Per Caritatem

A guest post by Eric Lee, Doctoral Student of Theology, University of Nottingham

In my previous post, I focussed on the importance of Socrates for Søren Kierkegaard, emphasizing the privileged place he held in his thought not only at the beginning (Concept of Irony) of his thought, but also just before Kierkegaard died (“My Task,” The Moment 10). In the remainder of “My Task,” Kierkegaard claims that ” ‘Christendom’ lies in an abyss of sophistry that is even much, much worse than when the Sophists flourished in Greece.”[1] The pastors and assistant professors he knows are exactly like the sophists of Greece, pawning off false knowledge as if it were real, but in their case they are “making those who understand nothing believe something and then making this human number the authority for what the truth is, for what Christianity is.”[2]

Earlier that year in a news paper article, Kierkegaard said, “everyone must be able to see that official Christianity is not the Christianity of the New Testament, resembles it no more than the square resembles the circle, no more than enjoying resembles suffering,” etc.[3] But still, the ones assured of their Christianity in this state want Kierkegaard to loudly proclaim his Christianity, to wear it on his sleeve, as it were. In response to these requests, Kierkegaard calls upon Socrates once again:

O Socrates! If with kettledrums and trumpets you had proclaimed yourself to be the one who knew the most, the Sophists would soon have been finished with you. No, you were the ignorant one; but you also had the confounded capacity of being able (also by means of being yourself the ignorant one) to make it manifest that the others knew even less than you-they did not even know that they were ignorant.[4]

Socrates’ behavior thereby angered the Sophists because of his gadfly-like manner of revealing the latter’s unwitting ignorance. Likewise, Kierkegaard provokes rage against himself by pointing out that even though he is not a Christian, others calling themselves such-like the Sophists in light of Socrates’ acknowledged ignorance-are even less so.  “I am not a Christian; and it is rash to conclude that because I can show that the others are not Christians, then I myself must be one, just as rash as to conclude, for example, that someone who is one-fourth of a foot taller than others is, ergo, twelve feet tall.”[5]

Kierkegaard ends his last brief treatise with a summation of his entire project: “My task is to audit the definition: Christian.”[6] If the form this takes is Socratic, the content and form taken together (which can never ultimately be pried apart I would argue) are for Kierkegaard wholly unique: “In Christendom’s eighteen hundred years there is absolutely nothing comparable, no analogy to my task; it is the first time in ‘Christendom’.”[7] One supposes one could very well compare him with Hamann, that “Magus of the North” whom Kierkegaard called “the greatest humorist in Christianity.”[8] Hamann also saw himself as a Christian Socrates before Kierkegaard did.[9] But Kierkegaard here is still correct: what he is dealing with is a new beast on par with what Dietrich Bonhoeffer would later describe as “cheap grace” (albeit due to over-determined speculation vis-à-vis Hegelianism), whereas Hamann’s struggles were with the so-called pure reason of the Enlightenment. In this sense then, Kierkegaard is perhaps in a unique position within Christianity.

In auditing the definition of ‘Christian’, Kierkegaard’s hope is to remind people that Christ’s invitation is not easy, indeed it is the ultimate sacrifice:

[W]hen it comes down to brass tacks and it must be certain what it is that Christ invites them to (in imitation to become a sacrifice), and this is not turned into something that pleases everybody-then it will be manifest, just as in contemporaneity with Christ, that all will most decidedly decline this with ‘Thanks for nothing’ and that only exceptionally does a very rare individual follow the invitation, and of these individuals in turn only a rare individual follows the invitation in such a way that he holds firm that it is an infinite, an indescribable grace that is shown him: to be sacrificed. … It would indeed be almost nauseating, stifling, oppressive, embarrassing that to be loved by God and to dare to love him should spiritlessly and idiotically be saddled with having the idea that one would have profit from it![10]

Kierkegaard’s tone remains Socratic, constantly questioning the ability to (Sophistically) ‘profit’ from following Christ. Instead, one must do the opposite of profiting: “to be sacrificed.”  In Cynthia’s previous post entitled “A Redemptive Historical Biblical ‘Postscript’ to Fear and Trembling,” Cynthia rightly points out that the story of the (non-)sacrifice of Isaac only truly makes sense in the ultimate sacrifice of Jesus Christ upon the cross, the former of which in Cynthia’s words “was itself a sign pointing beyond itself, a sign pointing to that future Christ-event in which ultimate existential expression of both suffering and love was displayed.” Kierkegaard here (like Saint Paul and many others after him)[11] is calling us to follow this same cruciform path. Like Saint Johannes Climacus reminds us,[12] not only do we climb up the ladder to Christ, but Christ himself is that ladder[13] and thus helps us along the way as he himself is that way, beginning and ending in love.[14]

Kierkegaard ends “My Task” with this exhortation:

You common man! I do not keep it a secret from you that, according to my concepts, to be a Christian is something so infinitely high that there are always only few who attain it (which both Christ’s life affirms if one pays attention to his contemporaries and his proclamation suggests if one takes it strictly)-yet it is possible for all. But one thing I beseech you for God in heaven’s sake and by all that is holy: avoid the pastors, avoid them, those abominations whose job is to hinder you in even becoming aware of what true Christianity is and thereby to turn you, muddled by gibberish and illusion, into what they understand by a true Christian, a contributing member of the state Church, the national Church, and the like. Avoid them; only see to it that you willingly and promptly pay them the money they are to have. One must at no price have money differences with someone one scorns, lest it be said that one was avoiding them in order to get out of paying. No, pay them double so that your disagreement with them can become obvious: that what concerns them does not concern you at all, money, and that, on the contrary, what does not concern them concerns you infinitely, Christianity.[15]

Kierkegaard here singles out more Sophists, it seems: the pastors, and the state Church. In his final exhortation, these concern him even more than the “associate professors,” his usual whipping boys. Like the Sophists of Socrates day, these are the figures who ultimately demand money and moreover profit for their services. Beyond this, Socrates wanders around poor and barefoot, acting as a midwife to learning, not charging anything for his ‘services’. The only analogy that Kierkegaard himself has before him is Socrates, and so Kierkegaard’s own task is to, beyond those who seek profit, exhort his readers to be infinitely concerned with Christ and Christianity.

Next week  I will conclude with a post reflecting on the themes of these last two posts in light of his earlier writings.

Notes

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[1] Kierkegaard, The Moment and Late Writings, p. 341.

[2] Ibid.

[3] “Would It Be Best Now to ‘Stop ‘Ringing the Alarm’?”, published April 7, 1855, in ibid., p. 52.

[4] Ibid., p. 342.

[5] Ibid., p. 343.

[6] Ibid.

[7] Ibid., p. 344.

[8] Journals and Papers II 1681 (II A 75 n.d., 1837).

[9] For example, Kierkegaard makes the same parallel of Hamann’s relationship to his contemporaries that he ultimately does with himself in “My Task”: “Hamann’s relationship to his contemporaries-Socrates’ to the Sophists (who could say something about everything)” (Journals and Papers II 1547 [III B 17 n.d., 1840-41]). On Hamann’s own works, see Johann Georg Hamann, Socratic Memorabilia: A Translation and Commentary, trans. and with an introduction by James C. O’Flaherty (Baltimore, MD: John Hopkins Press, 1967) and “Part I: The Making of a Christian Socrates” in John R. Betz, After Enlightenment: The Post-Secular Vision of J. G. Hamann (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 2009), pp. 23-87. On Hamann’s influence upon Kierkegaard, see John R. Betz, “Hamann Before Kierkegaard: A Systematic Theological Oversight,” Pro Ecclesia 16, no. 3 (Summer 2007): 299-333.

[10] Kierkegaard, The Moment and Late Writings, pp. 345-6.

[11] Romans 12:1. Cf. Hebrews 13:15; 1 Peter 2:4-5.

[12] After whom, of course, Kierkegaard named his pseudonym who wrote Philosophical Fragments and Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments.

[13] Jesus identifies himself with Jacob’s ladder in John 1:51.

[14] See John Climacus, The Ladder of Divine Ascent (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1982). On similarities between The Ladder of Divine Ascent and Johannes Climacus’ Philosophical Fragments see Jacob Howland, Kierkegaard and Socrates: A Study in Philosophy and Faith (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), p. 12.

[15] Kierkegaard, The Moment and Late Writings, pp. 346-7. Also, for Kierkegaard’s affinity for the “common man” see Jørgen Bukdahl, Søren Kierkegaard and the Common Man, trans. and ed. Bruce H. Kirmmse (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2001).

A guest post by Eric Lee, Doctoral Student of Theology, University of Nottingham

A warm thanks to Cynthia for inviting me to write a series of guest posts on Søren Kierkegaard. It is a welcome opportunity to serve as a kind of ‘midwife’[1] to a Kierkegaardian text that usually does not receive very much attention.[2] I want to blog through a piece entitled “My Task” which was the last piece of writing that Kierkegaard intended to publish in the series of writings known as The Moment. I will have two posts which work through the piece itself and then a final, third post which will attempt to show how these insights can be reflected back on Kierkegaard’s prior authorship in its pseudonymous guises.

While many familiar with Kierkegaard will know the phrase “the moment” (Øieblikket in old Danish, augenblick in German)[3] from his Philosophical Fragments[4] to define that moment of decision at which something absolutely new enters the picture such that it changes everything for the reception of a moment of transformation-Kierkegaard’s series by the same name of The Moment[5] signify a collection of writings in newspaper article and pamphlet form that intended to be a kind of ‘attack’ upon the Christendom of Copenhagen generally.  Specifically, they arose from his feud with Professor Hans Lassen Martensen.[6]

The religious climate of Kierkegaard’s time was such: because everyone was a Christian, baptised a Lutheran at birth, combined with a watered-down Christianity that used Hegelian terms to direct discourse and action (and not, say, the other way around)-the end result is that nobody in Copenhagen is thus a Christian.  Those familiar with Philosophical Fragments, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, and Practice in Christianity will be well-versed with Kierkegaard’s emphasis on the paradox of faith-the God-Man of Jesus Christ-and his concommitant bemoaning of the ‘slackening’ of this paradox such that the Christian faith is lived with no difficulty whatsoever. In fact, it is as simple as putting on one’s socks in the morning![7]

In light of this situation, Kierkegaard saw himself as a modern-day Socrates. He spells the form of this comparison in his The Point of View for My Work as an Author,[8] but in “My Task,” Kierkegaard goes into more depth concerning the comparison itself regarding both the person of Socrates as a distant echo of Kierkegaard as well as the culture of Athens and its own Sophistical leanings as an antecedent of Copenhagen’s Christians, especially Copenhagen’s “associate professors.”

To begin, Kierkegaard starts out with the following provocative declaration:

‘I do not call myself a Christian; I do not speak of myself as a Christian.’ It is this that I must continually repeat; anyone who wants to understand my very special task must concentrate on being able to hold this firm.[9]

Kierkegaard’s situation is that his entire culture has declared itself Christian, but in doing so, and in the way in which it has (among other things) forgotten the offense of the Cross,[10] it has put itself into a situation where they have abolished Christianity. So, if this is what Christianity has become, and if these are who the Christians are, then how can Kierkegaard call himself a Christian?[11] It is here where Kierkegaard makes the Socratic comparison, culminating into a paean to Socrates himself!

The only analogy I have before me is Socrates; my task is a Socratic task, to audit the definition of what it is to be a Christian-I do not call myself a Christian (keeping the ideal free), but I can make it manifest that the others are that even less.

You, antiquity’s noble soul, you, the only human being I admiringly acknowledge as a thinker: there is only a little preserved about you, of all people the only true martyr of intellectuality, just as great qua character as qua thinker; but how exceedingly much this little is! Even though over the centuries there have lived in Christendom a few isolated significant thinkers-how I long to be able to speak with you for only a half hour, far away from these battalions of thinkers that ‘Christiendom’ places in the field under the name of Christian thinkers![12]

And in his Journals and Papers, Kierkegaard says:

I have the deepest respect for Luther-but was he a Socrates? No, no, far from that. When I talk purely and simply about man I say: Of all men old Socrates is the greatest-Socrates, the hero and martyr of intellectuality. Only you understood what it is to be a reformer, understood what it meant for you yourself to be that, and were that.[13]

And later on in his Journals, Kierkegaard compares the martyrdom of Socrates to Christ:

Socrates is the only one, is “the martyr” in the eminent sense, the greatest man; whereas Christ is “the truth,” and it would be blasphemous to call him a “martyr.”

Why cannot Christ be called a martyr? Because he was not a witness to truth but was “the truth,” and his death was not martyrdom but the Atonement.[14]

If it was not already apparent through Kierkegaard’s continual use of irony and masks throughout his pseudonymous works-and even though Kierkegaard declares Socrates a “hero” in his Concept of Irony[15] dissertation before beginning his official authorship with Either/Or-Kierkegaard reminds us at the end of his life in The Moment and in his journals of the utmost importance of the person of Socrates for his work.  Socrates is not only the one thinker worth spending time with contra the Christian “thinkers” of his age, but Socrates himself, more than Luther and the Reformers and all their passionate writings (Kierkegaard himself a Lutheran!), is the only true and proper martyr to the intellect. Socrates, more than “a few isolated significant thinkers” in Christendom, is worth mentioning as “great” in both character and thought.

Why is this so? Aside from the fact that most philosophers in the 18^th and 19^th centuries held Socrates in extremely high regard,[16] it seems that Kierkegaard sees in Socrates a kindred spirit who is experiencing similar conflicts with his present age and dealt with these problems in a way most admirably in Kierkegaard’s eyes. In my next post, I will continue working through “My Task” in The Moment and thereby explore these themes further in Kierkegaard’s comparison of Christendom with a kind of Sophistry.

Notes

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[1] Cf. Plato’s Theaetetus 150b-151d.

[2] There are a few exceptions, notably the recent essay by Paul Muench based on his PhD dissertation, see Paul Muench, “Kierkegaard’s Socratic Point of View,” in A Companion to Socrates (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 2009), pp. 389-405. For his dissertation, see Paul Muench, “Kierkegaard’s Socratic Task” (PhD Dissertation: University of Pittsburgh, 2006). Accessed online, http://etd.library.pitt.edu/ETD/available/etd-04222006-115744/. Major studies that tend to overlook these final “moments” are Benjamin Daise, Kierkegaard’s Socratic Art (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2000) and Jacob Howland’s otherwise extremely excellent Kierkegaard and Socrates: A Study in Philosophy and Faith (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006).

[3] Augenblick subsequently had prominent use in Nietzsche’s, Jaspers’, and Heidegger’s philosophies, although it is arguable that Nietzsche only had secondary familiarity with Kierkegaard’s work. On this, see Thomas H. Brobjer,  “Nietzsche’s Knowledge of Kierkegaard,” Journal of the History of Philosophy 40, no. 4 (2002): 251-63.

[4] See Søren Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments / Johannes Climacus, ed. and trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1985. Also, for an important new translation of this text, see Søren Kierkegaard, Repetition and Philosophical Crumbs, trans. M. G. Piety (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009). I have not read this yet but it looks hopeful!

[5] Previously, these writings were available in a collection entitled Attack Upon “Christendom“, trans. Walter Lowrie (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1944; 1968).

[6] For an in-depth and impressively exhaustive look at this life-long feud with Martensen (among other local Danish Hegelian targets), see Jon Stewart, Kierkegaard’s Relations to Hegel Reconsidered (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003).

[7] See Søren Kierkegaard, Practice in Christianity, ed. and trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992), p. 35.

[8] Søren Kierkegaard, The Point of View, ed. and trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009).

[9] Søren Kierkegaard, The Moment and Late Writings, ed. and trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998), p. 340.

[10] Cf. Kierkegaard, Practice in Christianity, pp. 69-144

[11] Although he does not argue it here, Kierkegaard makes the case in The Point of View that the whole of his authorship poses the issue of “becoming a Christian” (pp. 55, 78, 93-4). It could thus be argued that the reason Kierkegaard cannot ever call himself a “Christian” is because ultimately he is only ever on the way to becoming one, and is never in a final state of “having arrived,” contra his fellow Danish Hegelians.

[12] Kierkegaard, The Moment and Late Writings, p. 341, emphasis in original.

[13] Søren Kierkegaard, Journals and Papers 2514, 3.80 (X2 A 559 n.d., 1850).

[14] Kierkegaard, Journals and Papers 2651-2, 3.160 (X.1 A 119-20).

[15] Søren Kierkegaard, Concept of Irony with Continual Reference to Socrates, ed. and trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992), p. 211: “At this point, I trust that two things are apparent-namely, that irony has a world-historical validity and that Socrates is not depreciated by my interpretation of him but really becomes a hero, so that he is seen going about his business, so that he becomes visible to the one who has eyes to see, audible to the one who has ears to hear.” C.f. Matthew 11:15 and Mark 8:18.

[16] One notable exception is Nietzsche, but even this picture is not as straightforward as Walter Kaufmann makes it out to be in his Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Anti-Christ, 4th edition (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1974). On this see Werner Dannhauser, Nietzsche’s View of Socrates (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1974) and Paul Harrison, The Disenchantment of Reason: The Problem of Socrates in Modernity (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1994), pp. 121-76.

In his work, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, Johannes Climacus discusses what he calls the dialectical aspects of Christianity or those aspects of Christian belief that one might call intellectual.   Climacus of course do not think that Christianity is merely a set of doctrines to which one must assent.  Rather, Christianity is a way of existence-as Climacus says, “Christianity is not a doctrine,” but is “an existence-communication” (VII, 328-29; pp. 379-380).[1] As C. Stephen Evans observes, this statement has been misunderstood often.  Climacus himself anticipated the potential misunderstanding and gives a lengthy footnote to clarify his meaning.  Here he explains,

Surely a philosophical theory that is to be comprehended and speculatively understood is one thing, and a doctrine that is to be actualized in existence is something else. If there is to be any question of understanding with regard to this latter doctrine, then this understanding must be:  to understand that it is to be existed in, to understand the difficulty of existing in it, what a prodigious existence-task [Existents-Opgave] this doctrine assigns to the learner (VII, 329; p. 379).

Because the Christianity of Climacus’ day had become overly speculative, he purposely distances himself from the word “doctrine,” as he fears that by employing the word, Christianity will continue to be categorized and understood as a philosophical theory instead of way of existence.  Thus, he comes up with a new term, “existence-communication.”  In no way is Climacus denying that Christianity has intellectual content; rather, he wants to make sure that this content is set forth in such a way that the uniqueness of Christianity as a transcendent (as opposed to an immanent) religion is upheld.  As Climacus explains,

If Christianity were a doctrine, it would eo ipso not constitute the opposite of speculative thought but would be an element within it.  Christianity pertains to existence, to existing, but existence and existing are the very opposite of speculation.  The Eleatic doctrine, for example, is not related to existing but to speculation; therefore it must be assigned its place within speculation.  Precisely because Christianity is not a doctrine, it holds true, as developed previously, that there is an enormous difference between knowing what Christianity is and being a Christian.  With regard to a doctrine, this distinction is unthinkable, because the doctrine is not related to existing.  I cannot help it that our age has reversed the relation and changed Christianity into a philosophical theory that is to be comprehended and being a Christian into something negligible.  Furthermore, to say that Christianity is empty of content because it is not a doctrine is only chicanery.  When a believer exists in faith, his existence has enormous content, but not in the sense of a yield in the paragraphs (VII, 329; p. 380).

The content of Christianity is dialectical; it is the “absolute paradox” and as such, it differentiates Christianity from immanent religions in which in principle all doctrines can be penetrated rationally, making revelation superfluous.  Climacus is firmly committed to what the orthodox Christian tradition calls the “mysteries of the faith”-the Incarnation, the Trinity and other doctrines which are both central to the Christian faith and can only be known through revelation.  In addition and related to the previous passage, Climacus believes that the content of Christianity has the potential to actually transform a person’s existence, giving him/her a new passion-”it is relating to the pathos-filled as an impetus for a new pathos” (VII, 488; p. 559).  Christian belief then is intimated related to action.  As Evans explains,

Climacus understands Christian belief as not merely accompanied by action but as essentially expressing itself in action.  Because of this he attempts to rethink the nature of that belief in such a way that it does not exclude belief as an intellectual act but does exclude even the possibility of belief being only an intellectual act.  This conception of Christian belief is itself demanded by “existential appropriation” that is Christianity and the content of Christianity, which is the absolute paradox, can be seen to correspond exactly to each other [VII, 532; pp. 610-611].  Both the content of Christianity and the appropriation of Christianity become “specifically different” from everything else (Kierkegaard’s Fragments and Postscript, p. 210).

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[1] All citations are from the Hong translation.

Johannes Climacus, whose view often overlaps with Kierkegaard’s own view yet is never to be simply identified with the latter, emphasizes Christianity as a transcendent religion.  By this he doesn’t mean to suggest that there is no continuity whatsoever between nature and grace or that grace destroys nature.  Rather, his point is to stress the uniqueness of Christianity in comparison with what he calls “immanent” religions, religions that do not require any kind of divine revelation but which arise from the human mind itself and are, as you might guess, obtainable by unaided human reason or via religious experience.  Because Climacus believes that human beings in their current state “lack the truth” due to sin and that this condition causes them to be prideful and to proclaim their own self-sufficiency, Climacus points to humanity’s need for “the God” to become man, for the eternal to enter into time and reconfigure all of history. Given these beliefs, Climacus draws attention to the Incarnate Christ as the object of the Christian’s faith; thus, according to his account, the historicity of the incarnation is a non-negotiable.  Commenting on Climacus’ view, C. Stephen Evans observes,

If Jesus’ life is merely a collection of stories or myths, or if Jesus is merely a creation of the early church (so that it is considered unimportant whether or not what the early Christians believed is literally true), then Christianity is essentially transformed into its opposite, and no “advance” on Socrates has been made at all.  For in such a case Jesus’ life would merely represent a possibility that man must be assumed to be able to know.  What distinguishes Christianity, according to Climacus, is that man is assumed to really lack the truth, and therefore must acquire it in existence in a genuinely historical relation to the God as he actually appeared (Kierkegaard’s Fragments and Postscript, p. 249).

According to Johhanes Climacus, though the ethical is not absent from the religious person’s concerns, what separates the two spheres is the manner in which the religious person (in particular, the Christian) relates to God.  As C. Stephen Evans explains,

[h]er relation to God [...] consists primarily not in self-confident action but in repentance.  Her task is not primarily to achieve a God-relationship herself by positively realizing her moral duty, but to achieve a sate of inward obedience to God by allowing God to transform her character.  This is well illustrated by Fear and Trembling where Johannes de Silentio claims that “an ethic which ignores sin is an absolutely idle science, but if it acknowledge sin, then it eo ipso transcends itself” (III, 146; p. 108).  The reason for this is given in a footnote attached to the same paragraph:  “As soon as sin appears, ethics perishes, precisely because of repentance; for repentance is the highest ethical expression, but precisely as such the deepest ethical self-contradiction” (III, 146n, p. 108n).[1]

Notes

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[1] C. Stephen Evans.  Kierkegaard’s Fragments and Postscript:  The Religious Philosophy of Johannes Climacus, (New York:  Humanity Books, 1999), 140.

It has been a while since I’ve posted a little philosophical humor, so here’s a good one.

 
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