Hannah Arendt was first introduced to Kierkegaard at the age of 14 when she read
Jaspers' Psychologie der Weltanschauungen ("What Remains? The Language Remains. --
A Conversation with Gunter Gaus," Essays in Understanding, p. 9.) Although her
understanding of Kierkegaard was much indebted to Jaspers, it cannot be assimilated
to his. While Arendt could never be called a Kierkegaard scholar and her writing
devoted specifically to him was very sparse, Kierkegaard was mentioned often in her
works and she felt she generally understood his position. "I know Kierkegaard
reasonably well," was how she put it. In her mind Kierkegaard made once and for all
clear the difference between theology as a science and philosophy. This difference
derived from the principle of doubt which she saw in Kierkegaard, as in DesCartes,
as a point of departure. It was Johannes Climacus eller De omnibus dubitandum est
which most represented Kierkegaard to her. Kierkegaard's view of love finds certain
parallels in Arendt's amor mundi.
Arendt viewed Kierkegaard as the founder of existential thinking -- i.e., antiphilosophical
philosophizing -- which overcomes metaphysical uncertainty by
decisively appropriating that which must be simply because I am, leaping beyond the
antinomies of Kant's pure reason, viz., the subjectivity of the existing
individual's truth. Arendt understood that this appropriation did not lead to
solitary contemplation and systematic thought, the path of philosophy since
Parmenides, but to action. Arendt's own problem, and it is here where she breaks
from Heidegger, is the same as Kierkegaard's: How does the truth of subjectivity
relate to action in the public realm?
Arendt's notion of philosophizing communication as a "loving struggle," something
she derived from Jaspers (and said often characterized her communication with him),
but not from Kierkegaard or Heidegger, in fact closely parallels Kierkegaard's
existing individual's essential communication.
What seems to me to be the case is that, in many important respects, Arendt was
really quite Kierkegaardian, both in her methods and in the kinds of issues she
chose to engage. In her project to reclaim politics for an estranged intelligentsia
she deploys notions of "individuality" and "understanding" which together suggest
Kierkegaard's existing individual abroad in the late 20th century. Moreover,
Arendt's agonistic Socrates, for her the paradigm of the individual in the public
realm, bears a great resemblance to Kierkegaard's Socrates. Indeed Socratic-like
individuals are possible only in the public realm. In The Human Condition Arendt
states that the public realm was "the only setting where men could show who they
really and inexchangeably were" and it was "reserved for individuality." (Arendt,
The Human Condition, p. 41.)
Kierkegaard's existing individual can be viewed from several perspectives. These
include 1) the category as the focal point of an otherwise seemingly diffuse
authorship; 2) the individual as the relation of self-to-self, i.e., as an
internally determined category that manifests angst; as the raison d'etre of the
theory of indirect communication, and in particular the notion of comic
apprehension as actualized by the genuine ironist and humorist; 4) as the concrete
man of faith who finds himself caught between the twin demands of authority and
freedom. Arendt, for whom Kierkegaard's existing individual paradigmatically
represents philosophizing, seems to regard these four aspects together.
Following Arendt's lead I shall try to interpret Kierkegaard's existing individual
as one who philosophizes as a praxis philosopher. I begin by considering the
existing individual as the focal point of Kierkegaard's authorship. The individual
is central to the authorship in two distinct senses: as "reader" and as dramatic
protagonist in a dialogue (the pseudonym). Kierkegaard frequently suggests that his
works resemble love letters, from one individual to another, which are not capable
of being correctly understood by anyone other than "that individual" to whom they
are addressed. Others may read them, but the meaning may elude them. It is this
view which partly explains the rather enigmatic citation from Hamann which
Kierkegaard placed on the title page of the original edition of Frygt og Baeven.
["Was Tarquinius Superbus in seinem Garten mit den Mohnkÿoupfen sprach, verstand
der Sohn, aber nicht der Bote."] In this Arendtian reading of Kierkegaard each of
the parties to these private communications --"loving struggles"-- makes possible
the position of the other. But such doxic exchange is what creates a public realm
and establishes individuals in the first place.
As is well known, Kierkegaard was inclined to deride academics, particularly those
professors of philosophy and theology whom he caricatured as bombastic Hegelian
systematizers. The portrayal may be unfair but one can infer that Kierkegaard does
not intend for his work to be manipulated into systematic treatises. Rather the
assertion implied is that the works are intended to evoke personal, existential,
responses -- and to be cited neither as dogma nor demonstration. Thus a correct
understanding of the existing individual is necessary in order for one to
understand correctly what else the authorship has to say. Furthermore, the simple
fact that the authorship does offer specific, positive descriptions of an abstract
category mitigates against the fairly common interpretation that Kierkegaard was
actually just a religious homileticist. This, in Arendt's view, would be like
saying that Socrates did no more that encourage his fellow Athenians to think like
him. When one considers that the category of the existing individual is the
standpoint from which the author speaks and is the perspective to which he speaks
as well, the descriptions of it which he offers must be regarded as something like
phenomenological invitations. The reader is being asked to look to his own inward
experience (i.e., life qua existing individual) in order to verify or falsify
Kierkegaard's descriptions. The status of Kierkegaard's claim, then, is that if an
existing individual examines his own inward life qua individual he will find there
the array of concerns and feelings upon which the authorship dwells. This result,
however, does not imply the objective validity of inward experience; it certainly
does not mean that inward experience provides an evidential model for a
comprehensive system of personal psychology. Nor are these descriptions to be
understood as prescriptive, or as normative values. They are rather the imperfect
articulations of that which fundamentally can only remain unsaid. Only that reader
who has come to Kierkegaard's point of view is capable of making the qualitative.
leap for which the authorship calls.
The existing individual, Kierkegaard's reader, is not one of the crowd and his
point of view is not that of the many. His views and concerns are neither those of
the many nor even compatible with those of the many. The difference between the
concerns of the individual and the crowd, Kierkegaard asserts, is toto caelo. This
assertion when considered together with the linguistic fact that Kierkegaard's term
for the individual (den Enkelte) suggests a singleness, might lead to the
conclusion that Kierkegaard's individual is a solitary figure, existing outside the
public space. This is not Arendt's understanding. It is made quite clear that this
could not be the case in Kierkegaard's commentary on I John 4:20: "If anyone says,
'I love God,' and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his
brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen." (Our Duty to Love
Those We See in Kaerlighedens Gerninger. Works of Love, p. 153. Here it is claimed
both that man has an essential need for other men that "is deeply rooted in
nature," (Ibid.) and that men have an obligation to care for other men out of love
of neighbor. Thus we see that Kierkegaard's individual is "in the world" in a very
basic sense, that his primary concerns are found in the space between man and man,
and that he cannot in fact "be" man except insofar as he fulfills this need; while,
on the other hand, precisely because he is an individual, his concerns are not
worldly concerns, or in Arendt's terminology, are not social. Kierkegaard's
individual exemplifies the Arendtian amor mundi. This individual, Arendt states,
"in his living existence is higher in rank than, and precedes, the species or the
mere thought of mankind." (The Life of the Mind, p. 121.) What is true for the
individual is to be found inwardly; the crowd is untruth. This circumstance implies
the dialectical relationship that obtains between the individual and the public,
and which becomes manifest in Kierkegaard's polemical assertions. However,
Kierkegaard claims, like a Socratic gadfly, that polemic which is needed for the
sake of the world (amor mundi) because it provides the necessary corrective, is
always misunderstood by the public. Thus the direct manifestation of the
individual-public dialectic is an inaccurate expression of the individual's true
inward condition or concern, Arendt puts it this way: "... we cannot solidfy in
words the living essence of the person." (The Human Condition, p. 181.) and it is
also a wrongly stated description of the public. Yet it does not, in Kierkegaard's
view, mean either to speak to the public or to describe the public from the
public's standpoint. Rather the individual's polemic is intended to be a message to
other individuals who will understand, qua individual, because they share the same
inward concerns.
Kierkegaard makes quite clear that the individual exists in the world because of a
duty imposed upon him. It is "Our duty to love those we see," and those whom we see
constitute precisely the world into which the individual is thrust. Basing his
discussion on I John 4:20 he asserts that if the individual is to stand in the
right relationship with God, i.e., if the individual is to enter into existence,
then he must not withdraw into an idealized "world"; nor must he try to escape in
pursuit of a pseudo happiness which rests on deceptions. "Delusion is always
floating; for this reason it sometimes appears quite light and spiritual, because
it is so airy." (Works of Love, p. 161.) Such would be to deny fundamentally that
which makes possible the realization of selfhood.
So deeply is love grounded in the nature of man, so
essentially does it belong to man -- and yet men very
often find escapes to avoid this happiness; therefore
they manufacture deceptions -- in order to deceive
themselves and make themselves unhappy. Soon the escape
is clothed in the form of sorrow; one grumbles about
humanity and over its unhappiness; one finds no one he
can love. To grumble about the world and its unhappiness
is always easier than to beat one's breast and groan over
oneself. (Ibid., p. 155.)
When Kierkegaard criticized the stance of H.C. Andersen he was charging that it did
not accept this duty. Of course to accept this duty is to engage oneself in a
virtually perpetual struggle against the "evil world" (mass mentality, the
numerical, the crowd) on behalf of the individual. Thus the relationship which
derives from our duty to love manifests a fundamental polemic which intends to be
simultaneously upbuilding and negating; to strengthen the individual qua individual
while negating the crowd. It is Kierkegaard's meaning to negate the validity of the
numerical principle as he points to the eternal validity made possible in the
standpoint of the existing individual.
Kierkegaard's individual is defined, then, by his fundamental concern. His
fundamental concern is what gives rise to the dialectical character of the
individual-public relation and, moreover, is itself dialectical. When Kierkegaard
poses the question, "What is self?" he is asking "What is the concern that
characterizes the individual as such?" Kierkegaard's psychology seeks to describe
the structural relations of self in order to account for the concern and articulate
its parameters. The self as self relating relation is the inward process through
which the individual discovers the right relation or harmony which consists in
discovering and appropriating that the absolute other makes possible the derived,
established relation which is the self. To simplify: The individual inwardly
appropriates the fact of his complete and utter dependence on the other, which is
equivalent to recognizing his possible non-being. The recognition of this
dependence implies the uncontested significance of the inward process which in turn
implies a willing which realizes the right relation of self to other (God). This
process is not unlike an Augustinian version of the activity which constitutes
philosophy, viz., the soul's inward search for God. And again, as for Augustine,
the process is possible only because of the intervention of divine grace. For
Augustine this process was animated by love; for Kierkegaard this process is
loving.
Kierkegaard's concept of love is central because it underlies the notion of the
ethical-beyond-itself (the ethical in the religious) and is what finally justifies
the standpoint of the individual. Kierkegaard makes the typical distinction between
loving as erotic inclination (aesthetic love) and loving which is a duty. Both
forms play a significant part in Kierkegaard's analysis, although the former does
so in a purely negative way. In the case of aesthetic love the individual hopes to
avoid despair through amusement, diversion and the like. Such tactics, Kierkegaard
tells us, always fail and the result is boredom. Within the aesthetic existence
sphere boredom is not recognized as despair, but as a mis-relationship of self as
that what it is. The response often takes the form of one of the counterfeit
expressions of the comic apprehension. These expressions --aesthetic love, ironic
appearance, and so on-- do nothing to move the self closer to God (as Augustine
would put it) or in Kierkegaard's terms to create the right relation of self to
self. But this standing according to both Augustine and Kierkegaard characterizes
the "world" which the individual essentially stands against. Thus we have what
looks to be the odd assertion that the individual denies the particular
possibilities inherent in temporal existence while these are exactly that to which
the crowd is attracted. The individual qua individual is not attracted to
particular "individual" pleasures while the crowd is.
As Arendt and others have pointed out the existing individual of Kierkegaard is
neither the solitary individual found in Stirner nor is he an aristocrat in any
sense of the term who stands above the ordinary man. Marcuse seems to have missed
Kierkegaard's point when he commented:
There is no doubt, he [Kierkegaard] says, that the
idea of socialism and community cannot save this age.
Socialism is just one among many attempts to degrade
individuals by equalizing all so as to remove all
organic, concrete differentiations and distinctions.
It is the function of resentment on the part of the
many against the few who posses and exemplify the higher
values; socialism is thus part of the general revolt
against extraordinary individuals. (Herbert Marcuse, Reason and
Revolution, London: Oxford, 1941, p. 266.)
A remark in Papirer answers Marcuse's criticism:
The communists here and abroad fight for human rights.
Good, so do I. Precisely for this reason I fight with
might and main against the tyranny which is fear of man.
Communism leads at best to the tyranny of fearing men
(only see how France at this moment suffers from it);
precisely at this point Christianity begins. The thing
Communism makes such a fuss about is what Christianity
assumes follows of itself, that all men are equal before
God, i.e., essentially equal. But then Christianity
shudders at this abomination which would abolish God and
in his place install fear of the masses [maengden], of
the majority of people, of the public. (VIII, 1A, 598.)
From this statement alone one might infer that Kierkegaard denies categorically
that the individual is superior in any way. Yet this conclusion would not seem to
be consistent with his descriptions of the existing individual as genuine ironist.
Since the individual author is, in most cases, an ironist, if he is claiming
superiority for himself his polemic would certainly have a different character than
Kierkegaard wants to attribute to it. If this were indeed the case the criticism of
Marcuse would be valid. However, Kierkegaard makes a careful distinction between
speaking from a superior standpoint and being inherently superior. That latter
Kierkegaard does categorically deny; no person is, of himself, inherently superior
to any other person. That is he is not superior in the view of God, the only
perspective that ultimately counts. The world may make judgments, but such
judgments always speak from an essentially incomplete position and thus are not
finally valid.
The extreme example of a worldly judgment which is mistaken because it is
incomplete is to be found in the story of Abraham. In Kierkegaard's retelling of
the story, which does not satisfy the rigors of biblical scholarship, Abraham's
actions are --from a worldly point of view-- utterly inexplicable. No rational
apology of any sort could be articulated. Therefore the judgment of the world which
would condemn him morally was wrong, not because it was incorrect in its
determination of what the universal-ethical expects, but because it was not
possible for it to appropriate the divine perspective from which Abraham's action
could be seen to be right. What Abraham did, or would have done, simply cannot be
said in a manner that could justify it. (This is one reason why Kierkegaard retells
the story under the pseudonym Johannes de Silentio.) But, as everyone knows, it was
not Abraham's decision to kill Isaac; Abraham was the tormented instrument of God.
Ethics, and with it reason, was suspended and Abraham became the utterly
transparent instrument of divine imperative. In this conception the individual,
Abraham, or the "Knight of Faith" as Kierkegaard calls him in this case, possesses
no inherent superiority because he is totally at the mercy of God. The "positive
third" which defines and establishes is inwardly appropriated as the final and
absolute authority, while the single (but not solitary) existing individual
recognizes that he is himself completely without authority.
That the existing individual is "without authority" became Kierkegaard's epitaph
for the individual qua author. In one sense this makes the same claim as the
proposition which asserts that the authorship consists of various communications
from one individual to another. To have authority would mean to be in the position
to be able to articulate to the world what is true for it. However, this is simply
impossible because of what Kierkegaard calls the "absolute incommensurability
between inwardness and outwardness." That which characterizes human concern as
such, the truth for which the individual would live or die as Kierkegaard puts it,
is purely inward, subjective. To speak with authority would mean to speak no longer
as an individual, but rather as a particular spokesman for outward objectivity. But
to speak as a particular spokesman for outward objectivity is to abnegate your own
viewpoint as individual. As such you are not "saying" the truth, you are instead
"stating" (i.e., reporting) the objectively discernible state of affairs. Objective
science (and here Arendt would include theology as an objective science) can be
carried on by anyone because, Kierkegaard claims, it is personally benign. Most
might agree to this position with respect to some of the objective sciences but not
others. The question of the possibility of value neutrality is raised. In
particular one must ask how politics fits into this analysis.
Kierkegaard addresses but does not answer this general problem in considering the
specific case of the priest, who represents the paradigm case of the particular
person who speaks with authority as against the existing individual who is always
and essentially without authority. The special obligations of the clergy to
articulate the objective propositions of theology have already been mentioned. But
the existing individual's lack of authority has another dimension to be considered.
So far the existing individual has been characterized as one defined in terms of
concern, possessed by inward relations which are grounded in the God-relation. It
has been suggested that to be an individual and to be "of the world" (in contrast
to being "in the world") reflect two irreconcilable domains. However, if the
individual is, as Kierkegaard says, a synthesis which includes the temporal and the
finite, then it hardly seems likely that the individual could exist in a manner
utterly and completely free of social determination. In fact Kierkegaard does not
make this claim, as should already be clear. Kierkegaard does offer the basis of a
social-political philosophy and it is to be found in his descriptions of the
individual to the world. This, too, should be clear. What remains to be considered
is how the social-political circumstances of an age affect the standpoint of an
individual vis á vis the world. Since the individual is, by nature, in the world,
it will follow that these circumstances do have a specific effect on the individual
per se. THE INDIVIDUAL IN THE TWO AGES This work of Kierkegaard's is the critical
review of a pseudonimously authored novella, The Two Ages. Although the author of
the novella used a nom de plume, viz., "the author of an everyday story", her
identity was not concealed and was common knowledge. She was Fru Thomasine
Gyllembourg, the mother of J. L. Heiberg (who in 1826 had introduced Hegelianism
into Denmark and disputed the merits of Kierkegaard's dissertation on irony).
Heiberg's name appeared as publisher on the title page of his mother's works. Fru
Gyllembourg's novella was presented to the public in a manner not unlike
Kierkegaard's own aesthetic works. In the Preface to her novella Fru Gyllembourg
wrote:
The power of the age's spirit over the individual's
innermost feelings, over his most private relations
and his judgments of himself and others; the
opposition wherein identical human passions, virtues
and weaknesses are presented in the different ages:
to the degree that I have found it in my own and
others' experience. (Quoted in the Danish editor's notes to Kierkegaard's Literary
Review, VIII, p. 9.)
The two ages which she experienced, and which in the novella she tries to
characterize in relation to the inner life of an individual, were the age of
revolution in the 1790's, and the contemporary period in which the novella was
written (it was published in October, 1845), which is called the present age. It is
the distinction between the spiritual climate of opinion in the two ages which
draws Kierkegaard's attention to the book, and which he then goes on to develop
much more thoroughly in his review.
Kierkegaard's Review merits special attention for several reasons. First it shows
Kierkegaard's reaction qua existing individual to a pseudonymously authored book.
It therefore suggests a model for the way he would have liked his own
pseudonymously authored works to be read. He does not subject the work to a
detailed examination, try to organize it into a system nor extract a doctrine from
it. Importantly he does not engage in a polemical exchange with Fru Gyllembourg as
he did with H.C. Andersen, but takes her pseudonymity seriously. Kierkegaard's
Review is a direct statement of his own; it is not pseudonymous, neither ironic nor
makes use of irony, and is not intended as a corrective. This work, unlike any of
Kierkegaard's other published writings is without irony, corrective or polemic.
The above criticism is my own interpretation of
what I have learned from the author, and therefore
if anything immature, untrue or foolish is contained
in it, it is my own doing. Anyone who finds it false
should look to me, but anyone who finds truth in it,
finds his outlook strengthened or enriched by it, is
referred to the teacher --the author of the novella.
The task in my review ... has not been to judge or
condemn the ages, but only to depict them. (Literary Review, p.
138.)
With that declaration Kierkegaard expresses his gratitude to the teacher in time
who occasioned not his reflections, but his decisive appropriation of an idea.
This decisive appropriation, as opposed to the contemplative reflection of the
philosopher, Kierkegaard understood as the special prerogative of the poet. Arendt,
for whom understanding is ultimately what she calls imagination, held a quite
similar view. In her words:
What the storyteller narrates must necessarily be hidden
from the actor himself, at least as long as he is in the
act or caught in the consequences, because to him the
meaningfulness of his act is not in the story that
follows. Even though stories are the inevitable results
of action, it is not the actor but the storyteller who
perceives and 'makes' the story. (Arendt, The Human Condition,
p. 192.)
In the Review when speaking of the age of revolution Kierkegaard first limits the
scope of his remarks by saying that he is not engaged in "an ethical-philosophical
evaluation of its justification but of the reflexive consequences of its
determinateness."Ibid., p. 76. Kierkegaard is concerned with the consequences of
the age insofar as they are actions turned back upon the subject, the individuals
making the revolutions. It is with consequence in this special sense that
Kierkegaard is concerned, and not with any of the social or economic goals that
dominate the rhetoric which defends each of the two ages. In leaving aside the
social and economic Kierkegaard's politics is quite Arendtian.
Kierkegaard's major premise is that the age of revolution is essentially
passionate. (The existing individual's passion or pathos is best understood as
something like the shock Plato reports at the wonder of existence and which Arendt
characterized as "something which is endured." This formulation of Arendt aptly
describes the attitude of pathos or passion of the existing individual in an age of
revolution.) (Arendt, "Philosophy and Politics" in Social Research [no. 57], p.
99.)
From this premise of the essentially passionate nature of an age of revolution
Kierkegaard proceeds analytically-historically to deduce several other essential
features embodied in an age of revolution. These features are: 1) form, 2) culture,
3) capable of becoming violent, 4) decorum, 5) immediacy of reaction, 6) being
essentially manifestation.
The age of revolution is essentially passionate and
therefore has essential form. Even the most vehement
expression of an essential passion eo ipso has form,
for this is its manifestation, and therefore again has
in its form an apology, a tone of reconciliation. Only
for a completely extraneous and perfunctory dialectic
is the form not the alter ego of content, and thereby
the content itself, but something irrelevant. (Ibid.)
The argument at this point might seem trivial, were it not understood in the
context of Kierkegaard's teaching of the absolute incommensurability of inwardness
and outwardness. The form is the essential manifestation of that which cannot by
its nature come to presence outwardly. The form is the apology, as it were, for
what can neither be the outward, visible actions of revolution, which constitute
its form, are not spurious accidents, but rather particular dissimulations of the
inward passion which is the essence of revolution. There would, of course, always
be apparent form; in an age of revolution the form is essential because of the
passion which supports it. Furthermore, because the form is essential, it can be
comprehended existentially-dialectically. In terms of Kierkegaard's frequent
analogy it is the contrast between a love letter, written in deep feeling of
passion, and a letter to a casual acquaintance, trough together somewhat
haphazardly. regarding the latter Kierkegaard asserts: "a completely extraneous
dialectic would be able to deal with it only as a speciously important question of
form." (Ibid., p. 76.)
This notion of form is structurally parallel to the distinction of Kierkegaard's
between genuine irony and the ironic appearance. The relation is that genuine irony
is a species of essential form while the ironic appearance is an instance of
specious form. If this is the case, then it will follow that: 1) a revolutionary's
actions (in a revolutionary age) will completely dominate his personality, and 2)
the particular activities of the revolution cannot be taken to specify the
fundamental, passionate idea which is the true spirit of revolution. The
revolutionary, then, resembles the genuine ironist like Socrates in his essential
traits. Thus it would seem that an individual becomes a revolutionary or a genuine
ironist dependent, at least partially, upon the age in which he was born.
In saying that the age of revolution has essential culture Kierkegaard makes the
same point again. When he asserts that "a maid passionately and powerfully made up
is essentially cultured," (Ibid.) he means that just as the particular, outward
circumstances of a maidservant's life bespeak nothing of the quality of her love,
so too the particular social-political-economic circumstances (or particular modes
of coping with these circumstances) do not stand to verify the presence or absence
of culture.
In contrast to essential culture Kierkegaard names various sorts of pseudo-culture
--the essentially dispassionate affectations by which people play at being
cultured-- which, to put it in other terms, is only the pretense of form.
When Kierkegaard makes clear the distinction between an age of violence and a
revolutionary age, by allowing that an age of revolution "is capable of being
violent, riotous, wild, ruthless," (Ibid.) he also tacitly assumes the other
possibilities: a revolution which is not violent and a period of violence which is
not a revolution. For a revolution in its essentially passionate life and worldview
is only potentially violent in service of its underlying idea and, conversely,
is incapable of turning upon its own idea. A revolution is restrained, guided by
its own motivation, and because of this "is less open to the charge of
crudeness." (Ibid.) That an age of revolution may or may not be violent,
Kierkegaard simply passes over. The argument that violence necessarily accompanies
basic social change did not occur to him to take seriously. So when he discusses
the consequences of a revolutionary age upon individual revolutionaries, the
revolution is discussed as though it were no more than an involved, passionate, and
decisive debate as in Kierkegaard's mind, it could be.
Thus Kierkegaard portrays the individuals in a revolutionary age as sharing in an
underlying idea, the one motivation of the revolution, and this both uniting them
and qualifying their participation as individuals.
When individuals (each one individually) are essentially
and passionately united ... they are united on the basis of
an ideal distance. (Ibid.)
This unity of the individuals in their devotion to the revolutionary ideal is
precisely the same, in Kierkegaard's view, as the unity of individuals in the
genuine Christian congregation. Thus Kierkegaard's view of the Church acquires a
social-political significance beyond its immediate object. Similarly, his attack on
Christendom polemically states what could also be drawn as inferences from his
analysis of the present age.
The comic remains the means by which the individual avoids the suffering of a
passionate or dispassionate age; insofar as irony and humor are able to create a
space around the existing individual his integrity and passionate concern with the
idea can survive. The comic serves as a two-way conduit between inwardness and
outwardness, both undermining the significance of outward demands for the
individual and by presenting the individual's genuine standpoint in a form which is
understood only by other existing individuals.
The Category of Essential Communication
It is clear that the existing individual addresses the public in various moods,
determined to some extent by the cultural-political context, i.e., the "age" in
which the individual speaks. Also, it has been argued, according to Kierkegaard
when the existing individual qua existing individual addresses the public, no
matter what the age and regardless of his mood, the speech is polemic. The speech
must be polemic because the existing individual is related to the public
dialectically. There will always and unavoidably be conflict because of this
essential opposition. Two examples of such conflict from different ages are
Kierkegaard's examples, viz., that of Socrates and the attack on the established
Church. Had Kierkegaard himself not drawn attention to it the similarity might have
gone unnoticed: outwardly the events bear little resemblance. Socrates, after all,
tells us in the Crito that it is our duty to obey the laws, even when we have
reason to believe they are unjust. Throughout the discussion Socrates remains calm
and pious, despite his approaching execution. Kierkegaard's attack, on the other
hand, is outspoken, flamboyant, motivated by a sense of incipient crisis. On
another level, too, the events seem to be quite dissimilar, but it is precisely on
this level that Kierkegaard seems to find an important similarity. Socrates, at
least as we know him from the Platonic dialogues, is ever rational. It is rational
discourse, unswayed by either public opinion or personal emotions, which Socrates
strives toward, the principle to which he wishes to remain true. Kierkegaard stands
for quite a different principle. According to him rational discourse had been
subverted, misused to support invidious distinctions and specious arguments.
Furthermore, its inherent limitation is clear as it can make no sense of the
absolute paradox. Thus Kierkegaard does not, like Socrates, strive to rise above
both the individual and the public. He asserts that the truth is to found on the
side of the individual. Yet it is here where Kierkegaard perceives his own
fundamental allegiance to Socrates. It is also at this point where the category of
"essential communication" becomes significant.
Kierkegaard maintains the distinction between the communication of knowledge and
the communication of human concern. It is clearly the latter which is of profound
significance for Kierkegaard and which his authorship seeks to realize by means of
the techniques of indirect communication. Kierkegaard considers that Socrates, in
contrast to the Platonic portrayal, was indirectly communicating human concern
which polemically addressed the public in a manner that went quite beyond rational
discourse. To see this we consider Kierkegaard's justification of his conception of
Socrates in the first chapter of The Concept of Irony. At that point Kierkegaard
contrasts the Platonic and Aristophanic conceptions of Socrates.
Plato and Aristophanes have in common the fact that both
their interpretations are ideal, but inverted with respect
to each other; Plato has the tragic ideality, Aristophanes
the comic. (Concept of Irony, p. 159.)
It is easy to see that a Socrates selflessly aiming towards rational insight --who
is executed for that-- is a tragic figure. On the other hand an eccentric and selfindulging
Socrates whose attitude is one of indirection quickly becomes a buffoon.
No doubt neither conception of Socrates is by itself fully correct; taken together
the genuine historical Socrates may emerge. But in addition, the Aristophanic
conception may be closer to the Greek public's notion of Socrates.
... to idealize Socrates according to a standard whereby
he became wholly unrecognizable would lie entirely outside
the interests of Greek comedy. That the latter was not the
case is also confirmed by antiquity, which reports
that the performance of the Clouds was honored by the
presence of its severest critic in this respect, by Socrates
himself, who, to the satisfaction of the public, stood up
during the performance so the crowd assembled in the theater
could convince itself of the proper resemblance. (Ibid.)
Such drawing attention to himself on the part of Socrates Kierkegaard took to be
quite significant and emulated on several occasions. Like Socrates he was prominent
in the audience of a play which ridiculed him (Andersen's En Comoedie i det Grønne,
wherein a parrot symbolizes Kierkegaard), he brought attention upon himself
throughout the entire Corsair affair, and during the height of his attack on the
established Church he would situate himself at a cafe table in public view so that
those going to and from church services would know that he obviously had not done
so.
It is this side of Socrates which, according to Kiekegaard, modifies, i.e., limits
and structures his personality and makes essential communication possible. it is
only an actual personality which can represent adequately an idea. This indeed was
one function of Greek comedy.
That a merely eccentric and ideal conception would fall
outside the interests of Greek comedy is also confirmed
by the penetrating Rütscher, who brilliantly argues that
the essence of Greek comedy lay in apprehending actuality
ideally, in bringing an actual personality on the stage
in such a way that this is seen as representative of the
Idea, and that this is the reason one finds in Aristophanes
three great comic paradigms: Cleon, Euripides, and
Socrates, whose persons comically represent the striving
of an age in its threefold direction. Whereas the minutely
detailed conception of actuality filled in the distance
between audience and theater, the ideal conception once more
estranged these two forces, insofar as art must always do
this. Moreover, it is undeniable that Socrates actually
presented many comical aspects in his life, or to say it
clearly once for all: he was to a certain extent what.
one might call an oddity. (Ibid., pp. 159-160.)
Thus Kierkegaard relies on Aristophanes' descriptions to put Socrates in proper
perspective historically, and then seeks to explain Socrates' relation to the
world, in the context of the events which surrounded him and which he helped to
precipitate, in terms of this synthesized conception. Out of this Kierkegaard
developed the notion of essential communication which the authorship attempts to
actualize.
To say that Socrates was something of an oddity is clearly not enough to explain
essential communication. Of course Socrates was not simply one of the crowd and it
is furthermore true that he was noticed partly because of his physical features and
eccentric personal habits. But these facts would in no way explain the force of the
Socratic enterprise or the possibility of essential communication. In order to do
this Kierkegaard must go beyond a mere synthesis of the Platonic and Aristophanic
conceptions of Socrates. It is here where irony enters in:
If, however, one will suppose that irony was the constitutive
factor in Socrates' life, one will have to admit that this
presents a much more comic aspect than allowing the Socratic
principle to be subjectivity, inwardness, with all the wealth
of thought this entails, and locates Aristophanes' authority
in the seriousness with which he, as an advocate of the older
Hellenism, must endeavor to destroy this modern nuisance.
This seriousness is too ponderous but would limit the comic
infinity which as such knows no limit. By contrast, irony
is at once a new standpoint and as such absolutely polemical
toward older Hellenism, and also a standpoint which continually
cancels itself. It is a nothingness which consumes everything
and a something which one can never catch hold of, which both
is and is not; yet it is something in its deepest root comical.
As irony conquers everything by seeing its disproportion to
the idea, so it also succumbs to itself, since it constantly
goes beyond itself while remaining it itself. (Ibid., p. 161.)
The irony of which Kierkegaard speaks here is genuine irony and it is the force by
which Socrates is able to withstand the affronts of the public. Thus it becomes
again clear that irony is a factor of singular importance. It is irony which in
determining the form of Kierkegaard's authorship sets it on the same track as the
Socratic enterprise. Insofar as Socrates was an ironist he was capable of essential
communication and on this level can be compared with Kierkegaard.
The authorship as a series of love letters to other existing individuals may be
admitted to the category of essential communication. It is essential because it
bespeaks the inward condition of an exiting individual as such, independent of all
contingencies. It is therefore, in Kierkegaard's sense, the truth. The truth,
however, does not admit of straightforward statement. Because irony is "a
nothingness which consumes everything and a something which one can never catch
hold of" (Ibid.) it can serve as the form for truth saying. The truth is yet never
directly stated, but is contained therein to be understood, i.e., inwardly
appropriated by other existing individuals.
To say that the authorship is an attempt to achieve essential communication does
not account fully for its polemical character or the nature of its polemic attacks.
It does not follow from the assertion that the truth cannot be stated
straightforwardly that an attempt reveal the truth will result in bitter polemics.
The answer to this question is to be found in Kierkegaard's notion of corrective.
The authorship is a Socratic stinging-fly intended by Kiekegaard as a polemic
against mass-mentality. One may say that the entire function of the authorship was
to split the public, the crowd, in order to make available the humanly essential
possibilities of individual existence. The particular polemical utterances are not
of lasting significance. They are born of the circumstances and since circumstances
change they soon loose their specific applicability. They are derisive in order to
provoke self-examination during an age when, Kierkegaard believed, it was urgently
needed. Thus the particular flavor of the authorship is determined by what
Kierkegaard perceived to be the lack in the present age. The degree of outspoken
polemic is a function of Kierkegaard's perception of the crisis in his own age.
This means that the authorship presents a two-edged sword. The one edge is designed
to split the public. It is adversarial, even abusive. The other is to cut away what
is unneeded, to open itself to existing individuals, to reveal the truth. These two
functions correspond generally to the two major phases of the authorship (which
were produced simultaneously): the aesthetic and the religious. The aesthetic works
challenge mass man to judge for himself; the religious are edifying, up-building,
addressed affectionately to that one existing individual. Both are polemicdialectic,
but the tone and mood vary greatly. Likewise no single one of the works
is to be understood as an essential communication. Rather, the authorship
understood as a whole is Kierkegaard's attempt to issue a polemic from the
standpoint of an existing individual which will communicate essentially the truth.
Who is the Existing Individual?
The existing individual has been portrayed according to the outline provided by the
theory of the existence spheres, i.e., in his aesthetic, ethical and religious
moods. In general he should be placed in the moment of transition in the border
spheres of irony and humor. In the "Fullness of time: (Øieblikket) the synthesis of
body and soul is present to him; he is both the silent Knight of Faith and the
outspoken polemicist. The individual is singular but not solitary; he is completely
without authority but nevertheless author.
It is the existing individual who in his pursuit of the self must strive to
actualize this condition in others as well. Kierkegaard did not articulate a
specific social or political philosophy. Kierkegaard's political position can
perhaps be compared to Augustine in Civitate Dei.
Perhaps the most apt characterization of the politics of Kierkegaard's existing
individual comes, although indirectly, from Hannah Arendt. In the Preface to Men in.
Dark Times she writes:
In [Heidegger's] description of human existence, everything
that is real or authentic is assaulted by the overwhelming
power of "mere talk" that irrestibly arises out of the
public realm, determining every aspect of everyday existence,
anticipating the sense or the nonsense of everything the
future may bring. There is no escape ... from the
"incomprehensible triviality" of this common everyday world
except by that withdrawal from it into that solitude which
philosophers since Parmenides and Plato have opposed to the
political realm. ... [such] dark times are ... not identical
with the monstrosities of [history] ... they are no rarity.
[But] even in the darkest of times we have the right to
expect some illumination, and that such illumination will
come less from theories and concepts than from the uncertain,
flickering, and often weak light that some men and women,
in their lives and their works, will kindle under almost all
circumstances and shed over the time span that was given
them on earth ... (Arendt, Men in Dark Times, p. ix.)
Such men and women are Kierkegaard's existing individuals.