicted who certainly were in need of the
consolations of Christianity without any additional sufferings
interposed--and surely no reader of his devotional works can be in
doubt that he was the most tender-hearted of men. In earlier, stronger
times, he imagines, he would have been made a martyr for his opinions;
but was he entitled to become a blood-witness--he who realized
more keenly than any one that he himself was not a Christian in the
strictest sense? In his "Two Religious Treatises" he debates the
question: "Is it permissible for a man to let himself be killed for the
truth?"; which is answered in the negative in "About the Difference
between a Genius and an Apostle"--which consists in the Apostle's
speaking with authority. However, should not the truth be the most
important consideration? His journal during that time offers abundant
proof of the absolute earnestness with which he struggled over the
question.
When Kierkegaard finally published "The Preparation for a Christian
Life," the bishop was, indeed, incensed; but he did nothing. Nor did
any one else venture forth. Still worse affront! Kierkegaard had said
his last word, had stated his ultimatum--and it was received with
indifference, it seemed. Nevertheless he decided to wait and see
what effect his books would have for he hesitated to draw the
last conclusions and mortally wound the old man tottering on the
brink of his grave by thus attacking the Church. There followed a three
years' period of silence on the part of Kierkegaard--again
certainly a proof of his utter sincerity. It must be remembered, in
this connection, that the very last thing Kierkegaard desired was an
external reorganization, a "reform," of the Church--indeed, he
firmly refused to be identified with any movement of secession,
differing in this respect vitally from his contemporaries Vinet and
Grundtvig who otherwise had so much in common with him. His only
wish was to infuse life and inwardness into the existing forms. And far
from being inferior to them in this he was here at one with the Founder
and the Early Church in that he states the aim of the Christian
Life to be, not to transform the existing social order, but to transcend
it. For the very same reason, coupled to be sure with a pronounced
aristocratic individualism, he is utterly and unreasonably indifferent,
and even antagonistic, to the great social movements of his time, to
the political upheavals of 1848, to the revolutionary advances of
science.
As Kierkegaard now considered his career virtually concluded,
he wrote (1851) a brief account "About my Activity as an Author"
in which he furnishes his readers a key to its unfolding--from
an æsthetic view to the religious view--which he considers his
own education by Providence; and indicates it to be his special task to
call attention, without authority, to the religious, the Christian life.
His "Viewpoint for my Activity as an Author," published by his brother
only long after his death, likewise defines the purpose of the whole
"authorship," besides containing important biographical material.
At length (January, 1854) Mynster died. Even then Kierkegaard,
though still on his guard, might not have felt called upon to
have recourse to stronger measures if it had not been for an
unfortunate sentence in the funeral sermon preached by the now
famous Martensen--generally pointed out as the successor to the
primacy--with whom Kierkegaard had already broken a lance or two.
Martensen had declared Mynster to have been "one of the holy
chain of witnesses for the truth (_sandhedsvidner_) which extends through
the centuries down from the time of the Apostles." This is the
provocation for which Kierkegaard had waited. "Bishop Mynster a witness
for the truth"! he bursts out, "You who read this, you know well what
in a Christian sense is a witness for the truth. Still, let me remind
you that to be one, it is absolutely essential to suffer for the
teaching of Christianity"; whereas "the truth is that Mynster
was wordily-wise to a degree--was weak, pleasure-loving, and
great only as a declaimer." But once more--striking proof of his
circumspection and single-mindedness--he kept this harsh letter
in his desk for nine months, lest its publication should interfere in
the least with Martensen's appointment, or seem the outcome of
personal resentment.
Martensen's reply, which forcefully enough brings out all that could
be said for a milder interpretation of the Christian categories and for
his predecessor, was not as respectful to the sensitive author as it
ought to have been. In a number of newspaper letters of increasing
violence and acerbity Kierkegaard now tried to force his obstinately
silent opponent to his knees; but in vain. Filled with holy wrath at
what he conceived to be a conspiracy by silence, and evasions to bring
to naught the whole infinitely important matter for which he had
striven, Kierkegaard finally turned agitator. He addressed himself
directly to the people with the celebrated pamphlet series Öieblikket
"The Present Moment" in which he opens an absolutely withering
fire of invective on anything and everything connected with "the
existing order" in Christendom--an agitation the like of which for
revolutionary vehemence has rarely, if ever, been seen. All rites of the
Church--marriage, baptism, confirmation, communion, burial--and
most of all the clergy, high and low, draw the fiery bolts of his wrath
and a perfect hail of fierce, cruel invective. The dominant note, though
varied infinitely, is ever the same: "Whoever you may be, and whatever
the life you live, my friend: by omitting to attend the public
divine service--if indeed it be your habit to attend it--by
omitting, to attend public divine service as now constituted
(claiming as it does to represent the Christianity of the New Testament)
you will escape at least one, and a great, sin in not attempting to fool
God by calling that the Christianity of the New Testament which is not
the Christianity of the New Testament." And he does not hesitate
to use strong, even coarse, language; he even courts the reproach
of blasphemy in order to render ridiculous in "Official Christianity"
what to most may seem inherently, though mistakenly, a matter of
highest reverence.
The swiftness and mercilessness of his attack seem to have left
his contemporaries without a weapon: all they could do was to shrug
their shoulders about the "fanatic," or to duck and wait dumbly until
the storm had passed.
Nor did it last long. On the second of October, 1855, Kierkegaard
fell unconscious in the street. He was brought to the hospital where he
died on the eleventh of November, aged 42. The immense exertions of
the last months had shattered his frail body. And strange: the last of
his money had been used up. He had said what he thought Providence
had to communicate through him. His strength was gone. His death at
this moment would put the crown on his work. As he said on his
death-bed: "The bomb explodes, and the conflagration will follow."
In appraising Kierkegaard's life and works it will be found true,
as Hotfding says, that he can mean much even to those who do not
subscribe to the beliefs so unquestioningly entertained by him. And
however much they may regret that he poured his noble wine into the
old bottles, they cannot fail to recognize the yeoman's service he did,
both for sincere Christians in compelling them to rehearse inwardly
what ever tends to become a matter of form: what it means to be a
Christian; and for others, in deepening their sense of individual
responsibility. In fact, every one who has once come under his
influence and has wrestled with this mighty spirit will bear away
some blessing. In a time when, as in our own, the crowd, society,
the millions, the nation, had depressed the individual to an
insignificant atom--and what is worse, in the individual's own
estimation; when shallow altruistic, socializing effort thought
naively that the millenium was at hand, he drove the truth home
that, on the contrary, the individual is the measure of all things;
that we do not live en masse; that both the terrible responsibility
and the great satisfactions of life inhere in the individual.
Again, more forcibly than any one else in modern times, certainly
more cogently than Pascal, he demonstrated that the possibility
of proof in religion is an illusion; that doubt cannot be combatted
by reason, that it ever will be _credo quia impossibile._ In
religion, he showed the utter incompatibility of the æsthetic and
the religious life; and in Christianity, he re-stated and re-pointed
the principle of ideal perfection by his unremitting insistence
on contemporaneousness with Christ. It is another matter whether
by so doing Kierkegaard was about to pull the pillars from underneath
the great edifice of Christianity which housed both him and his
enemies: seeing that he himself finally doubted whether it had
ever existed apart from the Founder and, possibly, the Apostles.
Kierkegaard is not easy reading. One's first impression of crabbedness,
whimsicality, abstruseness will, however, soon give way to admiration
of the marvelous instrument of precision language has become in his
hands. To be sure, he did not write for people who are in a hurry,
nor for dullards. His closely reasoned paragraphs and, at times
huge, though rhetorically faultless, periods require concentrated
attention, his involutions and repetitions, handled with such
incomparable virtuosity, demand an everlasting readiness of
comprehension on the part of the reader. On the other hand his
philosophic work is delightfully "Socratic," unconventional, and
altogether "un-textbook-like." Kierkegaard himself wished that his
devotional works should be read aloud. And, from a purely æsthetic
point of view, it ought to be a delight for any orator to practice
on the wonderful periods of e. g., "The Preparation," or of,
say, the parable of the coach-horses in "Acts of the Apostles."
They alone would be sufficient to place Kierkegaard in the front rank
of prose writers of the nineteenth century where, both by the power of
his utterance and the originality of his thought, he rightfully
belongs.
In laying before an English speaking public selections from
Kierkegaard's works, the translator has endeavored to give an
adequate idea of the various aspects of his highly disparate works.
For this purpose he has chosen a few large pieces, rather than given
tidbits. He hopes to be pardoned for not having a slavish regard for
Kierkegaard's very inconsequential paragraphing[8] and for breaking,
with no detriment, he believes, to the thought, some excessively
long paragraphs into smaller units; which will prove more restful
to the eye and more encouraging to the reader. As to occasional
omissions--always indicated by dots--the possessor of the complete
works will readily identify them. In consonance with Kierkegaard's
views on "contemporaneousness," no capitals are used in "The
Preparation" when referring to Christ by pronouns.
When Kierkegaard died, his influence, like that of Socrates, was
just beginning to make itself felt. The complete translation into
German of all his works[9] and of many into other languages; the
magnificent new edition of his works[10] and of his extraordinarily
voluminous diaries,[11] now nearing completion; and the steadily
increasing number of books, pamphlets, and articles from the most
diverse quarters testify to his reaching a growing number of
_individuals._ Below is given a list of the more important books
and articles on Kierkegaard. It does not aim at completeness.
Bärthold, A. S. K., _Eine Verfassetexistenz eigner Art._ Halberstadt,
1873.
Same: _Noten zu S. K.'s Lebensgeschichte._ Halle, 1876.
Same: _Die Bedeutung der aesthetischen Schriften S. K.'s._ Halle,
1879.
Barfod, H. P. (Introduction to the first edition of the Diary.)
Copenhagen, 1869.
Bohlin, Th. _S. K.'s Etiska Åskadning._ Uppsala, 1918.
Brandes, G. _S. K., En kritisk Fremstilling i Grundrids._ Copenhagen,
1877.
Same: German ed. Leipzig, 1879.
Deleuran, V. _Esquisse d'une étude sur S. K._ Thèse, University
of Paris, 1897.
Höffding, H. _S. K._ Copenhagen, 1892.
Same: German edition (2nd). Stuttgart, 1902.
Hoffmann, R. _K. und die religiöse Gewissheit._ Göttingen, 1910.
Jensen, Ch. _S. K.'s religiöse Udvikling._ Aarhus, 1898.
Monrad, O. P. _S. K. Sein Leben und seine Werke._ Jena, 1909.
Münch, Ph. _Haupt und Grundgedanken der Philosophie S. K.'s._
Leipzig, 1902.
Rosenberg, P. A. _S. K., hans Liv, hans Personlighed og hans
Forfatterskab._ Copenhagen, 1898.
Rudin, W. S. _K.'s Person och Författerskap. Förste Afdelningen._
Stockholm, 1880.
Schrempf, Ch. _S. K.'s Stellung zu Bibel und Dogma._ Zeitschrift
für Theologie und Kirche, 1891, p. 179.
Same: _S. K. Ein unfreier Pionier der Freiheit._ (With a foreword
by Höffding) Frankfurt, 1909.
Swenson, D. _The Anti-Intellectualism of K._ Philosophic Review,
1916, p. 567.
To my friends and colleagues, Percy M. Dawson and Howard M. Jones,
I wish also in this place to express my thanks for help and criticism
"in divers spirits."
[Footnote 1: Pronounced _Kerkegor._]
[Footnote 2: An interesting parallel is the story of Peter Williams, as
told by George Borrow, _Lavengro_, chap. 75 ff.]
[Footnote 3: Corresponding, approximately, to our doctoral thesis.]
[Footnote 4: Not "Discourses for Edification," _cf._ the Foreword to
_Atten Opbyggelige Taler_, S. V. vol. IV.]
[Footnote 5: _De Carne Christi_, chap. V, as my friend, Professor A. E.
Haydon, kindly points out.]
[Footnote 6: _Cf._ Brandes, S. K. p. 157.]
[Footnote 7: Mrs. Thomasine Gyllembourg-Ehrensvärd.]
[Footnote 8: With signal exception of "The Present Moment."]
[Footnote 9: In process of publication. Jena.]
[Footnote 10: Samlede Værker. Copenhagen, 1901-1906 (14 vols). In the
notes abbreviated S. V. Still another edition is preparing.]
[Footnote 11: Copenhagen, 1909 ff.]