S REN KIERKEGAARD
From Modern Philosophy: Essential Selections, by James Fieser
Home: https://storage.googleapis.com/jfieser/316/Index.html
2008, updated 1/1/2024, CC BY-NC-ND 4.0
CONTENTS
Introduction
Aesthetic Stage: Avoiding Boredom Through Variation
Ethical Stage: Marriage as the Ethical Ideal
Religious Stage: Abraham and the Paradox of Faith
Socrates and the Absolute Paradox of Learning Truth
Adam's Anxiety as the Source of Original Sin
The Failure of Objective Approaches to Scripture
Despair as the Sickness of Sin
The Divinity of Christ Cannot Be Proven
Against State Religion
Study Questions
INTRODUCTION
Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855) was born in Copenhagen, Denmark, the son of a successful but depressed business man. His mother, the second wife of his father, was a servant that the father was compelled to marry four months into her pregnancy with Soren. At age 17 he studied theology and then philosophy at the University in Copenhagen, and 10 years later received his Master's degree shortly before his father died and left him a modest inheritance. He was engaged to a woman 10 years his junior named Regine Olsen, but he broke it off less than a year later when he questioned his ability to play the role of a husband. Scholars speculate about whether it was his near-illegitimate birth, depression or possible sexual orientation. The breakup, though, was so haunting that he used love and marriage as a theme in his writings to express inner conflicts of values. After failed efforts to become part of Copenhagen's distinguished literary circle, he became a harsh critic the of city's prevailing intellectual climate, including Christian Hegelians and Denmark's state church. His works fall into two phases, which scholars call the "first authorship" (1843-1846) and the "second authorship" (1847-1855). The first authorship is characterized by works that he published under pseudonyms (e.g., Johannes the Seducer, Judge William, Hilarius Bookbinder, and Johannes Climacus) who represent differing value systems. The works in the second authorship are largely in his own name and display a more consistent viewpoint. At age 45, Kierkegaard collapsed on a street in Copenhagen, and died in a hospital within a few months. In addition to his 30 books and pamphlets he composed 7,000 pages of private journal entries. The selections below are from eight of his writings and appear in chronological order.
While most of Kierkegaard's writings are theological, the works have an underlying philosophical theme that was both inspired by Hegel and a reaction against him. According to Hegel, the giant mind of the cosmos improves itself through advances in human civilization, and this progress plays out in a dialectic process of thesis-antithesis-synthesis. Kierkegaard agrees that conflict between a thesis and its antithesis spark improvement. However, he sees the battle ground of this conflict within the value system of each individual person, not within larger cultural or political forces as Hegel maintained. Accordingly, a prominent theme throughout Kierkegaard's writings is that, first, I as an individual person sometimes face a crippling paradox within my values, which, second, triggers a moment within me where eternity enters the present, which, third, moves me forward to a higher level of values.
The first selections below are from his two-volume work Either-Or (1843). Its overall theme is that our lives involve a movement from what we are now, in a state of alienation from God, to what we ought to be, when we subjectively experience God. There are three stages to this. First, in the aesthetic stage I enjoy the widest variety of pleasures of the senses. When I realize that this will not result in true existence, I am faced with an either-or choice: remain in this stage or move on to the next. Second, in the ethical stage, I accept the limitations that moral responsibility imposes on me. When I realize that I cannot fulfill the moral law, I face another either-or: remain or move on to the next stage in a "leap of faith" (Kierkegaard did not use this term himself, although the notion is attributed to him). Third, in the religious stage, I have a non-rational experience of God as a subject. The first selection below from Either-Or, titled "The Method of Rotation", is written from the person in the aesthetic stage, and offers something like a manual to guide the aesthetic person in preserving pleasure in the face of inevitable boredom. We ultimately avoid boredom by varying our situation and the objects that we enjoy, while at the same time selectively forgetting past events that prove unuseful. We should avoid friendship and marriage since they restrict our freedom, and instead prefer more casual and temporary relationships with others. The second selection is written from the perspective of someone in the ethical stage who is giving advice to a friend who is stuck in the aesthetic stage. He illustrates the difference between the two stages by contrasting romantic love (aesthetic) with marital love (ethical). He argues that romantic love is in fact a striving towards marital love, and, from a higher ethical perspective, ethical duty is what is central to love and marriage. He also explains that the tension between the aesthetical and the ethical creates an "either-or" situation where the person decides to view life ethically, rather than with aesthetic indifference.
The next selection is from Fear and Trembling (1843), in which Kierkegaard uses the Old Testament story of Abraham and Isaac to show the difficulty of acting on the basis of faith. In the story, God commands Abraham to sacrifice Isaac his son, and, in an act of faith, Abraham prepares to do so, and nearly succeeds, until at the last moment God calls it off. For Kierkegaard, Abraham was justified in abandoning his ordinary ethical duty in response to God's command, but the choice was one of intense anguish. Further, Abraham's only ground for doing so was his faith, which, considering what was at stake, produced fear and trembling within him. In his discussion Kierkegaard distinguishes between the "Knight of Infinite Resignation" and the "Knight of Faith". The first of these consists of people in the ethical stage who give up what they hold dearest when it is the right thing to do. His example is someone who reluctantly ends a relationship where marriage is impossible (for example, if the man realizes he is impotent, gay, or terminally ill). The Knight of Faith, does this as well, but goes one step further: he proceeds with the marriage after all in the belief that God can perform miracles and make the impossible possible. The final portion of this selection is titled "the teleological suspension of the ethical" which discusses whether one can perform an apparently immoral action in the process of making a religious choice. Abraham, he argues, did this when, as an individual, he raised himself above the ethical universal. Thus, killing Isaac was ethically wrong, but religiously right, and the tension between ethics and religion produces anxiety.
In Philosophical Fragments (1844), he examines the Socratic question from Plato's dialogue Meno, whether virtue and truth can be taught. Socrates argued that it cannot, but can only be recollected from knowledge that we acquired in a previous life. While Kierkegaard rejects Socrates' view of having prior lives, he agrees with him that virtue and truth cannot be taught, and in fact the attainment of truth is inherently paradoxical. The learner is in a condition of error and relies on a teacher. The teacher, though, cannot impart the learner with the truth, but can only be the occasion whereby the learner leaves error and becomes truth himself in a movement from being-to non-being. As such the learner is reborn as a new person. The paradox of acquiring truth becomes even greater when seeking knowledge of God, specifically knowledge that God is unlike us (i.e., God is "wholly other" to use a common theological expression). The problem is that, if God is unknowable, then we cannot say whether he is like or unlike us. Kierkegaard's solution is that human sin is something like a gift that God gives us, by which we can understand how it is that God is unlike us.
In The Concept of Anxiety (1844) Kierkegaard explores the notion of original sin in the Biblical story of the fall of Adam. He shows here that anxiety is this original sin. Consider first what it's like to be in a state of innocence, which Adam experienced in the Garden of Eden, and, he says, all children experience. It is a state of ignorance, peace and rest, and freedom as in a dream. In addition to all these, though, there is an anxiety, a kind of fear, like the adventurous spirit that children have. This anxiety by itself is not bad, but we instantly lose our innocence and become guilty when we sink into it and love the anxiety which we fear. This involves what he calls a "qualitative leap" from innocence to guilt. The anxiety that we experience contains both a prohibition and a threat of punishment. In a child's case, if she rides her bike without a helmet his parents will put her in time out. In Adam's case, if he eats of the forbidden fruit, he will surely die. The prohibition gives him anxiety because of the freedom it presents to him, to either love it or flee from it. Punishment is at first incomprehensible to Adam since he is in a state of innocence and ignorance, and we might think that the threat came from God. However, Kierkegaard argues, the threat came from within Adam himself since, even in his innocence, language enables him to express what is spiritual.
In Concluding Unscientific Postscript (1846), Kierkegaard explores whether historical scholarship can tell us whether the Bible was divinely inspired, and thus contains truths about Christianity. He concedes that historical scholarship is valuable for ancient secular writings such as those by Cicero. However, we do not build our eternal happiness upon Cicero's books, but we do the Bible. Kierkegaard rejects all such approaches to the Bible: it produces no results and leads to despair, for the historical quest will be unending as new questions of the Bible's historicity arise. Further, even if the historical scholar could prove or disprove the authenticity of scripture, it would have no bearing on the believer's faith. Religious truth is thus obtained subjectively through the individual's faith commitment, not objectively through historical scholarship.
In The Sickness unto Death (1849), Kierkegaard returns to the notion of sin and argues here that sin is despair (which is a different topic than his earlier discussion that original sin is anxiety). He holds that there are two forms of despair: (1) being unconscious of having a self, and (2) not willing to be oneself. The second of these is most relevant to sin, and, in some sense, it is an asset since it defines our character by telling us what we are potentially capable of. It is a liability, though, since if we submit to it, we will descend from our highest capabilities, and not achieve them. While most people think that such despair is rare, he argues that it is in fact widespread, and ignorance of our despair is itself a form of despair.
In Practice in Christianity (1850) Kierkegaard argues that the divinity of Christ cannot be proven. Such attempts conflict with reason and ultimately depend on faith. At best, proofs from history will only show that he was a great man, but not God. It is in fact a category mistake to move from any set of finite facts within history to an infinite fact about God. He also argues that it is blasphemous to approach Christ's divinity from the consequences of his life, such as the positive impact that he had on his followers and successive generations of people as Christianity spread.
Finally, among his last publications before his death are some articles in a magazine called The Moment (1855), two of which are included here that oppose state religion. In the first, he argues that the State Church distorts the message of Christianity by coercing religious belief through the threat of eternal punishment. In the second, the Church errs by trying to pacify believer's spiritual anxieties, which are in fact needed for spiritual growth.
AESTHETIC STAGE: AVOIDING BOREDOM THROUGH VARIATION (Either-Or, "The Method of Rotation", 1843)
Boredom as the Root of All Evil
Chremylos: People eventually grow tired of everything. Of love,
Karion: bread,
Chremylos: music,
Karion: sweets,
Chremylos: honor,
Karion: cake,
Chremylos: battles,
Karion: figs,
Chremylos: ambition,
Karion: oatmeal,
Chremylos: promotion,
Karion: lentil soup.
Aristophane, Plutus, v. 189 ff.
Experienced people say that it is reasonable to proceed from a general principle, and I can accept that. Let us then start with the principle that all people are boring. Or would someone be so exceedingly boring that he would disagree with me? This principle has the highest repelling force, which as a negative, is basically the principle of movement. It is not only repelling but infinitely opposing, and those who have this principle behind them will necessarily make infinite discoveries. So if my claim is true, we need to only consider how harmful boredom is for humanity, and adjust our thoughts to the same degree that we would lessen or increase our motion. If you want to drive the speed of the movement to its highest, like driving a locomotive to its breaking point, you need to go ahead and say: boredom is the root of all evil. It is strange that boredom, which is itself such a calm and sedate thing, can so forcefully move other things. Yes, it exerts a truly magical effect, except that it does not attract and but only repels.
We fully recognize the ruinous nature of boredom in its relationship with children. As long as children enjoy themselves, they are always loving, kind children, and we mean that in all seriousness; because if they become wild and irrepressible while playing, one can assume with certainty that boredom is on its way. Therefore, if you hire a nanny, you must not only see that she is sober, loyal and orderly, but also take aesthetic considerations as to whether she can entertain the children properly. It would be safe to fire a nanny out of service if she could not do her duty, no matter how good she was. Here you can see clearly that the principle is recognized; but how strange things are in the world: the service of a nanny is the only relationship in which aesthetics becomes her right. If you wanted to divorce your wife, or depose a king, banish a pastor, bid farewell to a minister, or speak about a journalist's death sentence simply because they are boring, often frenziedly boring, it would be difficult to achieve this. It is no wonder that the world does not want to move forward, and that evil is spreading more and more, since boredom is increasing on earth and boredom is a root of all evil.
You can trace this from the beginning of the world. Adam was bored because he was alone, so Eve was given to him; then Adam and Eve, and Cain and Abel were bored then people multiplied and people were bored as a whole. In order to amuse themselves, they wanted to build a tower, the top of which reached up to the sky. This thought is just as boring as the tower was high, and terrible proof that boredom had already become a major force. Then people were scattered all over the world even today we still travel abroad to disperse -- but that did not stop boredom. What sad consequences did not this boredom have? Man stood up then fell low; first by Eve, then by the Babylonian tower.
On the other hand, what stopped the fall of Rome? It was not panis [bread] and circenses [games]. What do we do in our own time? Do we think of new amusements? On the contrary, one announces the downfall of the world. We want to appoint a constitutional assembly. Can there be anything more boring, both for the honorable members themselves and for those who have to read and hear their speeches? One wants to improve the state's finances through economizing. Can there be anything more boring? Instead of increasing the debt, you want to pay it off. How foolish! Why not take out a government bond, but not to pay off debts, but to provide the people with pleasant diversions. Let us celebrate the millennial kingdom and live wonderfully and joyfully every day. There should be plates of money everywhere. Everything would be free; the theater, the zoological garden, the Tivoli, etc. and you would be buried for free. I deliberately say free; because if you always have money, everything is free, so to speak. Nobody is allowed to have a permanent possession. An exception has to be made only with me. I reserve $1,000 a day that should be secured in the London bank, partly because I have so much expense, partly because I have come up with this idea, and finally because we cannot know if I can think of a new idea if the government bond has been used up.
What would happen if my idea came true? Anything great and beautiful in the world would flow to Copenhagen; the greatest artists, the most famous actors, the most beautiful dancers. Copenhagen would become a second Athens. The richest men in the world would also settle in our city. For example, the Shah of Persia and the King of England would also come to us. See there, my second idea. Take possession of the person of the Shah! Wouldn't there be a riot in Persia and a new Shah rise to his father's throne? The old Shah would drop in prices. Well, that's how you sell it to the Turks! Would they make money out of him? There is also one thing that our politicians seem to overlook entirely. The balance of Europe's power rests in Denmark. No happier existence! I know it from my own experience, since I once had the honor of the balance of power in a family. I could do what I wanted; I never suffered, but the others always did. Oh, how my voice would like to reach you, men of the king and the people, wise and intelligent citizens of all classes! Beware! Old Denmark is sinking, it is fatal, boredom is the reason, that is the most fatal. In ancient times, the king who could sing the most beautiful song in honor of the deceased became king. In our time he should be king who can make the best joke, and the crown prince who was the butt of the joke. . . .
All people are bored. The word itself indicates the possibility of a subdivision. It can designate both a person who bores others and someone who is bored himself; the former are the lower class, the large crowd; the latter the chosen ones, the nobility; and it is strange but true: those who do not bore themselves, generally bore others; on the other hand, those who bore themselves entertain others. . . .
Idleness, so they say, is the root of all evil. In order to get rid of evil, work was recommended. However, this observation, as can easily be seen from what has just been said, is of a very low-class origin. Idleness as such is by no means a root of evil, on the contrary, it is a truly divine life if I am not bored. Of course, idleness can cause you to lose your fortune; but the noble soul is not afraid of this, but it is afraid of boredom. The Olympic gods were not bored, they lived happily in happy idleness. A female beauty who does not sew or spin, does not knit or read, nor make music, is happy in her idleness. It is because she is not bored. Thus, idleness, is not the root of evil but instead the true good. Boredom is the root of evil and must be held off. Idleness, though, is not the evil and in fact we may say that those who lack a sense for show that they have not elevated themselves to the human level.
There is a tireless activity that excludes a person from the world of the spirit and puts him in the class of animals, which instinctively must always be in motion. So there are also people who have an extraordinary gift for turning everything into a business; their whole life is a business, they fall in love and get married, they hear a good joke and admire classical music with the same business zeal with which they work in the office. The Latin saying: otium est pulvinar diaboli [idleness is the devil's pillow] is quite correct; but the devil doesn't find the time to put his head on this pillow if you're not bored. However, since people believe that it is human destiny to work, then the disjunction is correct: unemployment [or] work. I suppose it is also human destiny to amuse oneself, hence the disjunction here is no less correct.
Boredom is demonic pantheism. If one remains in boredom as such, it becomes evil; as soon as it is canceled, however, it is true; but it is only removed through enjoyment, therefore, you should enjoy yourself. Claiming that one is elevated by work is just confused thinking. For idleness can certainly be removed through work, because this is its opposite, but not boredom. We can see that the most diligent workers, the most buzzing insects in their busy hum, are the most boring; and if they are not bored, the reason is that they have no idea what boredom is; but that doesn't remove boredom.
Boredom Reflected in Verbal Interjections and Dizzying Diversions
Boredom is partly innate genius, partly acquired immediacy. The English nation is by and large the model nation for this. True amiable inactivity is less common, it is not found in nature, it belongs to the world of the spirit. We sometimes encounter traveling Englishmen, who are an incarnation of this ability a heavy, motionless rodent, whose full linguistic abundance merges into a single monosyllabic word [e.g., "hmmm!"], in an interjection by which they express their highest admiration and their deepest indifference, because admiration and indifference are expressed in the indifference unity of boredom. Only the English nation produces such natural curiosities; among all other nations people are always a little more lively, not so absolutely stillborn. The only analogy known to me are the apostles of empty enthusiasm, who also make their journey through life with only one interjection, people who are enthusiastic everywhere because of their profession, everywhere, and where something happens, be it significant or insignificant, shout: "Ah!" or "O!"; for the difference between the important and the insignificant has been indifferent to them in a meaningless, blindly noisy enthusiasm. The later boredom is a fruit of misunderstood distraction; for a false, generally eccentric distraction tends to carry the seed of boredom. . . . Boredom rests on the nothingness that runs through human life and therefore easily leads to dizziness, which affects us when we look into a deep abyss, the infinite. We can also see that this eccentric diversion is based on boredom from the fact that the diversion has no echo, because in nothingness the echo is an absolute impossibility.
Crop Rotation: Change one's Situations to Maximize Enjoyment
But if, as shown above, boredom is the root of all evil, what is more natural than trying to overcome it? But we must not rush and be too quick in our judgment; because those who are demonically obsessed with boredom can easily dig deeper into it while trying to escape it. Everyone who is bored cries out for change. I fully agree, only you have to act according to a settled principle.
My view, which deviates from the general one, is clearly expressed with the phrase "crop rotation". There is, at least apparently, something ambiguous in the phrase, and if I wanted to use it to describe the general method that I have in mind, I would have to say that crop rotation consists of constantly changing the field, where each new crop takes new soil. The farmer does not use the expression in this sense. But I will use it for a moment to speak of a rotation, which is based on the boundless infinity of change, its extensive dimension as they say.
This method of rotation is crude, inartistic, and is based on an illusion. You don't want to live in the country anymore, so you travel to the city; you no longer want to live in your homeland, you travel abroad; one is "tired of Europe" and travels to America etc. One indulges in the enthusiastic hope of an infinite journey from one star to another. Or the movement takes a different, if even more extensive, direction. You don't want to eat on porcelain anymore, so you eat on silver or gold; half of Rome is burned to visualize the burning of Troy. This method undermines itself. For, what did Nero achieve? No, but Emperor Antonio was wiser, he says: : "You can begin life anew. You can see things again as you once saw them, and this makes for a new life"
The method I suggest is not to continually change the soil, which would soon run out. The true rotation is that one changes the method and the type of crops. Here we have the principle of limitation, the only one that can save us. The more you restrict yourself, the more inventive you get. A prisoner who must spend his whole life in a lonely cell, locked by all other prisoners, is very inventive; a spider can be his greatest entertainment. Here we have the principle that seeks satisfaction through its intensity, not its length.
The Art of Forgetting: Forgetting what you Cannot Use, but Remembering the Context
The more inventive a person is in changing the cultivation method, the better; but for every single change, the general rule applies, which involves the relationship of remembering and forgetting. All of life moves in these two currents, which is why one must always try to have them in one's power. Only after throwing hope overboard do you begin to live artistically; because as long as you still hope, you cannot limit yourself. Hope is a bad compass on stormy seas. It was therefore one of Prometheus's questionable gifts. He gave hope to mortal people because they could not see the future like the gods.
To forget: yes, everyone wants that. If you encounter something unpleasant, they always say: if I could only forget. But that's an art because you have to learn first. Whether I can forget depends on how I remember; and this latter again depends on how I understand real life. Those who separate themselves with their hope in their hearts will remember it so vividly that they cannot forget it. The real wisdom of life, then, is nil admirariis ["marvel at nothing"]. No moment of life may have so much meaning for us that we could not forget it at any moment, but on the other hand it should also be so important that we could remember it at any time. The age that learns best is also the most forgetful: the age of childhood.
The art of forgetting is not so easy, and few people understand it properly. You want to forget the unpleasant, not the pleasant. But that reveals great one-sidedness. Forgotten is the right expression for the actual assimilation, which puts what you have experienced on the soundboard. That is why nature is so great because it has forgotten that it was a mess; but the thought of chaos can reappear at any time. Since one usually only wants to forget the unpleasant, one often thinks of forgetting as a wild night that numbs everything else, but you must be able to forget both the pleasant and the unpleasant. Even the pleasant, especially if it has passed, can have something unpleasant in it and remind you of a lack, this unpleasant is also lifted by forgetting. If, however, you only want to push the unpleasant thing out of your mind as an incompetent in the art of forgetting, you will soon see that it has no purpose. In an unguarded moment, it often surprises you with all the power of the sudden and unexpected. . . . Forgetting is the scissors with which you cut away what you cannot use, but mind you, under the highest supervision of memory. Forgetting and remembering are therefore identical and the artistically created identity of the Archimedean point with which the whole world is lifted up.
The art of forgetting and remembering will also keep us from not being trapped in a single life. But beware of friendship. How do we define a friend? A friend is not what the philosophers call the necessary other, but rather, it is the superfluous third wheel. What are the friendship ceremonies? You drink brotherhood, open a vein and mix your blood with that of your friend. It is difficult to say when this moment will come, but it announces itself in an enigmatic way; you feel that you can no longer call yourself "you". If this feeling touched you, you were not mistaken, as Geert Vestphaler did when he drank brotherhood with the executioner.
What are the sure signs of friendship? Antiquity answers, but it is extremely boring: "agreement in likes and dislikes, this and this only is what constitutes true friendship". What is the meaning of friendship? Mutual assistance with advice and action. That is why two friends are so close to each other, although one is often only in the way of the other. Yes, you can help each other in the awkward situation of needing money, you can help each other by putting on or taking off the other's overcoat, and one is the most obedient servant of the other; you can give your most sincere New Year's wishes to each other, present your congratulations on their wedding, baptism, or funeral.
But if you also must avoid friendship, you shouldn't live without contact with people. On the contrary, these conditions can sometimes take an unfortunate twist, but you can always run away, even if you shares the movement for a while. Now one thinks that it could leave unpleasant memories when a relationship is broken. However, this is a misunderstanding. The unpleasant is a spicy ingredient in the troubles of life. In addition, the same relationship can take on a new meaning in a different way. You must consider one thing, which is this: never get trapped, and therefore always have forgetting at hand. The experienced farmer leaves his field uncultivated every now and then, and social wisdom recommends the same thing. Everything returns but always in a different way; what is once included in the rotation remains, but is varied in the operating method. One consequently hopes to see his old friends and acquaintances to be found in a better future, but one should not share the common fear that they have changed so much that they will be unrecognizable. One is more afraid that they remain unchanged. It is remarkable what even the most insignificant person can gain from such sensible treatment.
Beware of marriage. The bride and groom vow to love each other forever and ever. This is not that difficult, of course, but it doesn't mean much either. However, if you don't promise love and loyalty forever and ever, but, rather, until about Easter or until the first of May next year, your words would still make sense, because that can possibly be kept. What happens in marriage? After a short time one part realizes that it is not what it should be; now the other part complains and screams it so loud that everyone can hear it: unfaithful, unfaithful! After some time, the other part comes to the same result, and a neutrality is arranged, in which the mutual infidelity acknowledges to mutual satisfaction, because divorce is very difficult.
If this is the case with marriage, is it surprising that one tries to keep it with the most varied moral justifications? If someone wants to get divorced from his wife, she cries: he is a low, mean person, a villain, etc. How foolish! Indeed, isn't it an indirect attack on marriage itself? Either marriage is an absolute reality in itself, and then it is punished sufficiently if the relationship is broken; or it has no absolute reality, and then it is inconsistent to insult him because he is wiser than others. If somebody gets tired of their money and throws it out of the window, no one will say that he is a low, mean person; because either money is something real, in which case he is punished enough by robbing himself of it, or it is not something real, hence he is wise.
One must always be careful not to enter into a life-long relationship through which one can become several. Therefore, friendship is dangerous, but marriage is even more dangerous. It is well said that man and woman become one; but that's a very dark and mystical speech. If one has become several, one has lost his freedom and can no longer travel when he wants, can no longer rave about. If you have a woman, it is difficult; if you have a wife and perhaps children, it is difficult; you have a wife and actual children, almost impossible. It is said that a gypsy woman carried her husband on her back through life; on the one hand this is a rare thing, but on the other hand it is tiring in the long run -- I mean tiring for the man. Furthermore, marriage leads to a highly fatal connection with customs, where custom, like wind and weather, is unpredictable. In Japan, for example, as I understand, it is a custom that are restricted from childbirth delivery rooms. Why couldn't the time come when Europe will introduce the customs of foreign countries to itself?
Friendship is dangerous, but marriage is even more so. For, the woman is, and remains, the man's ruin as soon as he enters into a permanent relationship with her. Take a young man, fiery like an Arabian horse, let him marry, and he is lost. First the woman is proud, then, weak. She faints, then he faints, and finally the whole family faints. A woman's love is only pretense and weakness.
But just because you do not want to get married, life doesn't have to be without eroticism. The erotic must also have an infinity, but a poetic infinity that can be limited as much to an hour as to a month. If two people fall in love with each other and think that they are intended for each other, then it is important to have courage and break up. For, if they stay with each other, they can only lose everything and gain nothing. That seems to be a paradox and it is also for the feelings, but not for the mind. It is particularly important in this area that one knows how to use moods; this provides an inexhaustible variety of combinations.
Never take on an official position. If you do, you will soon become a John Doe, a little cog within the state machine, but stop being the master of your own business. Your theories cannot help. You get a title, which comes with the consequence of sin and evil. The law whose slave you become as a result is equally boring whether you advance quickly or slowly. You will never get rid of the title; even if you lose it through an offense, you will soon get it again through a gracious resolution by the king.
But if you take official positions, you must not be idle; you can practice all kinds of low-paying skills. But you must develop less extensively than intensely, and the older you get, you can prove the truth of the old saying that not much is needed to make children happy.
Arbitrariness and Variety the Rules of Social Wisdom
Thus, the first rule of social wisdom is to vary the soil to some extent, for if you only wanted to live with one person, the crop rotation would turn out badly. This is as when a farmer has a small field and can never leave it uncultivated, which is so critically important [to avoid]. The second rule of social wisdom, and the real secret of it, is this: always vary with yourself. To that end you always need to be master of your moods. Although you will never be able to produce them when you want (which is impossible), but prudence teaches you to seize the moment.
Just as an experienced sailor always looks inquiringly at the water and the clouds and knows beforehand that a storm will break out, one must always anticipate our moods. We must know how they affect ourselves and others before they come to us and make a home in us. One strikes the instruments in order to be able to produce pure tones, and the more one practices, the easier it will be to convince oneself that there are many tones sleeping within the soul of a person that the artist's hand can conjure up.
The whole secret is arbitrariness. One often believes that being arbitrary is not an art, and yet it requires a deep study, at least if one wants to become arbitrary in the sense that one does not get lost in it, but that one also enjoys it. One does not enjoy directly, but something completely different, which one puts in oneself arbitrarily. You should only see one or the other act of a play; you should only read the third part of a book. This offers a very different enjoyment than that which the author has presented to you.
I wish to give an example. I knew a person with whom I was connected through certain living conditions, whose chatter I had to listen to often. He bored me thoroughly with his little philosophical lectures. I was close to despair when I suddenly discovered that he was sweating profusely when he spoke. That caught my attention. I saw the beads of sweat collect on his forehead, then merge into a stream, flow down his nose, and end in a teardrop-shaped body that stuck to the very tip of his nose. From that moment on everything was different, now I was enjoying his conversation and even encouraging him to take his philosophical excursions just to watch the sweat on his forehead and nose.
It is extremely pleasant to let the realities of life be indifferent to an arbitrary interest. You make something accidental the absolute, and as such the subject of absolute admiration. This works particularly well when feelings are in motion. The more consistently you hold on to arbitrariness, the more interesting the combinations become. The degree of consistency always shows whether you are an artist or an incompetent. The eye with which you look at real life must always change.
The Neoplatonists assumed that people who were less perfect on earth would be transformed into more or less imperfect animals or plants after death, depending on their merits. Detailists, for example, become bees. Such a view of life, which sees everyone here on earth transformed into animals or plants, offers a great variety. I have heard of a painter, Tischbein, who idealized every person into an animal. His method, however, has the flaw that it is too serious and tries to discover a real similarity.
Outside chance corresponds with the arbitrariness within ourselves. We must therefore always have an open eye for the accidental, always be ready when we encounter something. The so-called sociable delights for which one prepares eight to fourteen days do not mean much; on the other hand, even the most insignificant thing can by chance offer rich entertainment. I cannot go into details here, no theory is possible. Even the most detailed theory is mere poverty compared to what genius easily discovers in its commonness.
ETHICAL STAGE: MARRIAGE AND THE EITHER-OR (Either-Or, , 1843)
Marriage as the Ethical Ideal ("The Aesthetic Validity of Marriage")
Romantic Love is a Striving towards Marriage
Examining the aesthetic validity of marriage might seem rather unnecessary: does anyone deny it? Hasn't it been proven enough? For centuries, knights and adventurers have endured the most unbelievable troubles and grievances, and finally ended up in the harbor of a happy marriage; For centuries, novelists and novel readers have worked their way through volumes and volumes to a happy marriage; one generation after the other has endured patiently hardships and complications of all kinds over and over again for four acts, if only the fifth act promised a happy marriage. With all these tremendous efforts, however, little is done to glorify marriage, and it is doubtful whether readers of such love stories have learned anything about the task that marriage represents. For, the harmful and corrupt feature of all these stories is that they stop where they should start. After surviving many ailments, the lovers sink into their arms, the curtain falls, the story is over, and the reader is no wiser than before. It does not mean much that someone fights with all his might for the possession of what he considers the highest and only good; nothing more belongs to it than that he is really in love for the first time. But to overcome the tension that so often follows the fulfillment of a wish is difficult; this includes prudence, wisdom, patience. It is in the nature of first love that it cannot take on enough hardships to possess the beloved object, and if there are no hardships, it will simply create them. This is what their full attention is focused on, and as soon as the hardships have passed, the scene shifter [in the theatrical production] knows what he must do next. Therefore, one rarely sees a wedding, except in operas or ballets, where such a festival gives rise to all kinds of dramatic bantering, to magnificent processions, meaningful gestures, rolling eyes, exchanging of rings etc.
In all these stories the real aesthetic lies in the fact that love is presented as striving, that the feeling prevails against opposition. What is wrong here is that this struggle, this dialectic, remains entirely external, and that love emerges from this struggle as abstractly as it entered it. If the idea of one's own dialectic of love awakens, the idea of its pathological struggle, its relationship to the ethical and the religious, then love has enough challenges without needing [theatrical] hard-hearted fathers, young virgins, enchanted princesses, goblins and monsters. In our time those cruel fathers are found less often; the newer literature, insofar as it treats love in this way, replaces it with money, which now becomes the medium of resistance against which love moves. . . .
Ethical Duty is Central to Love and Marriage
There is still one point left that needs an in-depth discussion. You still have concerns about marriage. "Marital love", you say, "seems so beautiful from the outside, so mild, so tender; but as soon as the couple has closed the door behind them, duty jumps out. You can decorate a stick so beautifully that it looks like a Shrovetide Rod [i.e., Christmas tree], but it is still just a stick." Again, this objection shows that you misunderstand the historical factors of marital love. For you assume that either magical forces or arbitrariness and mood are the constituents in love. But as soon as a consciousness shines forth, the magic disappears. For you, marital love is precisely this consciousness. So it seems to you that in marriage the baton of the bandmaster, which conducts the graceful dance of first love, transforms into the policeman's baton. Now, however, we already agreed that marital love has romantic first love in it, so as long as the first love remains unchanged, one cannot doubt the strict necessity of duty in marriage. So, the truth is that you don't believe in the eternity of love. You act as though you are the knight of first love, yet you don't believe in love, and even profane it. That's why you don't want to get married; you fear not being able to keep love. You are afraid of being trapped in marriage and unable to get out of it; you fear duty because love is not the highest thing for you. You will reply to me that love is of course the highest, but not marital love, but first love. Yes you believe in first love. But what does that help?
How many times should I repeat to you that the eternity of the first (or rather romantic) love is illusory, and must sooner or later cancel itself out? You want to hold love in its immediacy, you imagine that you have true freedom by being outside yourself, intoxicated in dreams. The result is your fear of the metamorphosis of the first love into marital love and therefore your horror of duty. You overlook that the seed of duty already lies within the first love, and thus does not come from outside [but from within you]. Marital love also has a duty in ethical and religious matters; and so duty does not appear as a stranger who, by virtue of the authority it assumes, ruthlessly pushes itself into the secrets of love; no, duty comes as an old, familiar friend whom lovers love to share in the secrets of their love. What duty says is nothing new to them, but something they have known for a long time; and they like to submit to duty's commandment, and at the same time feel uplifted, because what duty commands is also what they themselves want: for them, duty's commandment is a majestic, sublime, divine expression for the conviction that their wishes can be realized. If only duty could say encouragingly to them: Courage, courage! It's okay, love can be preserved: but that would not be enough for them. However, there is something authoritative in the commandment that corresponds to the inwardness of desire. "Love drives out fear." But if it does fear for itself, for its life, it is duty that strengthens the heart that love needs; duty says: fear nothing, you should conquer, not only in a future sense (for then it would only be hope) but also as an imperative: there is a conviction that cannot be shaken by anything.
You see duty as an enemy of love, I see it as a friend.
Either/Or as a Choice to View a situation Ethically ("Equilibrium between the Aesthetic and the Ethical")
My friend! As I have said to you so many times, I will tell you again, and even shout it out to you: Either/Or! . . . To me these words have always made a strong impression, and still do, especially when I thus utter them plainly without any relation to an object. In this lies the possibility of moving through most terrible contradictions. They seem to me to be a form of magical spell, and my soul becomes very serious, sometimes almost shaken. . . .
My Either/Or does not designate the choice between good and evil, rather, it denotes the choice by which one chooses good and evil or excludes them. The question here is under which point of view you want to look at and live all of life. Whoever chooses between good and evil of course chooses the good, but this only becomes apparent afterwards. For the aesthetic is not the evil, but the indifference, and that is why I said that choice is only constituted by the ethical. Thus, you do not decide in a choice whether you want the good or the evil, you only choose what you will; but the contrast between good and evil is thereby established. Whoever chooses the ethical chooses the good, but entirely in the abstract. If its existence is established, it does not follow that one could not choose evil again, even though one had chosen good. Here you see again how important it is that a choice is made, and that ultimately it is not a question of deliberation, but baptism of the will, which is what gives it the ethical character. The longer you go over the considerations, the more difficult it becomes to choose; for, the soul is constantly on the one side of the dilemma, and therefore it becomes more and more difficult to break away. Yet this is necessary if choices are to be made, and thus is of utmost importance if a decision is to mean anything. . . .
Here I will interrupt this discussion to show how an ethical perspective of life addresses one's personal life and its significance. For the sake of order, I will repeat a few remarks that I previously made about the relationship between the aesthetic and the ethical. Every aesthetic view of life is despair; it came from the fact that it was based on what can and cannot be. This is not so with the ethical view of life; it builds life on what is essential, namely, to be. The aesthetic is that of a man by which he is immediately who he is; the ethical is what makes a man what he becomes. This is by no means to say that whoever lives aesthetically does not develop; but he develops with necessity, not with freedom. There is no metamorphosis with him, no infinite movement in him, thereby reaching the point from which he becomes who he becomes.
RELIGIOUS STAGE: ABRAHAM AND THE PARADOX OF FAITH (Fear and Trembling, 1843)
The Story of Abraham Sacrificing Isaac: Four Versions
1. Abraham Plays the Role of an Insane Killer so Isaac Does Not Lose his Faith
And God tempted Abraham and said to him: take Isaac, your only son, whom you love and go to the land Moriah and sacrifice him there on a mountain which I will show you.
It was in the early morning, when Abraham arose and had his donkeys saddled. He departed from his tent, and Isaac with him; but Sarah looked out of the window after them until they were out of sight. Silently they rode for three days; but on the fourth morning Abraham did not say a word, but lifted up his eyes and saw Mount Moriah in the distance. He left his servants behind and, leading Isaac by the hand, he approached the mountain. But Abraham said to himself: "I will surely conceal from Isaac where he is going." He stood still, he laid his hand on Isaac's head to bless him, and Isaac bowed down to receive his blessing. Abraham's appearance was fatherly, his glance was mild, his speech admonishing. But Isaac did not understand him, his soul would not rise to him; he embraced Abraham's knees, he begged him at his feet, he begged for his young life, for his beautiful hopes, he recalled the joy in Abraham's house when he was born, he reminded him of the sorrow and the loneliness that would be after him. Then Abraham raised up the youth and lead him by his hand, and his words were full of consolation and admonishment. But Isaac did not understand him. He ascended Mount Moriah, but Isaac did not understand him. Abraham then hid his face for a moment. But when Isaac looked again, his father's expression was changed, his glance wild, his aspect terrible, he seized Isaac and threw him to the ground and said: "You foolish boy, do you believe I am your father? An idol-worshipper am I. Do you believe it is God's command? No, it is but my pleasure." Then Isaac trembled and cried out in his fear: "God in heaven, have pity on me, God of Abraham, show mercy to me, I have no father on earth, be you then my father!" But Abraham said softly to himself: "Father in heaven, I thank you. Better is it that he believes that I am inhuman than that he should lose his faith in you."
When the child is to be weaned, his mother blackens her breast; for it were a pity if her breast should look sweet to him when he is not to have it. Then the child believes that her breast has change; but his mother is ever the same, her glance is full of love and as tender as ever. Happy he who needed not worse means to wean his child!
2. Abraham Sacrifices a Ram Instead, but Loses his Faith
It was in the early morning. Abraham arose early and embraced Sarah, the bride of his old age. Sarah kissed Isaac who had taken the shame from her, Isaac, her pride, her hope for all coming generations. Then the two rode silently along their way, and Abraham's glance was fastened on the ground before him; until on the fourth day, when he lifted up his eyes and saw Mount Moriah in the distance; but then his eyes again sought the ground. Without a word he put the sticks in order and bound Isaac, and without a word he unsheathed his knife. Then he saw the ram God had chosen, and sacrificed him, and walked his way home. . . . From that day on Abraham grew old. He could not forget that God had required this of him. Isaac flourished as before; but Abraham's eye was darkened, he saw happiness no more.
When the child has grown and is to be weaned, his mother will in maidenly fashion conceal her breast. Then the child has a mother no longer. Happy the child who lost not his mother in any other sense!
3. Abraham does not Kill Isaac, but asks Forgiveness for Initially Desiring to do so
It was in the early morning. Abraham arose early; he kissed Sarah, the young mother, and Sarah kissed Isaac her joy, her delight for all times. Abraham rode on his way, lost in thought, for he was thinking of Hagar and her son whom he had driven out into the wilderness. He ascended Mount Moriah and he drew the knife.
It was a calm evening when Abraham rode out alone, and he rode to Mount Moriah. There he cast himself down on his face and prayed to God to forgive him his sin in that he had been about to sacrifice his son Isaac, and in that the father had forgotten his duty toward his son. Yet oftener he rode on his lonely way, but he found no rest.
He could not grasp that it was a sin that he had wanted to sacrifice to God his most precious possession, him for whom he would most gladly have died many times. But, if it was a sin, if he had not so loved Isaac, then could he not grasp the possibility that he could be forgiven: for what sin is more terrible?
When the child is to be weaned, the mother is not without sorrow that she and her child are to be separated more and more, that the child who had first lain under her heart, and afterwards at any rate rested at her breast, is to be so near to her no more. So they sorrow together for that brief while. Happy he who kept his child so near to him and needed not to sorrow more!
4. Abraham cannot Kill Isaac, but Isaac Loses his Faith
It was in the early morning. Everything was ready for the journey in the house of Abraham. He bade farewell to Sarah; and Eliezer, his faithful servant, accompanied him along the way for a little while. They rode together in peace, Abraham and Isaac, until they came to Mount Moriah. Abraham prepared everything for the sacrifice, calmly and mildly; but when he turned aside in order to unsheath his knife, Isaac saw that Abraham's left hand was clenched in despair and that a trembling shook his frame, but Abraham drew forth the knife.
Then they returned home again, and Sarah hurried to meet them; but Isaac had lost his faith. No one in all the world ever said a word about this, nor did Isaac speak to any man concerning what he had seen, and Abraham suspected not that anyone had seen it.
When the child is to be weaned, his mother has the stronger food ready lest the child perish. Happy he who has in readiness this stronger food!
Thus, and in many similar ways, thought the man whom I have mentioned about this event. Every time he returned, after a pilgrimage to Mount Moriah, he sank down in weariness, folding his hands and saying: "No one, in truth, was great as was Abraham, and who can understand him?" . . .
Preliminary Expectoration
Different Ways of Understanding the Abraham Story
There have existed countless generations that knew by heart, word for word, the story of Abraham; but how many has it made sleepless?
Now the story of Abraham has the remarkable feature of always being glorious, in however limited a sense it is understood. Still, here also the point is whether one means to labor and exert oneself. Now people do not care to labor and exert themselves, but wish nevertheless to understand the story. They praise Abraham, but how? By expressing the matter in the most general terms and saying: "the great thing about him was that he loved God so passionately that he was willing to sacrifice to Him his most precious possession." That is very true; but "the most precious possession" is an indefinite expression. As one's thoughts, and one's mouth, run on one assumes, in a very easy fashion, the identity of Isaac and "the most precious possession" and meanwhile he who is meditating may smoke his pipe, and his audience comfortably stretch out their legs. If the rich youth whom Christ met on his way'' had sold all his possessions and given all to the poor, we would praise him as we praise all which is great aye, would not understand even him without labor; and yet would he never have become an Abraham, notwithstanding his sacrificing the most precious possessions he had. That which people generally forget in the story of Abraham is his fear and anxiety. For as regards money, one is not ethically responsible for it, whereas for his son a father has the highest and most sacred responsibility. However, fear is a dreadful thing for cowardly spirits, so they omit it. Yet they wish to speak of Abraham.
A Minister Criticizes a Parishioner who Imitates Abraham's Act
So they keep on speaking, and in the course of their speech the two terms "Isaac" and "the most precious thing" are used alternately, and everything is in the best order. But now suppose that among the audience there was a man who suffered with sleeplessness; and then the most terrible and profound, the most tragic, and at the same time the most comic, misunderstanding is within the range of possibility. That is, suppose this man goes home and wishes to do as Abraham did; for his son is his most precious possession. If a certain minister learned of this he would perhaps go to him, he would gather up all his spiritual dignity and exclaim: "You abominable creature, you scum of humanity, what devil possessed you to wish to murder your son?" And this minister, who had not felt any particular warmth, nor perspired while speaking about Abraham, this minister would be astonished himself at the earnest wrath with which he poured forth his thunders against that poor wretch; indeed, he would rejoice over himself, for never had he spoken with such power and unction, and he would have said to his wife: "I am a minister, the only thing I have lacked so far was the occasion. Last Sunday, when speaking about Abraham, I did not feel thrilled in the least."
Now, if this same minister had just a bit of sense to spare, I believe he would lose it if the sinner would reply, in a quiet and dignified manner: "Why, it was on this very same matter you preached, last Sunday!" But how could the minister have entertained such thoughts? Still, such was the case, and the minister's mistake was merely not knowing what he was talking about. Ah, would that some poet might see his way clear to prefer such a situation to the stuff and nonsense of which novels and comedies are full! For the comic and the tragic here run parallel to infinity. The sermon probably was ridiculous enough in itself, but it became infinitely ridiculous through the very natural consequence it had. Or, suppose now the sinner was converted by this lecture without daring to raise any objection, and this zealous divine now went home elated, glad in the consciousness of being effective, not only in the pulpit, but chiefly, and with irresistible power, as a spiritual guide, inspiring his congregation on Sunday, while on Monday he would place himself like a cherub with flaming sword before the man who by his actions tried to give the lie to the old saying that "the course of the world follows not the priest's word."
If, on the other hand, the sinner is not convinced of his error, then his position would become tragic. He would probably be executed, or else sent to the lunatic asylum. At any rate, he would become a sufferer in this world; but in another sense I should think that Abraham made him happy; for he who labors, he will not perish.
Murdering Isaac vs. Sacrificing Isaac
Now how may we explain the contradiction contained in that sermon? Is it due to Abraham's having the reputation of being a great man so that whatever he does is great, but if another should undertake to do the same it is a sin, a heinous sin? If this is the case, I prefer not to participate in such thoughtless praise. If faith cannot make it a sacred thing to wish to sacrifice one's son, then let the same judgment be visited on Abraham as on any other man. If we possibly lack the courage to drive our thoughts to their logical conclusion and say that Abraham was a murderer, then it is better to acquire that courage, rather than to waste one's time on undeserved praise. The fact is, the ethical expression for what Abraham did is that he wanted to murder Isaac. The religious expression is that he wanted to sacrifice him. But precisely in this contradiction is contained the fear which may well rob one of one's sleep. Yet Abraham were not Abraham without this fear. Or, again, supposing Abraham did not do what is attributed to him, if his action was an entirely different one, based on conditions of those times, then let us forget him; for what is the use of calling to mind that past which can no longer become a present reality? Or, the speaker had perhaps forgotten the essential fact that Isaac was the son. For if faith is eliminated, having been reduced to a mere nothing, then only the brutal fact remains that Abraham wanted to murder Isaac which is easy for everybody to imitate who has not the faith the faith, that is, which makes it most difficult for him. . . .
Abraham's Paradox exposes the Absurdity of Faith
Love has its priests in the poets, and one hears at times a poet's voice which worthily praises it. But not a word does one hear of faith. Who is there to speak in honor of that passion? Philosophy "goes right on." Theology sits at the window with a painted appearance and sues for philosophy's favor, offering it her charms. It is said to be difficult to understand the philosophy of Hegel; but to understand Abraham, why, that is an easy matter! To proceed further than Hegel is a wonderful feat, but to proceed further than Abraham, why, nothing is easier! Personally, I have devoted a considerable amount of time to a study of Hegelian philosophy and believe I understand it fairly well. In fact, I am rash enough to say that when, notwithstanding an effort, I am not able to understand him in some passages, it is because he is not entirely clear about the matter himself. All this intellectual effort I perform easily and naturally, and it does not cause my head to ache. On the other hand, whenever I attempt to think about Abraham I am, as it were, overwhelmed. At every moment I am aware of the enormous paradox which forms the content of Abraham's life, at every moment I am repulsed, and my thought, notwithstanding its passionate attempts, cannot penetrate into it, cannot forge on the breadth of a hair. I strain every muscle in order to contemplate the problem and become a paralytic in the same moment.
I am by no means unacquainted with what has been admired as great and noble. My soul feels kinship with it, being satisfied, in all humility, that it was also my that cause the hero espoused. When contemplating his deed I say to myself: "your cause too is at stake." I am able to identify myself with the hero; but I cannot do so with Abraham, for whenever I have reached his height I fall down again, since he confronts me as the paradox. It is by no means my intention to maintain that faith is something inferior, but, on the contrary, that it is the highest of all things; also that it is dishonest in philosophy to offer something else instead, and to pour scorn on faith; but it ought to understand its own nature in order to know what it can offer. It should take away nothing; least of all, fool people out of something as if it were of no value. I am not unacquainted with the sufferings and dangers of life, but I do not fear them, and cheerfully go forth to meet them. . . . But my courage is not, for all that, the courage of faith, and is as nothing compared with it. I cannot carry out the movement of faith: I cannot close my eyes and confidently plunge into the absurd. It is impossible for me; but neither do I boast of it. . . .
The Knight of Infinite Resignation vs. the Knight of Faith
The [mere] knights of infinite resignation [who give up what they hold dearest] are easily recognized, for their gait is dancing and bold. But they who possess the jewel of faith [i.e., true the knights of faith] frequently deceive one because their bearing is strangely like that of a class of people heartily despised by infinite resignation as well as by faith: the philistines.
Let me admit frankly that I have not in my experience encountered any certain example of this type [i.e., knights of faith]. But I do not refuse to admit that as far as I know, every other person may be such an example. At the same time I will say that I have searched vainly for years. It is the custom of scientists to travel around the globe to see rivers and mountains, new stars, bright-colored birds, misshapen fish, ridiculous races of men. They abandon themselves to a sluggish state of unconsciousness which stares at existence and believe they have seen something worthwhile. All this does not interest me; but if I knew where there lived such a knight of faith I would journey to him on foot, for that marvel occupies my thoughts exclusively. Not a moment would I leave him out of sight, but would watch how he makes the movements, and I would consider myself provided for life, and would divide my time between watching him and myself practicing the movements, and would thus use all my time in admiring him.
As I said, I have not met with such a one; but I can easily imagine him. Here he is. I make his acquaintance and am introduced to him. The first moment I lay my eyes on him I push him back, leaping back myself, I hold up my hands in amazement and say to myself: "Good Lord! that person? Is it really he? Why, he looks like a parish-beadle [i.e., a minor church official]!" But it is really he. I become more closely acquainted with him, watching his every movement to see whether some insignificant incongruous movement of his has escaped me, some trace, perchance, of a signaling from the infinite, a glance, a look, a gesture, a melancholy air, or a smile, which might betray the presence of infinite resignation contrasting with the finite.
But no! I examine his figure from top to toe to discover whether there is anywhere a chink through which the infinite might be seen to peer forth. But no! he is of one piece, all through. . . . Thus he shows as much unconcern as any worthless happy-go-lucky fellow; and yet, every moment he lives he purchases his leisure at the highest price, for he makes not the least movement except by virtue of the absurd; and yet, yet, indeed, I might become furious with anger, if for no other reason than that of envy. Yet, this man has performed, and is performing every moment, the movement of infinity . . . He has resigned everything absolutely, and then again seized hold of it all on the strength of the absurd. . . .
Infinite resignation is the last stage which goes before faith, so that everyone who has not made the movement of infinite resignation cannot have faith; for only through absolute resignation do I become conscious of my eternal worth, and only then can there arise the problem of again grasping hold of this world by virtue of faith.
We will now suppose the knight of faith in the same case [i.e., where the knight of resignation reluctantly ends a relationship where marriage is impossible]. He [i.e., the knight of faith] does precisely as the other knight, he absolutely resigns the love which is the contents of his life, he is reconciled to the pain; but then the miraculous happens, he makes one more movement, strange beyond comparison, saying: "Still I believe that I will marry her: marry her by virtue of the absurd, by virtue of the act that to God nothing is impossible."
Abraham's Story as the Paradoxical Moment of Faith
Let us then either waive the whole story of Abraham, or else learn to stand in awe of the enormous paradox which constitutes his significance for us, so that we may learn to understand that our age, like every age, may rejoice if it has faith. If the story of Abraham is not a mere nothing, an illusion, or if it is just used for show and as a pastime, the mistake cannot by any means be in the sinner's wishing to do likewise. But it is necessary to find out how great was the deed which Abraham performed, in order that the man may judge for himself whether he has the courage and the mission to do likewise. The comical contradiction in the procedure of the minister was his reduction of the story of Abraham to insignificance whereas he rebuked the other man for doing the very same thing.
But should we then cease to speak about Abraham? I certainly think not. But if I were to speak about him I would first of all describe the terrors of his trial. To that end, like a leech I would suck all the suffering and distress out of the anguish of a father, in order to be able to describe what Abraham suffered while yet preserving his faith. I would remind the hearer that the journey lasted three days and a major part of the fourth. In fact, these three and a half days ought to become infinitely longer than the few thousand years which separate me from Abraham. I would remind him, as I think right, that every person is still permitted to turn around before trying his strength on this formidable task; in fact, that he may return every instant in repentance. Provided this is done, I fear for nothing. Nor do I fear to awaken great desire among people to attempt to emulate Abraham. But to put forward a cheap version of Abraham and yet forbid everyone to do as he did, that I call ridiculous.
It is now my intention to extract the dialectical implications that are in the narrative of Abraham in the form of problemata, in order to see what a tremendous paradox faith is; a paradox that can make murder a sacred, God-pleasing deed; a paradox that gives Isaac back to Abraham; a paradox of which no thought can take control, because faith begins where thought ends.
The Individuals' default Purpose is to Become the Universal
The ethical is the universal, and as such, the universal is that which is valid for everyone; expressed in another way, it is what is valid in every moment. It is immanent in itself, has nothing except its purpose (telos), but it is also purpose for everything outside of it. When the Ethical has absorbed this into itself, it does not progress. When understood physically and spiritually, the particular individual is the person who has his purpose (telos) in the universal, and this is his ethical task, to constantly express himself in it, to do away with his particularly to become the universal.
In Faith we Assert our Individuality above the Universal (i.e., Above the Ethical)
As soon as the individual in particular wants to assert himself over against the universal, he sins, and can only reconcile himself with the universal by acknowledging this. Every time when the individual, after entering the universal, feels the urge to assert himself as an individual, he is in temptation, and can only work his way out of this by remorsefully letting go of his individuality in the universal. If this is the highest thing that can be said about man and his existence, then the ethical would be of the same character as the person's eternal happiness, which is his purpose (telos). For, it would be a contradiction to say that his eternal happiness could be given up, that is, teleologically suspended, since as soon as it is suspended it will also be removed, whereas what is suspended is not removed but rather preserved in the higher, which is his purpose (telos). . . .
Faith is namely the paradox that the individual is higher than the universal, but it must be noted in the sense that the movement repeats itself so that, after being in the universal, he now isolates himself as the individual who is higher than the universal. If that is not the essence of faith, then Abraham is lost, so faith has never existed in the world simply because it has always existed. Because when the ethical (i.e., the moral), is the highest (and there is nothing incommensurable left in the person in any other way than that this incommensurability is not evil, that is, the individual, which is to be expressed in universal), then one does not need any categories other than those used by Greek philosophy, or such which can be derived from them through consistent thinking. . . .
Abraham (the Individual) Raised Himself Above the Ethical (the Universal)
I return to Abraham. Before the result, Abraham was either a murderer every minute, or we face a paradox which is higher than all resolution.
Thus, the story of Abraham contains a teleological suspension of the ethical. As the single individual he became higher than the universal [i.e., the ethical]. That is the paradox that cannot be conveyed. It is as inexplicable how he entered it as it is inexplicable how he remains in it. If this is not the case with Abraham, he is not even a tragic hero, but a murderer. It is thoughtless to continue to call him the father of faith, to speak of this to people who care about nothing but words. A person can become a tragic hero by his own powers, but not a knight of faith. If a person takes the path of the tragic hero, which is difficult in a sense, some will be able to assist him. However, the one who follows the narrow path of faith has no one to advise him, no one to understand him. Faith is a miracle, and yet no person is excluded from it; for that in which all human life is united is passion, and faith is a passion.
SOCRATES AND THE ABSOLUTE PARADOX OF LEARNING TRUTH (Philosophical Fragments, 1844)
Paradox of the Learner and Teacher of Truth (Chapter 1: "A Thought Project")
How far can truth be taught? We want to start with this question. It was a Socratic question, or it arose from the Socratic question of how far virtue can be taught; for virtue was again determined as insight (cf. Protagoras, Gorgias, Meno, Euthydemus). If the truth is to be taught, it must be assumed that it is not there; if it is to be taught, it is sought after. Here we encounter the difficulty that Socrates points out in the "Meno" as a "contentious proposition": that a person cannot search for what he knows and just as impossible can search for what he does not know; for what he knows, he cannot seek after, since he knows it, and what he does not know, he cannot seek after, since he also does not know what to look for. The ignorant only need a hint in order to reflect on what he knows by himself. So the truth is not brought into him; it was in him. Socrates develops this idea, and it ultimately is where the pathos of Greek consciousness is concentrated, since it becomes evidence of the immortality of the soul, however, in backwards way, that is, as evidence of the pre-existence of the soul. . . .
The Moment: An Instant when Time and Eternity Meet and Change one's Life
If I could imagine in another life meeting with Socrates, Prodicus, or the maidservant [i.e., notable teachers], then here again none of them would become more than an occasion, or as Socrates bodly states it that in the Underworld he himself would only want to ask questions; for the ultimate idea of all questioning is that the person asked must have the truth, and get it by himself. The temporal point of departure is nothing; for in the same moment that I discover that I have known the truth from eternity, without knowing it, at the same time, that moment is hidden in the eternal, admitted therein, so that I still cannot find it (so to speak), even though I searched for it, because there is no Here or There, but just an everywhere and nowhere (ubique a nusquam). . . .
If the situation now is to be different, then the moment in time must have such decisive significance, where I will not be able to forget that moment, neither in time nor in eternity, because the eternal, previously nonexistent, came into existence in that moment.
The Learner is Initially in a Condition of Error
We started with Socrates' difficulty in finding the truth, since it is impossible to find it whether you have it or not. Socratic thinking actually eliminated the disjunction, since it was shown that basically everyone has the truth. That was his explanation; we have seen the consequences of this for the moment [i.e., the eternal entering the present]. If this is to be of decisive importance, the learner must not have had the truth up to the moment, not even in the form of ignorance (otherwise one can only speak of a moment of instigation). Yes, he must not be a learner either: this is how we must understand the difficulty of his situation if we want to avoid the Socratic explanation [i.e., Socrates' solution that we recollect truths from our prior lives]. He must then be outside the truth (he is not one who comes to it, as a convert, but one who moves away from it), or he must be [in a condition of] Error. So he is Error. How can he be reminded, or what is the purpose of reminding him of something he didn't know and thus cannot? . . .
The Teacher is only an Occasion for the Learner to Discover Truth
If the teacher is supposed to be the occasion to remind the learner, he can in no way lead him to remember that he actually knows the truth; because the learner is Error. If the teacher is to remind him of something, if the teacher is to be the occasion for it, he can only remind him that the learner is the Error. By reflecting on this, the learner is excluded from the truth, more than before when he was ignorant of being Error. Further, by reminding the learner of this, the teacher pushes the learner away from him, only that the learner, who is thrown back into himself, does not discover that he already knew the truth, but discovers his Error. From this act of consciousness, the Socratic principle now applies that the teacher is only an occasion, whoever he happens to be, even if he were a god. Because I can only discover my own Error through myself; it is only when I have discovered it that it has not been discovered before, even if the whole world knew about it. (Under the presupposed assumption regarding the moment, this becomes the only analogy to the Socratic.) . . .
The Learner who becomes Truth is Reborn as a New Person
If the student is Error (otherwise we go back to the Socratic [theory of recollection]), but still human; and if he now receives the condition and the truth, then he does not become a human being for the first time, for he already was, but he becomes another human being. He does so not in the superficial sense that he would be someone of the same quality as before, but rather he would be a person of a different quality, or (as we can call it) a new person. . . .
If the learner was in the condition of Error and now received the truth with its condition, a change takes place with him, which is like the movement from non-being to being. This transition from non-being to being, however, is a birth. But one who already exists cannot be born, and yet he is born. We will to call this transition the rebirth through which he is born for the second time. Just as in his first birth, the learner is not yet aware of any of the world into which he is now born, not whether it is cultivated, not whether there are other people on it. While you can be baptized en masse, you can never be reborn en masse. The person, who gave birth to himself with the help of the midwife Socrates, subsequently forgets everything else in the world and, in a deeper sense, owes no one anything. Similarly, the learner who is reborn owes nothing to anyone, but everything to that divine teacher. Just as the former, through himself, forgot the whole world, so too must the learner, through this teacher, forget himself. . . .
The Absolute Paradox (Chapter 3)
Paradox as the Passion of Thought
Although Socrates used all his strength to gain knowledge of human nature and come to know himself (even though he was praised for centuries as the person who knew the person best), he nevertheless confesses that he was reluctant to think about the nature of beings, such as Pegasus and the Gorgons, because he was not yet completely at peace with himself, namely whether he (the expert of human nature) was a more strange monster than himself Typhon, or, instead, a friendlier, simpler creature that naturally has something divine in it (Phaedrus, 229). This is obviously a paradox. But one should not think lightly of the Paradoxical. For the paradox is passion of thought, and the thinker who avoids the paradox is like the lover who wants to subdue passion: a mediocre patron. But the highest potency of every passion is to want its own downfall; and so it is also the highest passion of the mind that it wants to be opposed, although in one way or another the opposition must become its downfall. Thus, the highest paradox of thinking is to discover something that it cannot itself think. This passion for thinking is basically everywhere, in all thinking, even in that of the individual, provided that the thinking person is not merely himself. But habit prevents you from discovering this. So as natural scientists explain it, human walking is continual falling; but a proper and leisurely man who goes to the office in the morning and comes back home at noon, thinks this is an exaggeration since his progress is through mediation [i.e., synthesis]; how should it occur to him that he falls constantly, he who runs after his nose! . . .
The Paradox of Knowing that God is Unlike Us
Perhaps someone will say: "You are whimsical, and I can see that very well; but you probably don't believe yourself that I should think of worrying about such a whim. It is so strange or so ridiculous that no one has even thought of it, and above all so absurd that I would have to throw everything I have in my consciousness out of it in order to fall for something like that." Certainly, you would have to do that, but can you also be justified in keeping all the assumptions that you have in your consciousness and at the same time hold the opinion that you think about your consciousness without prior assumptions? Are you denying the implications of our discussion: that the reason, in attempting to determine the Unknown [i.e., God] as the unlike, ultimately strays and confuses the unlike with the like? But something else seems to follow from this: namely that man must first obtain knowledge that the Unknown (the God) is unlike from him, absolutely unlike, before he can actually know anything about it. The mind by itself cannot obtain knowledge of this (this is a self-contradiction as we have seen); for, if he should obtain knowledge of it from God and if he learns about it from him, then he cannot understand it again and therefore cannot obtain knowledge of it; how should he understand the absolutely unlike? If this is not immediately clear, its consequence gives it more clarity; for if the God is absolutely unlike from man, man is absolutely unlike from the God; but how should the mind grasp this?
Knowledge of Sin is needed to Know we are Unlike God
This shows that we are facing a paradox. Just to know that the God is unlike, man needs help from the God, and now he gets to know that the God is absolutely unlike him. But if the God is to be absolutely unlike human beings, this cannot be due to the fact that what man owes to the God (because in this respect he is related to him), but in what he owes himself or what he is responsible for. Now what is the unlikeness? What else but sin? Because the unlikeness, the absolute unlikeness, is supposed to be the fault of the person himself. We earlier express this in such a way that man was Error by caused this his own guilt, and we agreed, both playful and yet seriously, that it was too much to ask man to discover this through himself. Now we have found the same thing again. When the expert of human nature [i.e., Socrates] wrestled with the unlike, he became perplexed about himself; he soon no longer knew whether he was a stranger monster than Typhon or whether there was something divine in him. What was missing for him [i.e. for Socrates]? The consciousness of sin (which he could certainly no less teach to another person than any could any other man) which only the God can teach, that is, if he wanted to be a teacher. Yes, as we have speculated, he wanted this. To be this [teacher] he wished to become the same as the individual person so that the individual could understand the God completely. So the paradox becomes even more dangerous, or the same paradox has two sides and turns out to be the Absolute Paradox: negative, by revealing the absolute unlikeness of sin, positive, by wanting to abolish this absolute unlikeness in absolute likeness.
ADAM'S ANXIETY AS THE SOURCE OF ORIGINAL SIN (The Concept of Anxiety, 1844, 1.5)
The Psychology of Anxiety
Innocence as a state of Ignorance that is both at Peace and Anxious
Innocence is ignorance. In his innocence, man is not determined as spirit, but mentally, is in close union with his naturalness. The spirit in man is dreaming. This concept is entirely in agreement with that of the Bible, which denies the knowledge of the difference between good and evil to man in the state of innocence [i.e., Adam in the Garden of Eden] and thus condemns all imaginary notions of merit by Catholicism.
In this state [of ignorance] there is peace and rest; but at the same time there is something else that is not conflict and strife, since there is nothing to conflict with. So, what is it? Nothing! But what effect does it have? It creates anxiety. This is the deep secret of innocence, that it is anxiety at the same time. Dreaming, the spirit projects its own actuality, but this actuality is nothing and innocence constantly sees this nothingness outside itself.
Anxiety as Freedom through the Dreaming Mind
Anxiety is a determination of the dreaming mind and therefore is part of psychology. When I am awake, the difference between my self and my non-self is established, but in sleep that difference is suspended, for, when dreaming it is an implied nothing. The reality of the mind always shows itself as a figure that elicits its possibility; but it is gone as soon as one reaches for it, and it is nothing that can only produce anxiety. It cannot do more as long as it shows itself. The concept of anxiety is never dealt with in psychology, thus I must point out that it differs from fear and similar [psychological] conditions that always refer to something specific. But anxiety is the reality of freedom as a possibility before the possibility. That is why there is no anxiety in animals, precisely because their naturalness is not determined as a spirit.
If we now want to look at the dialectical determinations of anxiety, it turns out that these really are the same as psychological ambiguity. Anxiety is a sympathetic antipathy [hostility] and an antipathetic [hostile] sympathy. I think it is easy to see that this is a psychological determination in a completely different sense than that of concupiscence [i.e., sexual desire]. The use of language fully confirms this; we say: a sweet anxiety, a sweet apprehension, and a strange anxiety, a shy anxiety, etc.
Anxiety as an Adventurous Part of Spirit
The anxiety established in innocence is, first, not guilt, and, second, not an adversity for others, that is, not a suffering that is incapable of harmonizing with happiness of innocence. If we look at children, we find in them anxiety more clearly indicated as a search for the adventurous, the monstrous, the enigmatic. Even if there are children with whom this is not found, this proves nothing, for animals do not have it either. The less spirit, the less anxiety. This anxiety is so essential to the child that it does not want to be without it; and even if something causes the child anxiety, the child is captivated by its sweet apprehension. In all nations, which consider the childlike as the dream state, there is this anxiety. The deeper it is, the more profound the nation is. It is simply dull stupidity to think of this as merely disorganization. Anxiety has the same meaning here as melancholy at a much further point, when freedom has gone through the imperfect forms of its history and now needs to come to itself in the truest sense of the word.
Sin as a Qualitative Leap from Innocence to Guilt
Just as the relationship that anxiety bears to its object (i.e., the something that is nothing), is completely ambiguous (the use of language also significantly speaks of anxiety of nothing), so too the transition here from innocence to guilt is also dialectical, so that the explanation must be psychological. The qualitative leap stands out sharply from the ambiguity of the previous state. For whoever is guilty of anxiety is truly innocent: it was not he but the anxiety, as a foreign power, which took control of him, a power that he did not love, but was anxious about. At the same time, though, he is guilty because he sank into the anxiety that he loved while he also feared it. There is nothing more ambiguous than this in the world, and that is why it is the only psychological explanation, while (to repeat myself) it can never attempt to explain the qualitative leap. Any suggestion that Adam was tempted [in the Garden of Eden by God's prohibition] or the seducer deceiving him [i.e., Eve and the Serpant], has only the necessary ambiguity for a superficial observation. It cheats on ethics, reduces the qualitative leap to a quantitative shift, and with the help of psychology, pays man a compliment at the expense of ethics -- a compliment that anyone who is ethically developed must refrain from, since it is a new, more dangerous seduction.
The Anxious Spirit Unites the Psyche and Body
That anxiety comes to the foreground is what everything is about. The man is a synthesis of psyche and body; however, a synthesis is unthinkable if the two are not united in a third party. This third is the spirit. In innocence man is not merely animal; if he were just an animal in any moment of his life, he would never become a human being at all. So spirit is present, but as an immediate, dreaming spirit. To the extent that it is now present, it is in a sense an enemy power; because it constantly disturbs the relationship between psyche and body. That relationship continues, but does not last, insofar as it is only supposed to last through the spirit. On the other hand, spirit is a friendly power, because it wants to establish the relationship. What is the relationship of man to this ambiguous power? How does the spirit relate to itself and its condition? It relates itself through anxiety. The spirit cannot do away with itself or take hold of itself as long as it is outside of itself. Man cannot sink into a vegetative state since he is destined as a spirit. He cannot flee anxiety because he loves it; but he really can't love it because he flees from it. Now innocence is at its peak. However, it is ignorance, while not an animal brutality, is an ignorance determined by spirit. Accordingly, innocence is anxiety because it is ignorance about nothing. There is no knowledge of good and evil here; but the whole reality of knowledge is projected in anxiety as the vast nothingness of ignorance.
Adam's Anxiety from both the Prohibition and Threat of Punishment
The Prohibition from the Fruit is Incomprehensible to Adam
Innocence is still there, but it only needs a word and then ignorance concentrates. Innocence cannot understand this word, of course, but anxiety has already taken its first prey; instead of nothing, innocence received a puzzling word. In Genesis it says that God told Adam: "Only from the tree of knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat", naturally Adam truly did not understand this word. For how could he understand the difference between good and evil, if this distinction could only be made through the fruit's pleasure?
If one now assumes that the prohibition awakens desire, then one obtains knowledge instead of ignorance; for Adam must have had a knowledge of freedom if he desired to use it. Thus, the explanation [i.e., freedom] follows it [i.e., reason]. The prohibition gives him anxiety because the prohibition presents him with the possibility of freedom. What passed by innocence as the nothing of anxiety, has now returned to Adam, and is once again nothing -- the anxious possibility of an ability. He has no conception of his ability; otherwise (what generally happens) you assume in advance that which comes later, namely, the distinction between good and evil. It is only the possibility of an ability that is present as a higher form of ignorance, and as a higher expression of anxiety. For, in the higher sense, it both is and is not, since, in a higher sense, he loves it and flees from it at the same time.
The Threat of Punishment is Also Incomprehensible to Adam
After the words of prohibition follows the word of judgment: you shall surely die. What it means to die, Adam certainly could not understand at all. But after he was told these words, nothing would prevent him from having the idea of something terrifying. Indeed, in this respect even animals may understand facial expressions and movement in the spoken voice, without understanding the words. If the prohibition is to arouse desire, the threat of punishment naturally also creates the idea of a deterrent. But this by itself confuses things. Rather, terror only becomes anxiety, because Adam did not understand what was said; here too there is only the ambiguity of anxiety. The infinite possibility of ability that was awaken by the prohibition is now approaching nearer, for this possibility now shows another possibility as its consequence.
Thus, innocence is brought to its most extreme. Through anxiety, innocence is trapped in her relationship with both what is prohibited and to the punishment. She is not guilty and yet there is anxiety in her as if she were lost.
Psychology cannot go any further than this, but it can reach this point and, in particular, it can point it out again and again in its observation of human life.
The Threat of Punishment came from Within Adam
I conclude by returning to the Biblical story. I initially suggested that both the prohibition and the threat of punishment originated outside [of Adam from God]. This, of course, has troubled some thinkers. But the difficulty is such that you must smile at it. Through language, innocence indeed can speak insofar as it can express all that is spiritual. Therefore, we may assume that Adam only spoke to himself. Then the imperfection disappears in the narrative (that is, where someone else speaks to Adam about something that he does not understand). But, if Adam could speak [to himself in this way], it does not follow that he understood what was said in a deeper sense. Most of all, this applies to the distinction between good and evil, which is established in the language, but is only available through freedom. Innocence can indeed speak of this distinction [between good and evil]; but the distinction is not there for innocence, and the distinction only has the meaning for innocence in the manner shown in the preceding.
THE FAILURE OF OBJECTIVE APPROACHES TO SCRIPTURE (Concluding Unscientific Postscript, 1846)
Problems with the Objective Theological Analysis of Scripture ("Holy Scripture")
Historical Scholarship is Valid for Secular Texts, but Deceiving for Religious Texts
If historical questions are asked about the truth of Christianity, holy scripture immediately becomes a crucial document, and it is important to secure scripture historically and critically. One deals with the relationship of the individual writings to the canon, their authenticity, integrity, the credibility of the authors and one establishes a dogmatic guarantee: inspiration. . . .
Sometimes one hears uneducated or semi-educated people or inflated geniuses scoffing at the critical work in the writings of antiquity, one hears foolishly mockery at the insignificant researcher's care, while it is his honor that he does not regard anything scientifically as insignificant. No, scholarly philology is entirely in its right . . . but you cannot get a clear impression of this from the learned critical theology. Its whole endeavor suffers from a certain conscious or unconscious duality. It looks as if something should suddenly come out of this criticism for faith, something that concerns it. That is where the deception lies.
For example, if a philologist publishes a [secular] work by Cicero and does it with great expertise. . . to pave the way for thought in the confusion of the readings, one can indulge in admiration. For when it is finished, nothing else but the admirable thing follows from it but that, through its art and efficiency, an ancient writing in the most reliable form has been brought about. In no way, however, should I now build my eternal happiness on this book; because, yes I confess, his astute ingenuity is not enough for me as concerns my eternal happiness. Yes, I confess, my admiration would not be joyful, but rather one of displeasure if I thought he had something like this in mind. But that's exactly what the learned critical theology does. When it is finished (and until then it keeps us in suspense with this prospect) it then concludes: so you can now build your eternal happiness on these scriptures.
Critical Scholarship of Scriptures Leads to Despair
Anyone who believes in the inspiration [of a scripture], must consequently consider every critical assessment of it, whether favorable or unfavorable, to be a judgment of inadequacy, a kind of attack. He who, without faith, dares to delve into such critical assessments, it is impossible to expect inspiration to come from them. Who really cares about the whole thing?
The contradiction is not noticed because the matter is treated objectively; yes, it is not there if the researcher himself forgets what he is hiding, except when he sometimes lyrically encourages himself to work on it, or polemicizes lyrically with eloquence. However, suppose someone appears with infinite personal interest, and in passion wants to connect his eternal happiness to the expected result. He will quickly see that there is no result and none to be expected, and the contradiction will drive him to despair. Luther's rejection of the "Letter of James" [from the New Testament] was enough to make him despair. In the case of an infinite interest in eternal happiness, there is a point of importance, of infinite importance, or vice versa: the despair over the contradiction will just teach him that it cannot be penetrated along the way.
Critical Scholarship of Scripture can be Unending
Yet this is how things have gone. One generation after the other has gone to the grave, new difficulties have arisen, they have been defeated and yet more difficulties have arisen. As an inheritance, the illusion has passed from generation to generation that this [theological] method is the right one, but the scholarly researchers have still not yet succeeded, etc. Everyone seems to be content with this, they are becoming more and more objective. The personal infinite interest (which is the possibility of faith, then actual faith, the form of eternal happiness, then actual eternal happiness) disappears more and more because the decision is postponed, and is postponed as if it came straight out of the result of the scholarly researcher's work. That is to say: the problem does not arise at all; one has become too objective to have eternal happiness; for, it [i.e., theological scholarship] is only there for the infinite personal interest, and you give it up to become objective, you let yourself be fooled by objectivity! Through the clergy, who betray scholarship from time to time, the congregation learns about it. In the end, the "community of believers" is merely a title, because the church becomes objective simply by looking at the clergy and seeing a tremendous result! Now an enemy is advancing against Christianity. He is dialectically just as well educated as the researcher scholar or the amateur church goer. He attacks a book of the bible, a series of books. The learned rescue choir immediately rushes in, etc. . . .
Even if the Scholar Proves the Authenticity of Scripture, this has no Bearing on Faith
For the dialectical to have its due, and simply think its thoughts undisturbed, let us first accept one and then the other.
Let's assume that it will be successful to prove from the Bible what a learned theologian could ever wish to prove from the Bible in his happy moment. That is, that these books belong to the canon, not others, they are authentic, they are complete, the authors are credible, and you can say that it is as if every letter was inspired. (There is nothing more one can say, because inspiration is the subject of faith, it is qualitatively dialectical, it cannot be achieved through quantitative means.) Furthermore, there is no trace of contradiction in the scriptures. Because let's be careful in our hypothesis, otherwise once again the Parentheses will appear [i.e., comments of clarification by theologians] and the philological-critical restlessness leads us astray. In general, what is necessary here to make things easy and extremely simple is just a dietary precaution, the rejection of any inserted scholarly remark, where, one, two, three, could become a hundred-year parenthesis [of theological commentary]. So suppose that everything about the scriptures is in order. What happens then? Has the faithless person come one step closer to faith? No, not a single step. For, faith does not result directly from a scientific consideration, on the contrary, through this objectivity one loses the infinite personal interest of passion, which is the condition of faith, the "everywhere and nowhere" in which faith can arise.
Did he who does believe gain some power and strength? No, he did not. In this extensive knowledge, in this certainty that lies at the door of faith and desires it, that he will need a lot of effort, a lot of fear and trembling, so as not to be challenged and confuse knowledge with faith. Until now, faith had a beneficial master of discipline, it would have its most dangerous enemy in certainty. If passion is taken away, then faith is no longer there, and certainty and passion are incompatible. Let a parallel illuminate this. Whoever believes that there is a God and providence has it easier to keep the faith (and easier to believe and not just imagine), if he is in an imperfect world where passion is kept alive, rather than in an absolutely perfect world. In a perfect world, faith is unthinkable. Therefore, it is also taught that in eternity faith is abolished.
How fortunate that this desired hypothesis, the most beautiful wish of critical theology, is an impossibility, because even the most perfect realization can only be an approximation. Again how fortunate for scholars that the mistake is by no means their fault. If all the angels joined forces, they could only bring about an approximation, because with historical knowledge an approximation is the only certainty; but this is also not enough to build an eternal happiness on it.
Even if the Scholar Disproves the Authenticity of Scripture, this also has no Bearing on Faith
So, I now assume the opposite, that the enemies have succeeded in proving from Scripture what they want [i.e., the inauthenticity of scripture], with a certainty that surpasses the strongest desire of the most poisonous enemy. What then? Did the enemy do away with Christianity? Not at all. Did he harm the believer? Not at all, not the least. Has he won himself the right to be liberated from responsibility for not believing? Not at all. Simply because these books were not written by these authors, not authentic, incomplete, not inspired (even though this cannot be proven because it is the subject of faith), it does not follow that these authors [of the Bible] have not been there and, above all, that Christ was not there. In this respect the believer is just as free to accept it, just as free. Let us well consider this, because if he accepted it on the basis of evidence, he would be about to give up his faith. If it ever comes to this, the believer will always have some guilt, since he himself made the first move by playing into the hands of unbelief by trying to prove itself. Here is the difficulty, and I am brought back to the situation with scholarly theology. For whose benefit is the evidence given? Faith does not need it, and must see it as its enemy.
On the other hand, when faith begins to be ashamed of itself (like when a mistress who is not content with her love life, and inwardly ashamed of her lover, then must show that there is something excellent about him), that is, when faith begins to lose passion, that is, when faith ceases to be faith, then proof is needed to have overall respect for the unbeliever. What, at this point, in the confusion of the categories of created by spiritual speakers [i.e., pastors and theologians] is performed in rhetorical stupidity, oh, let's not talk about it. The vanity of faith (a modern substitute, "how can you believe when you receive glory from one another", John 5:44) naturally does not want and cannot carry the martyrdom of faith, and a presentation on actual faith is perhaps now the presentation most rarely heard in all of Europe. Speculative thinking has understood everything, everything, everything! The spiritual speaker does hold back a little, and confesses that he has not yet understood everything, he confesses that he strives (poor fellow, this is a mix-up of the categories!). "If there is someone who has understood everything," he says, "I confess (oh, he is ashamed and does not realize that he should be using irony towards others) that I did not understand everything, cannot prove everything, and we lesser ones (alas, he feels his inferiority in a very incorrect place) we have to be satisfied with the faith." (Poor, misunderstood, ultimate passion: faith, that you must to be content with such a defender; poor spiritual speaker, you do not even know what you are saying. Poor intellectual indigent Homeless Joe, who does not really succeed in scholarship, but has faith, because faith indeed he has, that made fishermen into apostles, the faith that can move mountains, that is, when you have it!)
An Objective approach Prevents the Subject from having an Infinite Interest in Passion
When the matter is dealt with objectively, the subject cannot passionately relate to the decision, at least not have an infinite interest in passion. It is a self-contradiction and thus comical, to be infinitely interested in relation to what in its maximum always becomes only an approximation. However, if passion is added, zealousness emerges. With the infinitely passionate passion, every dot will be of infinite value. The error lies not in the infinitely passionate passion, but in the fact that its object has become an object of approximation.
Objective observation has existed from generation to generation precisely because people become more and more objective, less and less interested in passion. Assuming that in this way the search for proof of the truth of Christianity was continued, the strange thing would happen at last, that if one had finished proving its truth, it would have ceased to be something present; it would have become something historical, it would be something of the past, the truth of which (that is, the historical truth) would now be made reliable. In this way the anxious prophecy in Luke 18:8, comes true: but when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?
Religious Truth Obtained through Subjectivity, not Objectivity ("Holy Scripture")
Objective Scholarship's Quest for Truth is Unending
The more the observer becomes objective, the less he builds an eternal happiness (that is, his eternal happiness) upon his relationship to his contemplation, because eternal happiness is only available to the person who is infinitely interested in passion. Objectively, the viewer (whether he is a research scholar or an amateur church goer) understands himself objectively in the following farewell speech at the end of life: since I was young, book after book was doubted, and now their authenticity has been proven. But now, of course, one has again recently raised doubts about some books that have never been doubted before. But someday a scholar will certainly come [who will prove their authenticity], etc.
Even a Modest "Objective Subjectivity" never Obtains Religious Truth
The modest, objective subjectivity, to the hero's praise, keeps itself at a distance; it is at the service of accepting the truth as soon as the truth is provided. However, it is a distant goal to which one strives (undeniably, for an approximation can last as long as one wishes) and while the grass grows, the viewer dies, peacefully, for he was objective. Oh, objectivity! You are not prized for nothing, you shape everything, not even the most earnest believer has been so convinced about his eternal happiness, and more importantly, so sure not to lose it, as someone who is objective! It could be that this objectivity and modesty were misplaced, that it was unchristian. If so, then, it is a questionable way to enter the truth of Christianity.
Religious Truth Obtained through Subjectivity's Infinitely Personal Passion
As soon as one takes away subjectivity, and passion from subjectivity, and infinite interest from passion, there is no decision at all, neither in this problem nor in any other. All decision, all essential decision, rests in subjectivity. An observer (and this is the objective subjectivity) has no infinite urge for a decision, and sees it at no point. This is the deception of objectivity and the significance of mediation [i.e., synthesis] as a review in the continuing process, in which nothing exists and in which nothing is infinitely settled. This is because movement [i.e., perceived progress] returns to itself, and returns yet again, and thus this movement itself is a chimera, of which speculation is always wise afterwards. Objectively understood there is enough [progressive] result everywhere, but no final result anywhere, which is quite proper precisely because the decision rests in subjectivity, which is to say in passion, the maxim in the infinitely personal passion of one's eternal happiness.
Religious Truth is Subjectivity ("The Subjective Truth, Inwardness")
To show the distinction between the ways of objective and subjective reflection, I must now explain how the subjective reflection seeks back inwardly into inwardness. Inwardness at its fullest in an existing subject is passion, and truth as a paradox corresponds to passion. The fact that truth becomes the paradox, is based precisely in its relation to an existing subject. Thus, the one corresponds to the other. By forgetting that one is an existing subject, passion dies out and, in return, the truth is no longer paradoxical. However, the knowing subject, as a human being, becomes a more fantastic something and, truth becomes a fantastic object of its knowledge.
When truth is inquired into objectively, reflection is directed towards the truth as an object to which the knower is related. Reflection is not directed towards the relationship itself, but instead towards the fact that it is the truth, the truth he relates to. If it is only the truth to which he relates, then the subject is the truth. If the truth is subjectively asked about, reflection is directed subjectively on the individual's relationship. If only the "how" of this relationship is in truth, then the individual is in truth, even if the "what" to which he is related is untrue.
Let's take as an example knowledge of God. Objectively, reflection is directed toward the problem of whether it is the true God. Subjectively, though, the individual is directed toward the question of whether the individual is related to a something in such a way that this relationship is in truth is a God-relationship. In which of these approaches is the truth found? Well, might we resort to a mediation [i.e., a synthesis] here and say: it is on neither side, but in the mediation of the two? Well said, if only someone could explain how an existing individual manages to be in that state of mediation; for to be in a state of mediation is to be finished, but to exist is to become. Also, an existing being cannot be two places at once, being subject-object. When he is the nearest to being in two places at once, he is in passion, but passion is only momentary, and passion is also the highest of expression of subjectivity.
DESPAIR AS THE SICKNESS OF SIN (Sickness unto Death, 1849)
Despair is the Sickness unto Death (Sect. 1)
Two Forms of Despair: (1) Being Unconscious of Having a Self, and (2) Not Willing to be Oneself
A human person is spirit. But what is spirit? Spirit is the self. But what is the self? The self is a relation that relates to itself, that is, it is the relation that the relation relates to itself. The self is not the relation, but rather the relation as it relates to itself. A person is a synthesis of infinity and finite, of the temporal and the eternal, of freedom and necessity, in a word, a synthesis. A synthesis is a relation between two. Thus considered, a human person is not yet a self.
In the relation between the two [components, e.g., infinity and finite], the relation is the third element as a negative unity, and the two [components] relate to the relation, and the relation to the relation. Thus, under the provision of soul, the relation between soul and body is a relationship. If, on the other hand, the relation is to itself, then this relation is the positive third [i.e., the synthesis], and this is the self. . . .
Accordingly, there are only two forms of true despair. If the self of the human person had established himself, then we could only speak of the one form, that of not willing to be oneself, willing to be rid of oneself. But there can be no talk about despairing of willing to be oneself. This form is the expression of the complete dependence of the relation (the self), the expression that the self cannot by itself come to or be in equilibrium and tranquility, but only by relating itself to itself, which has set up the whole relationship.
Is despair an asset or a deficiency? From a purely intellectual perspective, it is both. If we only looked at despair in the abstract, we would have to say: it is a tremendous asset. The possibility of this sickness constitutes the superiority of humans over animals, and this superiority distinguishes him very differently than merely walking upright, because it suggests an infinite uprightness or exaltation, namely that he is spirit. The possibility of this sickness is the human's superiority over animals; to be aware of this sickness is the Christian's superiority over natural human; to be cured of this sickness is the Christian's happiness.
Thus, it is an infinite fortune that we can despair; and yet despair is not merely the greatest misfortune and misery, it is also damnation. Otherwise it is not a relationship between possibility and actuality. If it is an asset to be either this or that [i.e., a possibility] then it is an even greater asset to be that [i.e., actuality], that is, like ascending a ladder of what we are able to be. However, when it comes to despair, the result is a decent from what we are able to be. As the asset of possibility is infinitely high, so too is the depth of the decent infinitely low. . . .
Despair is the misalignment in relation to one's own being as a synthesis. But the synthesis itself is not the misalignment; rather, the synthesis is merely the possibility of misalignment, that is, within the synthesis lies the possibility of misalignment. If the synthesis itself were the misalignment, then there would be no despair, then the despair would be something that was within human nature; it would be something that happened to a person, something that he suffered, like a disease that is inflicted on him, like death, which is the fate of all. No, despair lies within people themselves. But if he were not a synthesis, he could not despair at all, and if the synthesis not originate from God's hand in the right relationship, then he could not despair either . . .
Universality of this Sickness (Section 2)
Universal Despair is Uplifting because it Sets a High Standard
Just as the doctor says that there is perhaps not a single living person who is perfectly healthy, whoever similarly knows people well would have to say that there is not a single person who is without some despair. For inside such a person is there is a restlessness, a strife, a disharmony, an anxiety about an unknown something that he does not dare to obtain knowledge of, an anxiety of a possibility of life, or an anxiety about himself. Thus, just as the physician speaks of someone going around with a disease in the body, so too the person carries a sickness within him, a sickness of the spirit that occasionally indicates an anxiety that he cannot explain. In any case, no one has lived, and no one lives outside Christendom, without being desperate, and none even within Christendom, unless he is a true Christian; and in so far as the person is not quite that, he is at least somewhat desperate.
To some, this consideration will certainly seem paradoxical, an exaggeration, and even a gloomy and depressing view. But it is none of these. It is not gloomy; on the contrary, it seeks to create light in what is generally left in a certain darkness. It is not depressing, but rather uplifting, since it looks at every person to be spirit, which is the highest requirement for him. It is also not a paradox, but a consistently carried out basic view, and therefore not an exaggeration.
Inadequacy of the Common view that Despair is Rare
The common view of despair, however, remains within mere appearance, and is therefore a superficial view, and indeed no view at all. It assumes that everyone should know best about themselves whether they are in despair or not. Whoever simply says that he is in despair is considered to be so, and whoever does not think himself so is not considered to be in despair. On this common view, then, despair is a fairly rare occurrence, not a frequent one. However, it is not the rare thing that one is desperate, no, the rare thing, the very rare thing, is that one is not in despair.
True Despair can be Hidden, and Seem to be Insignificant
But this common view of despair is a very poor one. Among other things, it completely overlooks that being unaware of one's despair is actually the form of despair (this is just to mention one problem, which if correctly understood brings thousands and even millions into the category of despair). The common view of identifying despair is similar to how we sometimes judge whether a person is sick or not. It in fact does this in a far deeper sense, for the common view understands far less about spirit than of sickness and health, and without spirit, one cannot understand despair. It is usually assumed that people are healthy when they do not themselves say they are sick, especially when they say they are well. The doctor, on the other hand, judges differently. But why? Because the doctor has a specific and well-developed idea of what it means to be healthy, and then he checks the condition of the person. The doctor knows about illnesses that are only in the imagination, and also about imaginary health; in the latter case, he first uses treatments to make the illness apparent. In general, precisely because he has insight, the doctor does not necessarily trust the person's own statement about his condition. It is his job to recognize illnesses, and therefore first of all to recognize whether the supposedly sick person is really sick, or whether maybe the supposedly healthy person is sick after all.
So also it is with the physician of the spirit regarding despair. He knows what despair is; he knows it and therefore is not content with the testimony of a person, no matter whether he says he is in despair or not. It should be noted that in a sense those who say it are not always in despair. One can affect despair, one can also go wrong and confuse the despair, which is a state of mind, with all sorts of temporary gloominess or grief, which does not lead to despair. However, the physician of the soul also sees these states as forms of despair; he sees very well that it is affectation, but this affectation is also despair; he sees very well that this gloominess, etc., does not have much significance, but it is nevertheless despair precisely because it does not have significance and is of no great importance.
THE DIVINITY OF CHRIST CANNOT BE PROVEN (Practice in Christianity, 1850, tr. Hollander)
Proofs from Scripture Conflict with Reason and Depend on Faith
Let me first ask another question: is any more absurd contradiction thinkable than wishing to prove that a certain person is God? (Ignore, for the present, whether one wishes to do so from history, or from whatever else in the wide world one wishes to prove it.) To maintain that a certain person is God (that is, professes to be God) is indeed a stumbling block in the purest sense. But what is the nature of a stumbling block? It is an assertion which is in conflict with all (human) reason. Now think of proving that! But to prove something is to make it reasonable and real. Is it possible, then, to make reasonable and real what conflicts with all reason? Scarcely; unless one wishes to contradict one's self. One can prove only that it conflicts with all reason. The proofs for the divinity of Christ given in Scripture, such as the miracles and his resurrection from the grave exist, too, only for faith; that is, they are no "proofs," for they are not meant to prove that all this agrees with reason but, on the contrary, are meant to prove that it is in conflict with reason and therefore a matter of faith.
Proofs from History Fail to Demonstrate that Christ was God
First, then, let us take up the proofs from history. "Is it not 1800 years ago now that Christ lived, is not his name proclaimed and reverenced throughout the world, has not his teaching (Christianity) changed the aspect of the world, having victoriously affected all affairs: has then history not sufficiently, or more than sufficiently, made good its claim as to who he was, and that he was God?" No, indeed, history has by no means sufficiently, or more than sufficiently, made good its claim, and in fact history cannot accomplish this in all eternity. However, as to the first part of the statement, it is true enough that his name is proclaimed throughout the world as to whether it is reverenced, that I do not presume to decide. Also, it is true enough that Christianity has transformed the aspect of the world, having victoriously affected all affairs, so victoriously indeed, that everybody now claims to be a Christian.
Now, if one intends to introduce this conclusion by assuming that Jesus Christ was a man, and then considers the 1800 years of history (i.e. the consequences of his life), one may indeed conclude with a constantly rising superlative: he was great, greater, the greatest, extraordinarily and astonishingly the greatest man who ever lived. If one begins, on the other hand, with the assumption (of faith) that he was God, one has by so doing stricken out and cancelled the 1800 years as not making the slightest difference, one way or the other, because the certainty of faith is on an infinitely higher plane. One course or the other one must take; but we will arrive at sensible conclusions only if we take the latter.
Category Mistake in Historical Proofs: Moving from a Finite Fact to an Infinite Fact about God
If one takes the former course [of historical proof] (unless by committing the logical error of passing over into different category), one will find it impossible in the conclusion suddenly to arrive at the new category "God"; that is, one cannot make the consequence, or consequences, of a man's life suddenly prove at a certain point in the argument that this man was God. If such a procedure were correct one ought to be able to answer satisfactorily a question like this: what must the consequence be, how great the effects, how many centuries must elapse, in order to infer from the consequences of a man's life for such was the assumption that he was God; or whether it is really the case that in the year 300 Christ had not yet been entirely proved to be God, though certainly the most extraordinarily, astonishingly, greatest man who had ever lived, but that a few more centuries would be necessary to prove that he was God. In that case we would be obliged to infer that people the fourth century did not look upon Christ as God, and still less they who lived in the first century; whereas the certainty that he was God would grow with every century. Also, that in our century this certainty would be greater than it had ever been, a certainty in comparison with which the first centuries hardly so much as glimpsed his divinity. You may answer this question or not, it does not matter.
In general, is it at all possible by the consideration of the gradually unfolding consequences of something to arrive at a conclusion different in quality from what we started with? Is it not sheer insanity (providing man is sane) to let one's judgment become so altogether confused as to land in the wrong category? If one begins with such a mistake, then how will one be able, at any subsequent point, to infer from the consequences of something, that one has to deal with an altogether different, in fact, infinitely different, category? A foot print certainly is the consequence of some creature having made it. Now I may mistake the track for that of, let us say, a bird; whereas by nearer inspection, and by following it for some distance, I may make sure that it was made by some other animal. Very good; but there was no infinite difference in quality between my first assumption and my later conclusion. But can I on further consideration and following the track still further, arrive at the conclusion: therefore it was a spirit a spirit that leaves no tracks? Precisely the same holds true of the argument that from the consequences of a human life for that was the assumption we may infer that therefore it was God.
Is God then so like man, is there so little difference between the two that, while in possession of my right senses, I may begin with the assumption that Christ was human? For that matter, has not Christ himself affirmed that he was God? On the other hand, if God and man resemble each other so closely, and are related to each other to such a degree that is, essentially belong to the same category of beings, then the conclusion "therefore he was God" is nevertheless just nonsense, because if that is all there is to being God, then God does not exist at all. But if God does exist and, therefore, belongs to a category infinitely different from man, why, then neither I nor anyone else can start with the assumption that Christ was human and end with the conclusion that therefore he was God. Anyone with a bit of logical sense will easily recognize that the whole question about the consequences of Christ's life on earth is incommensurable with the decision that he is God. In fact, this decision is to be made on an altogether different plane: man must decide for himself whether he will believe Christ to be what he himself affirmed he was, that is, God, or whether he will not believe so.
It is Blasphemous to Approach Christ's divinity from the Consequences of his Life
What has been said (mind you, providing one will take the time to understand it) is sufficient to make a logical mind stop drawing any inferences from the consequences of Christ's life: that therefore he was God. But faith in its own right protests against every attempt to approach Jesus Christ by the help of historical information about the consequences of his life. Faith contends that this whole attempt is blasphemous. Faith contends that the only proof left unimpaired by unbelief when it did away with all the other proofs of the truth of Christianity, the proof which (indeed, this is complicated business) I say, which unbelief invented in order to prove the truth of Christianity (the proof about which so excessively much excitement has been made in Christendom, the proof of 1800 years) as to this, faith contends that it is blasphemy.
With regard to a man it is true that the consequences of his life are more important than his life. If one, then, in order to find out who Christ was, and in order to find out by some inference, considers the consequences of his life: why, then one changes him into a man by this very act a man who, like other men, is to pass his examination in history, and history is in this case as mediocre an examiner as any half-baked teacher in Latin.
But strange! By the help of history, that is, by considering the consequences of his life, one wishes to arrive at the conclusion that therefore, therefore he was God; and faith makes the exactly opposite contention that he who even begins with this syllogism is guilty of blasphemy. Nor does the blasphemy consist in assuming hypothetically that Christ was a man. No, the blasphemy consists in the thought which lies at the bottom of the whole business, the thought without which one would never start it, and of whose validity one is fully and firmly assured that it will hold also with regard to Christ the thought that the consequences of his life are more important than his life; in other words, that he is a man. The hypothesis is: let us assume that Christ was a man; but at the bottom of this hypothesis, which is not blasphemy as yet, there lies the assumption that, the consequences of a man's life being more important than his life, this will hold true also of Christ. Unless this is assumed one must admit that one's whole argument is absurd, must admit it before beginning. So why begin at all? But once it is assumed, and the argument is started, we have the blasphemy. The more one becomes absorbed in the consequences of Christ's life, with the aim of being able to make sure whether or no he was God, the more blasphemous is one's conduct; and it remains blasphemous so long as this consideration is persisted in.
Interesting coincidence: one tries to make it appear that, providing one only thoroughly considers the consequences of Christ's life, this "therefore" will surely be arrived at and faith condemns the very beginning of this attempt as blasphemy, and hence the continuance in it as a worse blasphemy.
History is not the Same as Sacred History
"History," says faith, "has nothing to do with Christ." With regard to him we have only Sacred History (which is different in kind from general history), Sacred History which tells of his life and career when in debasement, and tells also that he affirmed himself to be God. He is the paradox which history never will be able to digest or convert into a general syllogism. He is in his debasement the same as he is in his exaltation but the 1800 years, or let it be 18,000 years, have nothing whatsoever to do with this. The brilliant consequences in the history of the world which are sufficient, almost, to convince even a professor of history that he was God, these brilliant consequences surely do not represent his return in glory! Indeed, in that case it were imagined rather meanly! The same thing over again: Christ is thought to be a man whose return in glory can be, and can become, nothing else than the consequences of his life in history whereas Christ's return in glory is something absolutely different and a matter of faith. He abased himself and was swathed in rags he will return in glory; but the brilliant consequences in history, especially when examined a little more closely, are too shabby a glory at any rate a glory of an altogether incongruous nature, of which faith therefore never speaks, when speaking about his glory. History is a very respectable science indeed, only it must not become so conceited as to take upon itself what the Father will do, and clothe Christ in his glory, dressing him up with the brilliant garments of the consequences of his life, as if that constituted his return. That he was God in his debasement and that he will return in glory, all this is far beyond the comprehension of history; nor can all this be got from history, excepting by an incomparable lack of logic, and however incomparable one's view of history may be otherwise.
How strange, then, that one ever wished to use history in order to prove Christ divine.
AGAINST STATE RELIGION (The Moment, 1855)
The State Church's Blasphemous Message of Christianity: Coercive Belief through Threat of Eternal Punishment ("If We are Really Christians, Then What is God?", 2.8)
Though it is not so, [suppose] that all we mean by being "Christians" is propaganda, [perpetrated by] this whole machinery of a State Church and thousands of spiritual worldly councilors of chancery, etc.; this would be a stupendous delusion which would not be of the least help to us in the life everlasting, but, on the contrary, would be turned into an accusation against us (though, again, this is not so). For if it is so, then let us, for the sake of life everlasting, get rid of it, the sooner the better. Though it is not so, if what we [in our delusion] understand by being a Christian really is [what it means] to be a [true] Christian: then what is God in Heaven?
[On this supposition that Christianity is as described by the State Church] God is the most ridiculous being that ever existed, His Word is the most ridiculous book which has ever appeared; for to move heaven and earth, as He does in his Word, and to threaten with hell and everlasting damnation--in order to obtain as His result what we understand by being Christians (and our assumption was that we are true Christians)--well, now, has anything so ridiculous ever been seen before? Imagine that a fellow with a loaded pistol in his hand held up a person and said to him, "I will shoot you"; or imagine, what is still more terrible, that he said, "I will seize you and torture you to death in the most horrible manner, if" (now watch, here's the point) "if you do not make your life here on earth as profitable and as enjoyable as you can": would not that be utterly ridiculous? For to obtain that effect it certainly is not necessary to threaten one with a loaded pistol and the most painful torture; in fact, it is possible that neither the loaded pistol nor the most painful torture would be able to deter him from making his life as comfortable as he can. The same is true when, by fear of eternal punishment (terrible threat!), and by hope of eternal salvation, He wishes to bring about, well, to make us what we are (for what we call Christian is, as we have seen, really being Christian), to make us, well, to make us what we are; that is, make men live as they please; for to abstain from committing crimes is nothing but common prudence!
The most terrible blasphemy is the one of which "Christianity" is guilty, which is, to transform the God of the Spirit into a ridiculous piece of nonsense. The stupidest kind of worship, more stupid than any idolatry ever was among the heathen, and more stupid than to worship as a god some stone, or an ox, or an insect--more stupid than anything, is to adore as god--a fool!
The State Church Inhibits Spirituality by Prematurely Satisfying People's Spiritual Urges ("Diagnosis", 4.1)
A person is growing thinner every day and is wasting away. What might the trouble be? For surely he is not suffering from lack of food! "No, sure enough," says the doctor, "that is not the trouble. The trouble is precisely with his eating, with his eating in season and out of season, with his eating without being hungry, with his using stimulants to produce an appetite, and in this manner ruining his digestion, so that he is wasting away as if he suffers from lack of food."
The same is true in religion. The worst of all is to satisfy a craving which has not yet made its appearance, to anticipate it, or--worse still--by the help of stimulants to produce something which looks like a craving, which then is promptly satisfied. Ah, the shame of it! Yet this is exactly what is being done in religion, where people are in very truth fooled out of the real meaning of life and helped to waste their lives.
That is in very truth, the effect of this whole machinery of a state church and a thousand royal officials who, under the pretense of being spiritual guides for the people, trick them out of the highest thing in life, which is, concern about one's self, and the urge which would surely of itself find a teacher or minister after its own mind; whereas now the urge--and it is just the growth of this sense of desire which gives life its highest significance--whereas now this need does not arise at all, but on the contrary is forestalled by being satisfied long before it can arise. This is the way, they claim, this is the way to continue the work which the Savior of Mankind did begin--stunting the human race as they do. Why is this so? Because there happen to be a thousand and one royal officials who have to support their families by furnishing what is called--spiritual guidance for men's souls!
STUDY QUESTIONS
Please answer all of the following questions.
1. In the section "Avoiding Boredom Through Variation," why according to Kierkegaard is boredom the root of all evil and idleness not the root of all evil?
2. In the section "Avoiding Boredom Through Variation," explain Kierkegaard's crop rotation metaphor.
3. In the section "Avoiding Boredom Through Variation," why according to Kierkegaard should we avoid friendship, marriage and official positions?
4. In the section "Marriage and The Either-Or," what are the key points of distinction between aesthetic romantic love and aesthetic marital love?
5. In the section "Abraham and the Paradox of Faith," what are the main features of Kierkegaard's discussion of the minister who criticizes a parishioner who imitates Abraham's act?
6. In the section "Abraham and the Paradox of Faith," what according to Kierkegaard are the paradoxical elements of Abraham's story?
7. In the section "Abraham and the Paradox of Faith," what according to Kierkegaard are the key points of the teleological suspension of the ethical?
8. In the section "Socrates and the Absolute Paradox of Learning Truth," how did Socrates address the issue of learning virtue and what does Kierkegaard conclude about it?
9. In the section "Socrates and the Absolute Paradox of Learning Truth," why according to Kierkegaard is the learner initially in a condition of error, and the teacher only the occasion for the learner to discover truth?
10. In the section "Socrates and the Absolute Paradox of Learning Truth," what according to Kierkegaard, are the main features of the absolute paradox of knowing that God is unlike us?
11. In the section "Adam's Anxiety as the Source of Original Sin ," what according to Kierkegaard, are the main features of the psychology of anxiety?
12. In the section "Adam's Anxiety as the Source of Original Sin ," why according to Kierkegaard is the prohibition and threat of punishment incomprehensible to Adam?
13. In the section "The Failure of Objective Approaches to Scripture," why according to Kierkegaard does critical scholarship of scripture lead to despair?
14. In the section "The Failure of Objective Approaches to Scripture," why according to Kierkegaard is critical scholarship unending?
15. In the section "The Failure of Objective Approaches to Scripture," even if the scholar proves or disproves the authenticity of scripture, why according to Kierkegaard does this have no bearing on faith?
16. In the section "Despair as the Sickness of Sin," what is Kierkegaard's argument against the common view that despair is rare?
17. In the section "The Divinity of Christ Cannot be Proven," why according to Kierkegaard can't proofs from history demonstrate that Christ was God?
18. In the section "The Divinity of Christ Cannot be Proven," what according to Kierkegaard is the category mistake with historical proofs about the divinity of Christ?
19. In the section "Against State Religion," explain Kierkegaard's example of the mugger with a pistol.
20. In the section "Against State Religion," explain Kierkegaard's example of the patient with the eating disorder.
21. Short essay: please select one of the following and answer it in a minimum of 100 words.
a. Sartre makes the following assessment of Kierkegaard's and Heidegger's respective notions of anguish: "Kierkegaard describing anguish [i.e., despair] in the face of what one lacks characterizes it as anguish in the face of freedom. But Heidegger, whom we know to have been greatly influenced by Kierkegaard, to considers anguish instead as the apprehension of nothingness. These two descriptions of anguish do not appear to us contradictory; on the contrary the one implies the other" (Being and Nothingness, 1943, 1.1.5). Explain Sartre's point and whether he is right.
b. Camus makes the following criticism of Kierkegaard's leap of faith: "The leap does not represent an extreme danger as Kierkegaard would like it to do. The danger, on the contrary, lies in the subtle instant that precedes the leap. Being able to remain on that dizzying crest that is integrity and the rest is subterfuge. I know also that never has helplessness inspired such striking harmonies as those of Kierkegaard. But if helplessness has its place in the indifferent landscapes of history, it has none in a reasoning whose exigence is now known ("Myth of Sisyphus", 1955). Explain Camus' point and how Kierkegaard might respond.
c. Karl Barth criticizes Kierkegaard for over-emphasizing subjectivity and producing a faith that is groundless: "did not a new anthropocentric [i.e., human-centeredness] system announce itself in Kierkegaard's theoretical groundwork? . . . the experiment with a subjectivity which as such regarded itself as the truth was taken over anew in just this form. It was an experiment with a faith founded in and moved by itself and thus groundless and without object" ("A Thank You and a Bow," 1963). Discuss Barth's point and how Kierkegaard might respond.
d. Adorno describes the following disagreement between artists and Kierkegaard on the value of disengaging from the world and being just an onlooker: "Thinking men and artists have not infrequently described a sense of being not quite there, of not playing along, a feeling as if they were not themselves at all, but a kind of spectator. Others often find this repulsive; it was the basis of Kierkegaard's polemic against what he called the esthetic sphere" (Negative Dialectics, 1966, 3.3.2). Discuss Kierkegaard's problem with this kind of disengagement, and whether he or the artist is right.
e. Gadamar makes the following assessment of Kierkegaard's critique of the aesthetic stage: "By acknowledging the destructive consequences of subjectivism and describing the self-annihilation of aesthetic immediacy, Kierkegaard seems to me to have been the first to show the untenability of this position. His doctrine of the aesthetic stage of existence is developed from the standpoint of the moralist who has seen how desperate and untenable is existence in pure immediacy and discontinuity. Hence his criticism of aesthetic consciousness is of fundamental importance because he shows the inner contradictions of aesthetic existence, so that it is forced to go beyond itself. Since the aesthetic stage of existence proves itself untenable, we recognize that even the phenomenon of art imposes an ineluctable task on existence, namely to achieve that continuity of self-understanding which alone can support human existence, despite the demands of the absorbing presence of the momentary aesthetic impression" (Truth and Method, 1975, 1.1.3.b). Explain Gadamer's point and whether you agree.
f. George Schrader describes the following criticism of Kierkegaard's view in Fear and Trembling that rational justifications of morality are groundless: "[According to Kierkegaard] insofar as a person is ever called upon to act as an individual, he stands outside the ethical sphere and, thus, can find no ethical justification for his action. If ethical justification is equated with rational justification, then the action of the individual qua individual must presumably go without any justification whatever. It is this equation, suggested if not explicitly espoused by Kierkegaard, that has aroused the ire of rational moralists" ("Kant and Kierkegaard on Duty and Inclination" 1978). Discuss Kierkegaard's position and whether he or the moral rationalist is right.
g. Alasdair MacIntyre criticizes Kierkegaard's view of the ethical in Either-Or for being groundless: "But now the doctrine of Enten-Eller is plainly to the effect that the principles which depict the ethical way of life are to be adopted for no reason, but for a choice that lies beyond reasons, just because it is the choice of what is to count for us as a reason. Yet the ethical is to have authority over us. But how can that which we adopt for one reason have any authority over us? The contradiction in Kierkegaard's doctrine is plain" (After Virtue, 1981, 5). Explain MacIntyre's point and how Kierkegaard might respond.
h. Paul Edwards criticizes Kierkegaard's notion of religious truth as subjectivity for dodging the critical issue of whether in fact God exists: "This new interpretation of the idea of"truth" has been hailed as a momentous contribution to philosophy and religion. A little reflection shows, however, that it is nothing but a confusing redefinition. From the fact that a person sincerely and passionately believes in God, it does not follow that there is a God, and the disagreement between the believer and the unbeliever obviously concerns the latter question. As we shall see shortly, Kierkegaard's attempt to save religion by redefining truth reappears in William James, and Kierkegaard is a forerunner of various contemporary philosophers who deny that there is such a thing as objective truth" (God and the Philosophers, 2009, "Fideism")