Yeah, it seems like every white male was prone to such language in the 19th century. Even Nietzsche has some horrendous stuff on women in Beyond Good and Evil. Regarding “system talk”, I am not opposed to say, “systematic theology,” or I guess another term for it is “constructive theology”? But yes, definitely what Hegel does with systems in a totalizing way is not to be commended. I don’t know very much about Thomas Aquinas, but it seems like for as “systematic” (and voluminous) as his writings are, it seems like from what I know about his works that there isn’t so much a ‘kernel’ as much as there is a labyrinth to this thought; not so much a firm membrane as much as something porous perhaps? I don’t know.

Rusty,

What would you say would be the theo-political benefits to using the language of martyrdom in reference to Jesus? The reason that martyrdom becomes an odd word for Jesus is because, as Kierkegaard points out, it doesn’t ‘properly’ make sense. To be a martyr means one is being a martyr for something. So it makes perfect sense for Kierkegaard to say that Socrates was a martyr to the intellect; or it makes perfect sense to say that the first apostles were martyrs to Christ — but what is Jesus a martyr to? He isn’t a martyr ‘to’ the Father in an act of filliation as much as it is an ‘act’ of love from the Triune God made to or for fallen humanity. But even then, that sounds a bit odd. I guess it just gets a bit confused considering there is no truth “about” Jesus precisely because Jesus Christ exactly is the truth, way, life. Perhaps there may still be some good way to express this theo-politically though?

Peace,

Eric

Thanks for your very helpful response (and thanks for the sensitivity regarding SK’s sexist comment; we all have our prejudices, and I for one and just as guilty as the next person).

I tend to agree with SK that we, as finite and historical begins can’t have a “system,” as we are always in process (on a multitude of levels). Though perhaps “system-talk” is appropriate when it comes to God, if by that we mean, there is no development in God (in the Hegelian sense) and we affirm that God knows himself fully (whereas full self-transparency for us is not possible).

I look forward to your next post, which I plan to put up on Friday or Saturday.

With all good wishes,
Cynthia

Excellent questions. I would say that it is in Kierkegaard’s comment that Socrates is “just as great qua character as qua thinker” where Socrates becomes heroic. Kierkegaard uses Socrates in different ways in his writings (which I will highlight in my next post by way of a Mary-Jane Rubenstein article), so by the time of the Concluding Unscientific Postscript, Kierkegaard as Climacus holds Socrates in such high regard because he is precisely the existential thinker. That is, his deeds match up with his thought in such a unique and distinctive way that he himself becomes a kind of event for all of western philosophy.

I would say that is why Socrates is ultimately the hero for Kierkegaard, but regarding the element of your question regarding knowledge, I would have to defer to D. C. Schindler’s recent book Plato’s Critique of Impure Reason: On Goodness and Truth in the Republic. There Schindler says that Socrates is not exactly a pure skeptic, nor is he a Sophist who claims to have knowledge. He is somewhere in between the two, and this comes precisely from Schindler’s emphasis on the priority of the Good. Because the Good is the highest thing for Plato (Beauty is equated with the Good, too), it shines a light on all knowledge and reveals it as partial. Thus, Socrates is correct to say that he is ignorant, because, in light of the good his knowledge is only fragmentary; on the other hand though, the Good as absolute in no way abolishes the relative, and so therefore the partiality, the relative itself reflects the Good and participates in it. To put it in other terms, Socrates can know that he is ignorant. He ends up being neither a skeptic (he knows about his ignorance) nor a complete Sophist–he still claims his ignorance, the main difference being that the Sophists do not actually realize their own ignorance.

Socrates is a martyr because of his existence, which is hopefully explained a bit here (please forgive Kierkegaard on the ‘effeminate’ comment as usual!):

“Socrates did not first of all try to collect some proofs for the immortality of the soul in order then to live, believing by virtue of the proofs. Just the opposite. He said: The possibility of immortality occupies me to the point that I unconditionally venture to wager my whole life unconditionally upon it, as if it were the surest thing of all. And this is the way he lived–and his life is a proof of the immortality of the soul. He did not first of all believe by virtue of the proofs and then live; no, his life is the proof and not until his martyr-death is the proof complete.–You see, this is spirit. It is a little embarrassing for mimics and all those who live second-hand and tenth-hand lives, those who are result-hunters, and those with cowardly, effeminate natures” (JP I 73 [(X.2 A 406]).

Kierkegaard follows this up with, “Used with discrimination, this may be applied to becoming a Christian.”

Hopefully such texts will not be abused by extremists, but this has nothing to do with any kind of fundamentalism. Kierkegaard is singling out at least two kinds of people here: extreme rationalists on the one hand, and as usual, Hegelians on the other with his “result-hunters” comment (for Hegel Spirit [Geist] knows itself as result). So again we can see this come out in this journal entry:

“No, Socrates is the only person who solved the problem: he took everything, everything, with him to the grave. Marvelous Socrates, you performed a feat which remains eternally just as difficult, if anyone should want to repeat it; you left nothing, nothing, nothing, not even the thinnest thread of a result which a professor could grab onto; no, you took everything along to the grave. This way you kept the highest enthusiasm closed up airtight in the most eminent reflection and sagacity, kept it for eternity–you took everything along. Therefore the professors are disparagingly saying of you now–O, Socrates!–that, after all, you were only a personality, that you did not even have a system” (JP IV 4303 [XI1 A 449 n.d., 1854]).

One could say that for Kierkegaard, having a “system” could very well be equated with the Sophist presumption to full knowledge. They do not know (or at least do not acknowledge) that they are really ignorant, just as the progenitors of the system, at least as far as Hegel is concerned, actually claim to achieve Absolute Knowledge (e.g. at the end of Phenomenology of Spirit). Schindler talks about Hegel’s Geist as being “greedy”, that is, not allowing for a distinction between being and appearance, but that is perhaps the topic of a post in and of itself which would definitely need some fleshing out.

Peace,

Eric

Thanks again for this series. Do you see SK’s description of Socrates as “the hero and martyr of intellectuality,” as referring also to the fact that the only knowledge Socrates claimed to have was that he didn’t know anything? In other words, is Socrates a “martyr to intellectuality” by showing us via dialogic interaction how little we truly know and how even what we think we know is easily shown to be misguided and even contradictory(or at least so shot through with inconsistencies that we have to “pull back” on our knowledge claims)?

Best wishes,
Cynthia