Kierkegaard (28 page)

As an idea, angst can be as difficult to understand as it has been significant in the history of Western thought. Kierkegaard's earliest English translators used the word “dread,” while later scholars opted for “anxiety.”
Secular existentialist philosophers have made much of Kierkegaardian angst as the fear of death and unavoidable annihilation that looms over all human decisions. Yet angst for Haufniensis was not solely negative. Nor was it fear of an inevitable reality. Instead, angst is about free possibility and is deeply ennobling. Only human beings can experience anxiety about the possibilities of the future because only human beings have the ability to freely choose their lives. “If a human being were a beast or an angel, he could not be in anxiety . . . the more profoundly he is in anxiety, the greater is the man” (155). Angst is not fear of what is real. It is the ambiguous sense of unease people feel when considering the undefined possibilities of life. Specifically for Haufniensis, it is the unease humans face when prompted by the Eternal God to become an Authentic Person. This possibility is attractive and repulsive at the same time.
Attractive
, because it represents the true home for every new self.
Repulsive
, because such a relation to God also requires a death to the old self. Sin is what happens when the person, in fear, turns away from the possibility of relation to the Eternal. Some points that follow from this are worth noting. First, fear comes from angst, but it is not synonymous with it. Secondly, “sin” is seen as the propensity for fearful turning from God (and consequent self-betrayal), which all humans share. Original Sin is the act of the will that occurred first with Adam and occurs every time a self fearfully clutches to itself rather than turns to God. Thirdly, sin follows angst, but the presence of angst does not cause sin. Instead, angst indicates the presence of spiritual freedom. With his prayer “Not my will but yours be done,” Jesus Christ faced the possibilities of his future responsibly and authentically. The great angst of Gethsemane revealed a spiritually great Person.

Prefaces: Light Reading for People in Various Estates According to Time and Opportunity

June 17, 1844

Nicholas Notabene

“Writing a preface is like being aware that one is beginning to fall in love . . . every event an intimation of the transfiguration” (6).

Spare a thought for poor old Nicholas Notabene. All the chap wants to do is write, but his wife has forbidden it. For her, living with a writer is like being married to man who is never home. “To be an author when one is a husband . . . is open infidelity”!

Not wishing to face the wrath of this good woman, Nicholas alights on an ingenious solution. Rather than publish one book of his own, he will write the prefaces to a number of books that have not yet been written. In this way, Nicholas can communicate all he wants to say without succumbing to the temptation to be an author.

Prefaces
appeared on the same day as the
Concept of Anxiety,
and a week after
Philosophical Fragments
and
Three Upbuilding Discourses
. As the title and pseudonym imply, it is a lighter work than the others, filled with humorous observations and satirical swipes. While the format of
Prefaces
appears less rigorous than a philosophical or religious text, the content retains themes familiar to any reader of Kierkegaard. Much of the satire is aimed at key literary figures such as J. L. Heiberg and H. L. Martensen. Kierkegaard also has wider targets in mind: Notabene prefaces books that reflect a general cultural intoxication with Hegel's philosophy, as well as Kierkegaard's own reading public, who care more about the appearance of sophistication owning a difficult book provides, than they do about actually reading the book itself.

A literary public intellectual, Heiberg had written reviews of two of Kierkegaard's previous books,
Either/Or
and
Repetition
. The reviews were not good, but more so, Kierkegaard felt that in his misunderstanding of
the books, Heiberg had misrepresented them too.
Prefaces
makes fun of Heiberg's pretentious attempts to “go beyond” Hegel, and his pompous predilection to treat his writing as gifts to the reading public. Martensen—never far from Kierkegaard's sights—is satirised for his presentation of the high point of Christian history as producing the sophisticated, cultured chattering class of Golden Age Denmark. Martensen, a Hegelian theologian, was also well-known in Denmark for adopting the phrase “doubt everything” (lifted from the seventeenth-century French philosopher René Descartes). Notabene's fawning
Prefaces
in fact satirise this approach, ironically showing up systematic philosophies that supposedly start with nothing but end up claiming to describe Absolute Truth. Notabene confesses he cannot doubt everything, but at least he can doubt whether the philosophers understand their own thought. The Hegelian philosophy that had so entranced Danish culture was one that proposed an endless development of thought based on opposites: from thesis to antithesis to synthesis.

“I am so obtuse that philosophy cannot become understandable to me. The opposite of this is that philosophy is so sagacious that it cannot comprehend my obtuseness. These opposites are mediated into a high unity, that is, a common obtuseness” (58).

Three Discourses on Imagined Occasions

April 29, 1845

Søren Kierkegaard

These three non-pseudonymous discourses on the occasions of confession, marriage, and a funeral were written at the same time as the pseudonymous
Stages on Life's Way
and came out a day before. Unsurprisingly the occasions correspond in interesting ways with the stages of life in the companion title. True to form, the pseudonymous stuff was more popular than the material in Kierkegaard's own name, a fact not lost on the author.

The first occasion of confession leads Kierkegaard to explore what it means to seek God. It is a reflection on the feelings that arise when one has a truly aesthetic appreciation for nature and the wonder that occurs as a result. The discourse surmises that when a self is alone with itself away from the distractions of human civilisation, it will be more amenable to a godly encounter. Like confession in a church, the appreciation for nature will bring one into contact with God. “When the forest frowns at eventide, then the night's moon gets lost in the trees . . . then the pagan suddenly sees the marvel of a luminous effect that grips him, then he sees the unknown, and worship is the expression of wonder” (19).
Discourses
does not think nature worship is the same as Christianity; instead, Christianity is the completion and attainment of what the honest pagan dimly apprehends and desires. Nature sparks wonder, but it is not itself a fit object of worship. Man is not one with nature. Man in nature is lonely until he finds God. Yet for this he must own up to his guilt and in solitary confession admit his self is not yet a fit home for the Divine.

The occasion of a wedding recalls the earnest ethical discourses of Judge William in
Either/Or
. Like the Judge, Kierkegaard has short shrift for romantic notions and flowery rhetoric. Love does not “conquer all” when it is infatuated happiness, but only when it is a duty of daily commitment. In keeping the marriage vows, a person enters into a relationship that must be renewed again and again in the moment. When men and women live ever-presently, they open themselves up to the Eternal. “So, then, a true conception of life and of oneself is required for the resolution of marriage; but this already implies the second great requirement, which is just like the first: a true conception of God . . . thus a language is required in which they talk to each other. This language is the resolution, the only language in which God will involve himself with a human being” (63).

If Kierkegaard departed from clichéd sentimentality when discoursing on the responsibilities of marriage, the occasion at the graveside finds him departing from the usual sombre tone of a funeral. In the
discourse, the reality of death is a route to authentic living. Death is the occasion that brings everyone, equally, before God. Likewise, the certain knowledge of our death is the occasion for hopeful, fruitful living now in the present. This is a form of living every single person can choose, regardless of their station in life, crowd, or culture. Kierkegaard refers to this awakened, aware life as “earnestness.” “Death is the schoolmaster of earnestness . . . precisely by its leaving to the single individual the task of searching himself . . . Death says, ‘I exist; if anyone wants to learn from me, then let him come to me' ” (74–76). The certainty of death is a wake-up call for persons to live in the moment as Single Individuals. “If death is night then life is day . . . the terse but impelling cry of earnestness, like death's terse cry, is: This very day!” (82–83).

Stages on Life's Way

April 30, 1845

Multiple pseudonymous authors compiled and edited by Hilarius Bookbinder

It is evening in the forest. The sun has set, leaving only a cool darkness. Five young, worldly aesthetes gather for a banquet in a fairy-tale hall under the trees. Here we meet a “young man” ambivalent about the possibility of fatherhood, a cynical Ladies' Tailor, Constantine from
Repetition
, and Victor Eremita and Johannes the Seducer from
Either/Or
. The five meet to talk about love, philosophy, and women. Their monologues grow increasingly disdainful of marriage and the female sex. Women are, at best, an inspiration for poems and song. At worst they are mad degenerates. The best thing to do to avoid the trap women represent is to avoid commitment and to treat love of them as an act of momentary enjoyment. By way of sealing their pact, the men throw their wine goblets out into the dark: a libation to the gods of the world.

On their way home, they encounter Judge William and his wife.
William has written a manuscript about marriage, which Victor steals away. The Judge's missive becomes the second stage of
Stages
. In stark contrast to the misogyny of the aesthetes, the moral man urges a view of marriage as the highest of human endeavours. The young men want “love” but they will never have it because they lack resolution. Only a self, choosing daily to dedicate itself to another, will know love. Marriage is a sacred duty.

But there are exceptions. A thing may be good, but still not right for some individuals. Here,
Stages
makes overtures into the other realm of life. The truly religious person does not abide only by what is ethical merely because it is ethical. Existing before God, the Single Individual is set apart from habitually following that which is universal to all, even when the universal is good. “Guilty?/Not Guilty?” is the diary of a young man named Quidam, found and published by Frater Taciturnus (Brother Silence) who fished the manuscript from a lake. Quidam tells of his conflict. He is in love, but he cannot marry. Christian marriage requires openness and honesty, yet if Quidam shares his life with his wife, he will draw his fiancée into a state of suffering, due to an oppressive family secret. In entries marked “morning” and “midnight” and “a year ago today” the work returns again and again to melancholy self-introspection. It recounts the various schemes Quidam alights upon to release himself from this marriage that will doom the beloved. Finally, Quidam decides to bring public shame upon himself, thus allowing the beloved to reject him without hurt to her reputation. A year later, Quidam now wonders whether he is guilty or not. Taciturnus tells us Quidam stands at the doorway to the religious. In
Stages
, the religious person recognises God is not the solution to suffering. A life chosen for God will be distinctly marked by the suffering that comes from being set apart. Unlike the aesthete or the ethicist, the religious man knows misfortune happens to anyone and everyone and is not a source of grief. Truly religious grief is over guilt, not misfortune.

Stages
is baffling, elliptical, and monumental. Kierkegaard recognised
it as a difficult work. To readers familiar with his life story, the autobiographical elements leap off the page. Søren was fiercely ambivalent about marriage, he laboured under an impeding sense of family doom, and he was convinced his life would be a sort of curse to Regine. Quidam often repeats phrases drawn verbatim from Søren and Regine's communication, including, infamously, a word-for-word reprinting of the note Søren used to break his engagement. The breach of confidence seems almost unforgivable. Yet these are observations gifted by hindsight. In 1845 only two people (Regine and Søren) knew the private phrases for what they were. The convoluted nature of the book and its multiple narrators only hinted at plain truths. More importantly perhaps, they revealed that when it comes to matters of love, identity, and faith, there are no “plain truths” at all.

Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments

February 27, 1846

Johannes Climacus

“Although an outsider, I have at least understood this much, that the only unforgivable high treason against Christianity is the single individual's taking his relation to it for granted” (16).

Søren originally intended for this mammoth work to conclude the “authorship” begun with
Either /Or.
The book brings the reader through the stages of life's way, drawing the earlier deliberations on aesthetics and ethics to a close with an extended reflection on the religious forms of existence. The book contains an explanation (of sorts) to the pseudonymous project, and with this revelation and conclusion Søren expected to end his authorial career and begin a new one, possibly as a country parson. Instead, life took over to the extent that, in hindsight,
Postscript
represents the midpoint to a prolific writing career, rather than any sort of conclusion to one.