Stages on Life’s Way

by Søren Kierkegaard

  I am far from being learned and make no claims to that; it would be embarrassing if I were foolish enough to assume anything like that. I am not a dialectician, not a philosopher, but to the best of my ability respect learning and everything that brilliant people offer to explain life. I am, however, a married man, and when it comes to marriage I am afraid of no one. If I were asked, I would confidently and cheerfully stand at the professor’s lectern, even if what I have to say is not entirely appropriate for delivery from a lectern. I boldly argue my thesis with all the world’s dialecticians, with Satan himself—he shall not be able to wrench my conviction away from me. Let the nitpicking chicaners pile up all their objections to marriage—their case will collapse. Their objections can quickly be classified in two parts: those which one best answers, as Hamann says, by saying “Bah”9—the others can quickly be disposed of. Generally I am somewhat thin-skinned and cannot very well bear being laughed at. It is a weakness I still have been unable to master, but if someone wants to laugh at me for being a married man, then I am afraid of nothing. In this respect I am invulnerable to laughter; in this respect I feel a courage that is almost the antithesis of the life pattern of the poor judge who goes from his home to court and from court to his home and is surrounded by documents. Put me in a group of clever fellows who have conspired to make marriage ludicrous and to mock what is holy—arm them with every witticism there is, tip their mocking arrows with the barb that an ambiguous relation to the opposite sex [VI 91] sharpens, dip the arrows in the malice that is not slow-witted but gained by devilish sagacity—I have no fear. Wherever I am, even if it were in the fiery furnace,10 when I am to talk about marriage, I notice nothing. An angel is with me,11 or, more correctly, I am not there, I am with her, her whom I still continue to love with the blessed resolution of youth, I who, although a married man for several years, still have the honor of fighting under the victorious banner of the happy first love alongside her through whom I feel the meaning of my life, that it has meaning and in many ways. For what to the rebel are chains, what to the slave-minded are onerous duties, to me are titles and positions of honor I would not exchange for those of the King, King of the Wends and the Goths, Duke of Slesvig, etc.12 That is, I do not know whether these titles and positions of honor would have significance in another life, whether they, like so much else, are forgotten in a hundred years, whether it is possible to imagine and clearly ascertain how the idea of such relationships can fill out an eternal consciousness in recollection. I honor the King, as does every good married man, but I would not exchange my titles with his. This is the way I see myself; and I like to think that every other married man does the same, and really, whether the single individual is far away or nearby, I wish that he also would be as I am.

  See, I secretly wear on my breast the ribbon of my order, love’s necklace of roses. Believe me, its roses are not withered; believe me, its roses do not wither. Even if they change with the years, they still do not fade; even if the rose is not as red, it is because it has become a white rose—it did not fade. And now my titles and positions of honor—what is so glorious about them is that they are so equally apportioned, for only the divine justice of marriage is able continually to give like for like. What I am through her she is through me, and neither of us is anything by oneself, but we are what we are in union. Through her I am Man, for only a married man [Ægtemand] is an authentic man [ægte Mand];13 compared with this any other title is nothing and actually presupposes this. Through her I am Father—any other position of honor is but a human invention, a fad that is forgotten in a hundred years. Through her I am Head of the Family; through her I am Defender of the Home, Breadwinner, Guardian of the Children.

  [VI 92] With so many positions of honor, one does not become an author in order to acquire a new rank. Nor do I ask for what I do not dare lay claim to, but I do write so that the person who is as happy as I may be reminded of his own happiness if he reads this, so that he who doubts, if he reads this, may be persuaded. If there were only one, I am still happy; I ask for only a little—not because I am so easily satisfied, but because I am indescribably contented. With so many occupations and all of them so appealing, one writes when there is time and opportunity and hopes that anyone who could possibly benefit from it might not be disturbed by deficiencies in form and will refrain from all criticism, for a married man who writes about marriage writes least of all to be criticized. He writes as he thinks best, often distracted by those more appealing pursuits. In other words, if I could mean something to more people by being an author, I far prefer to mean as much as possible to my wife. I am her husband, by marriage—that is, by marriage I become eligible for the prize, the race track that is my Rhodes and my dancing place.14 I am her friend—oh, that I might be that in all sincerity of heart, oh, that she might never feel the need of anyone more sincere. I am her counselor—oh, that my wisdom might be equal to my will. I am her comfort and her encouragement—admittedly not yet summoned—oh, but if I am ever summoned to serve in this capacity, may my strength be equal to the disposition of my heart. I am her debtor, my accounting is honest, and the accounting itself is a blissful task. And finally, this I know, I will be a recollection of her when death one day separates us—oh, that my memory will be faithful, that it will preserve everything when it is lost, an annuity of recollection for my remaining days, that it will give me even the most minor details again and that I may say with the poet when I am anxious about today: et haec meminisse juvat [and it is pleasant to recollect these things], and when I am troubled about tomorrow: et haec meminisse juvabit [and it will be pleasant to recollect these things].15 Alas, like the judge in court, one must at times put up with the dismay of reading again and again a summary of a criminal’s vita ante acta [earlier life], but with a beloved wife’s vita ante acta one never becomes bored—neither does one need the accurate printed details in order to recollect. It is certainly true that willing hands make light work, and so it is also with the task of remembrance. It [VI 93] is probably true (when said, it sounds infatuated) that in death the picture of the beloved will be found in the faithful lover’s heart, but from the marital point of view a resolution of the will is vigilant in the falling in love so that it does not become lost in the infinite. To be sure, love declares that a moment with the beloved is heavenly bliss, but marriage wishes love well and fortunately is better informed. Suppose it is the case that the first effervescent passion of falling in love, however beautiful it is, cannot be sustained; then marriage knows precisely how the best in the love can be sustained. If a child who has received from his parents a copy of his school book has, so to speak, devoured it even before the year is over, is this a sign that he is to be praised as a pupil for his zeal and delight? So it is with marriage—the married man who from God in heaven received his copy (as beautiful as a gift from God can be!) and read it daily, every day throughout a long life, and when it was laid aside, when night came and the reading had to stop, it was just as beautiful as the day he received it: was not this honest discretion, directly proportionate to the delight of the infatuation, with which he reads again and again, was this not just as praiseworthy, just as strong an expression of falling in love as the strongest expression that falling in love has at its disposal?

  Only of marriage do I wish to write; to persuade one individual is my hope; to spirit away those who speak against it is my intention. Hence for me marriage is my only chord, but it is so compounded that I, without exactly relying on the virtuosity that is generally required of anyone who has but one chord, dare permit myself to be heard, not exactly as an artist for a large audience, but rather as a wandering musician who stands outside the door of a particular house and does not call anyone away from his work, even though there is a winsomeness to his music when it sounds during work. In other words, I by no means think that what I may have to say would be unlovely. A good deal of it I owe to my wife, even though I do not talk with her in just the way I am writing here, but what comes from her invar
iably has a certain charm that is a woman’s dowry. I am often amazed by it. Just as someone who writes a poor hand must be amazed when he sees his own manuscript executed by an expert calligrapher, and just as one who has sent a closely and crabbedly handwritten sheet to the printer hardly dares to acknowledge as his own the attractive, clean proof he receives, so it often is also with me in my domestic life. I express as well as I can what obscurely moves [VI 94] within her, and then she is amazed that it is just exactly what she wanted to say; hence I say it as well as I can, and then she appropriates it. But now comes my turn, when I see with amazement that my thoughts and my words have acquired an inspiration, an inwardness, and a charm so that I can justifiably say that they are not my thoughts. The trouble is that the attractive elegance of the words and thoughts more or less almost entirely disappears when I want to repeat them and can no more be expressed than I can describe her voice on paper. She is, however, to a certain extent a coauthor, and a literary firm such as that does not seem unlovely to me if one intends to write only about marriage. She sanctions, that I know, my using what I owe to her; she forgives, that I know, my using the opportunity to say one thing and another about her that I otherwise cannot manage to say except in solitude, because I cannot say directly to her how much she means to me, lest my eulogizing become oppressive and perhaps almost disturb our good understanding. As anonymous and as one who wants to preserve anonymity most scrupulously, I have safeguarded myself against what I on the whole hope that a sense of delicacy would forbid everyone: to make my domestic life an object of anyone’s curiosity.

  Praised be marriage, praised be everyone who speaks in its honor! What I have to say is not some new discovery—indeed, it would be dubious to make a new discovery with respect to the oldest institution in the world. Every married man knows the same as I know. The main ideas are and remain the same, just like the root consonants (radicals), but while these remain fixed and unchanged, one can have the joy of adding new vowels16 and then rereading it. It follows, of course, that this must be taken cum grano salis [with a grain of salt] and, however I may go about it, that I do not, as a malicious mocker has said, make erotic love and marriage have the same consonants and the vowels constitute the difference. This, in turn, is like a well-known passage in the book of Genesis, where it says that Esau kissed Jacob,17 and the learned Jews who did not credit Esau with this mentality but did not dare to change the consonants, either, merely inserted other dots, so that it read: he bit him. The best answer to such a [VI 95] charge is “Bah”; any other objection, precisely the more forthright it is, is welcome, for a consistent objection is a “wanted” notice for the apprehension of the truth and is extremely opportune for one who has the explanation.

  Erotic love [Elskov] does indeed have its own god. Who does not [VI 96] know him by name, how many do not think to benefit greatly by calling this relationship by this name: an erotic relationship. Eros, the erotic, and everything pertaining to it have a claim to the poetic. Marriage, on the other hand, is not so favored, does not have such a lofty lineage, for even if it is said that God has instituted marriage, it is usually the pastor or, if you like, the theologian, who says it, and he or the latter speaks in a totally different sense about God than does the poet. As a result, all that is comfortable and fragrant about Eros disappears, for Eros can become concrete only in the totally specific; the idea of God, however, is on the one hand so earnest that the pleasure of love seems to vanish when the God who is the Father of spirits is himself supposed to be the copula, and is on the other hand so universal that one loses oneself as a nothing that still wants to have a teleological qualification by which one is qualified in relation to the highest being. The clearness, the transparency, and, on the other hand, the roguishness and the semidarkness, which is Eros’s relation to the lovers, the God of spirit cannot easily acquire in relation to marriage. The fact that he is involved is in a certain sense too much, and for that very reason his presence means less than that of Eros, who exists wholly and entirely only for the lovers. The relationship is similar to a purely human one. If his royal majesty has his lord chamberlain attend a christening party, it can perhaps heighten the mood of those present; but if the king himself were to attend, it perhaps would disturb, but remember that with respect to marriage there is no status distinction that makes one class stand closer to God than another. Nor is it easy to think of God precisely as spirit and then [VI 97] to think of him involved in the marriage in such a way that the idea does not become an introduction so general in nature that it leads into nothing at all, and in such a way that the idea does not become so spiritual that it promptly leads out again.

  If one is willing to be satisfied with the poetic explanation of erotic love, which essentially is pagan—for the attribution of falling in love to a deity is nothing but the beautiful jesting earnestness of immediacy—if one is willing to let marriage shift for itself or at most be something that tags along afterward, then perhaps there is no difficulty, but to find no difficulty in this way is a difficult matter for anyone who is accustomed to thinking. Naturally Eros lays no claim to any faith and cannot become the object of faith—this makes Eros so useful to the poet—but a God of spirit who is the object of a spiritual faith is indeed in a certain sense infinitely removed from the concretion of falling in love.

  In paganism there was a god for erotic love and none for marriage; in Christianity there is, if I may say so, a god for marriage and none for erotic love. Marriage is, namely, a higher expression for erotic love. If the matter is not regarded in this way, everything is confused and either one remains unmarried and a mocker, a seducer, a hermit, or one’s marriage becomes thoughtlessness. The difficulty is that as soon as one thinks of God as spirit,18 the individual’s relationship with him becomes so spiritual that the physical-psychical synthesis that is Eros’s potency easily disappears, as if one were to say that marriage is a duty, that to marry is a duty, that this then is a higher expression than falling in love, because duty is a spiritual relation with a God who is spirit. Paganism and immediacy do not think of God as spirit, but when this is taken for granted, the difficulty is to be able to preserve the qualifications inherent in the erotic so that the spiritual does not burn them up and consume them but burns in them without consuming them. Thus, marriage is threatened with dangers from two sides; if the individual has not in faith placed himself in the relationship with God as spirit, paganism haunts his brain as a fantastic reminiscence and he cannot enter into any marriage; and on the other hand neither can he do it if he has become totally spiritual; even if one of the latter type and one of the former type were married, such falling in love or such a match is no marriage.

  Now, even though paganism did not have a god for marriage as it had for erotic love, even if marriage is a Christian idea, there is nevertheless always something to hold to—namely, that Zeus and Hera had a special title as Protectors of [VI 98] Marriage: τέλειος [he who has attained fulfillment] and τέλεια [she . . .].19 To explain the term more precisely is a matter for philologists. I do not hide my ignorance, and since I am quite aware that I lack the necessary learning, I do not arrogate to myself a spiritual eagle eye20 that would authorize me to make light of classical learning and classical culture, which still always remains the substantial food of the soul, beneficial in a way entirely different from green fodder and the solutions of the schemers to the question: What do the times require? For me it is of importance only to dare to use these words, τέλειος and τέλεια, about married people; I leave Jupiter and Juno out of this, not wishing to make a fool of myself by wanting to solve the historical-philological problem.

  Marriage I regard, then, as the highest τέλος [goal] of individual life; it is the highest τέλος in such a way that anyone who evades it crosses out the whole of earthly life in one single stroke and retains only eternity and spiritual interests, which admittedly at first glance are not slight, but in the longitude of time are very strenuous and also in one way or
another an expression for an unhappy life. That the highest τέλος, if marriage is so regarded, cannot therefore be exhausted by a succession of finite “whys”21 is obvious to everyone and need not be elaborated. The highest τέλος always includes the particular qualifications, in which it is exhausted as in its predicates, thus under itself, so that they have their meaning precisely as immanent and, on the other hand, are meaningless as soon as they attempt to go on their own, for a detached thought that wants to be all its own is comical and thoughtless. Thus, in order to eliminate misunderstandings, the main point is that marriage is a τέλος, yet not for nature’s striving so that we touch on the meaning of the τέλος in the mysteries, but for the individuality. But if it is a τέλος, it is not something immediate but an act of freedom, and belonging under freedom as it does, the task is actualized only through a resolution. Now the signal is given; all the objections that prowl around society like solitary shapes will, if they have any sense at all, concentrate on this point. I know it well, the battle is going to be here; this will not be forgotten, even if I seem for a time to have forgotten it in order hypothetically to take a little look around.

  [VI 99] The difficulty is this: erotic love or falling in love is altogether immediate; marriage is a resolution; yet falling in love must be taken up into marriage or into the resolution: to will to marry—that is, the most immediate of all immediacies must also be the freest resolution, that which is so inexplicable in its immediacy that it must be attributed to a deity must also come about by virtue of deliberation, and such exhaustive deliberation that from it a resolution results. Furthermore, the one must not follow the other; the resolution must not come slinking along behind but must occur simultaneously; both parts must be present in the moment of decision. If deliberation has not exhausted thought, then I make no resolution; I act either on inspiration or on the basis of a whim.