|
 Philosopher
of the Month
September
2001 - Soren Kierkegaard
Jiou
Lee-Yang
The
biographies of many philosophers rarely merit so much as a mention
when explaining their work. This is usually as much due to their
tediousness as their irrelevance. With Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855),
his biography is both significant and interesting.
Casting a long, dark shadow over his whole life was the presence
of his father. This is a man who, as Kierkegaard's journal recalls,
"as a small boy tending sheep on the Jutland Heath, suffering
many ills, famished and exhausted, stood up on a hill and cursed
God! And that man was never able to forget it, not even at the age
of 82." Nor was Kierkegaard Jr able to forget it, as he inherited
the religious fervour and guilt of his father. Before he was twenty-one,
no fewer than four of his siblings and his mother had died, convincing
Soren that God's retributive curse had fallen on the whole family.
As a young man, Kierkegaard tried to throw oft this melancholy and
he did indeed become known as quite a bon viveur in Copenhagen society.
However, his journal revealed a darker, suicidal side: "I have
just returned from a party of which I was the life and soul; witty
banter flowed from my lips, everyone laughed and admired me - but
I came away, indeed that dash should be as long as the radii of
the earth's orbit wanting to shoot myself."
Perhaps the most important event in his life was his broken engagement
to Regine Olsen. This decision caused a great deal of anguish within
him, and flimsily revealed references to this event can be found
in many of his works, notably Either/or and Repetition. His explanation
of the annulment was that married life was incompatible with his
dedication to his vocation as a writer. As if to prove the point,
over the ten years from 1843, Kierkegaard produced such a volume
of work that one can hardly imagine how he had time to eat, let
alone fulfil his conjugal duties.
It doesn't require an analyst to see the connection between Kierkegaard's
life history and the production of books with titles like Fear and
Trembling and The Sickness Unto Death. But, thankfully, as well
as being a depressive, Kierkegaard was also a thinker worthy of
the accolade "genius". Although his works are not presented
systematically and analytically, no-one can deny that they contain
a wealth of razor sharp intellectual insights.
At the core of his work is the rejection of systematised, logical
thought as a definitive guide to life and meaning. His chief target
here was Hegel, whose philosophical system was seen by many in the
mid nineteenth century as able to explain virtually everything.
Hegel thought that wherever there appeared to be a contradiction,
a thesis and antithesis, it would be possible to reach rational
harmony by means of a synthesis between the two. What is irrational
in the original two positions is thus eliminated and what is rational
is preserved. But Kierkegaard argued that the "movement' in
the synthesis is not explained. If the synthesis is fully contained
in the thesis and antithesis, then the synthesis is no real progression
at all. If, on the other hand, there is something novel in the synthesis,
then the movement is not strictly rational, as something new must
have been introduced that was not contained in the original pairing.
Kierkegaard's point is that no matter how rigorous your logical
system, there will always be gaps. As these gaps are logical gaps,
it is futile to try and bridge them. Instead, they can only be breached
by a leap of faith. What characterises a leap of faith is the absolute
uncertainty that underlies it. Faith is by definition that which
cannot be proven or disproved. That is why a leap of faith is undertaken
in 'fear and trembling".
In moral terms, that meant, for Kierkegaard at least, embracing
the religious life. This was Kierkegaard's third sphere of existence.
The first was what he called the aesthetic, which was a life dedicated
to the instant, perhaps best summed up in the phrase carpe diem
- 'seize the day'. The second was the ethical, where one tries to
live in accordance with eternal values. For Kierkegaard, both are
incomplete, in terms of rationality and of satisfying human needs.
But, as we have seen, these gaps cannot be closed through a rational
synthesis. Only Christianity, which paradoxically combined the temporal
and the infinite in the God-man Jesus Christ, bridges this gap.
But embracing Christianity requires leaving rationality behind and
taking a bold leap of faith.
The existentialist movement of the early twentieth century was the
natural heir to Kierkegaard's thought. Philosophers like Sartre
and Nietzsche also emphasised the limits of logic and personal choice.
But as critics have complained, once this stance is taken, anything
is justifiable. What seems to matter is not what you choose, but
that you choose it freely.
Kierkegaard's complex, poetic work, rewards careful reading. But
perhaps at its core, the moral of Kierkegaard's philosophy can be
summed up in the single sentence of Kierkegaard scholar Michael
Collins: "Human existence requires real 'passion' as well as
thought."
Suggested reading:
A Kierkegaard Anthology, ed. Bretall
The Mind of Kierkegaard by Michael Collins, both published
by Princeton, £10.50.
A
new philosopher of the month will be featured from mid-October 2001
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