Stages on Life’s Way

by Søren Kierkegaard

  Thus in the infinite reflection freedom is gained, whether it is affirmative or negative. In my imaginary construction, I have chosen protestation; in this way the double-movements show up most clearly. Simultaneously he holds on firmly to his love, and he has no obstacles from the outside; on the contrary, everything smiles favorably and threatens to be changed to terror if he does not follow his wish, threatens him with the certain loss of his honor, with the death of his beloved—thus he simultaneously holds on firmly to his love and maintains that despite everything he will not, cannot make it concrete.

  The situation is so dialectical that one must not be in a hurry, for that would result only in confusion. But if it is true that the time of immediacy is over, then it is a matter of attaining the religious—everything temporary serves no purpose. And for the person for whom it is true that the time of immediacy is over, for that person, too, the most difficult dialectical movement will become popular; otherwise I am very willing to admit that my imaginary construction is far from being popular. What makes an exposition unpopular is generally believed to be the many technical terms in the scholarly terminology. But that is a totally incidental kind of unpopularity, which scholarly windbags have in common with skippers, for example, who also are unpopular because they speak a jargon and not at all because they speak profoundly. Indeed, time and again the terminology of a philosophy can also make its way even to the common man, 464and consequently its unpopularity was, after all, incidental. It is the thought, not the incidentals of expression, that essentially makes an exposition unpopular. A systematic ribbon and button maker can become unpopular but essentially is not at all, inasmuch as he does not mean much by the very odd things he says (alas, and this is a popular art!). Socrates, on the other hand, was the most unpopular man in Greece because he said the same thing as the simplest person but meant infinitely much by it. To be able to stick to one thought, to stick to it with ethical passion [VI 388] and undauntedness of spirit, to see the intrinsic duplexity of this one thought with the same impartiality, and at one and the same time to see the most profound earnestness and the greatest jest, the deepest tragedy and highest comedy—this is unpopular in any age for anyone who has not realized that immediacy is over. But neither can what is essentially unpopular be learned by rote. More on that later.

  This, then, is the task I have assigned myself: an unhappy love affair in which love is dialectical in itself and in the crisis of infinite reflection acquires a religious aspect. It is easy to see how different this task is from any other unhappy love affair; it is easy to see if one looks at both parts at the same time—otherwise one will perhaps not see either of them.

  2.

  Misunderstanding as the Tragic and Comic-Tragic Principle Utilized in the Imaginary Construction

  When Claudius declares that misunderstanding is really due to the fact that people do not understand one another,465 in his naive humor [Lune] as spontaneous immediacy there are concealed differences that when brought out display the comic and the tragic; this is also why that naive remark varies in relation to the opposite passion with which it can be accentuated. The tautological aspect of this remark is equally capable of arousing the comic and the tragic passion; the remark itself is one of humor. Socrates, for example, could very well say ironically in the collapsed situation of the dialogue: By the gods, Polus,466 it is surely strange that we do not understand each other. It must be due to a misunderstanding. An enthusiast would say tragically: Ah, misunderstanding—not to be able to understand each other. From the point of unity of the comic and the tragic, this remark would not be humorous but [VI 389] profound. In other words, as soon as misunderstanding between two people is posited, then as long as they misunderstand each other no other reason can be given for it than misunderstanding. If the reason for the misunderstanding can be given, then the discrimen [distinguishing element] of the misunderstanding is removed. Thus the two could go on misunderstanding each other but nevertheless also basically understand each other.

  There is misunderstanding wherever the heterogeneous are brought together, a heterogeneity, please note, of such a kind that there is a possibility of a relation, for otherwise the misunderstanding is not—therefore it can be said that as the basis of the misunderstanding there lies an understanding, that is, the possibility of an understanding. If the impossibility is present, then misunderstanding is not present. With the possibility, however, there is misunderstanding, and looked at dialectically it is both tragic and comic.

  Poetry cannot become involved with this duplexity of misunderstanding; it must use misunderstanding either comically or tragically. To an extent it is correct in placing the basis of misunderstanding in some third factor outside, by the removal of which the misunderstanders understand each other. In other words, if the misunderstanding lies in the relation to each other of the heterogeneous ones themselves, then the relation is dialectical and the misunderstanding is just as comic as it is tragic. But if there is a third factor outside that separates the two in misunderstanding, then the two, viewed essentially, are not misunderstanding but understanding, as one sees when that third factor outside is removed.

  Without going too far with examples and comparisons, [one may say that] when poetry uses misunderstanding in connection with an unhappy love affair it locates the misunderstanding in an unfortunate event, in a mysterious occurrence, in an evil or foolish individual who by his interference occasions the misunderstanding between the two. Poetry must be sure of the real possibility of understanding—otherwise it cannot begin at all. Take away that event, that occurrence, that individual, and then they understand each other, for the obstacle merely makes them unable to arrive at that. A misunderstanding of that sort is not simultaneously comic and tragic. The circumstance of the misunderstanding is simple, and what makes it tragic in unhappy love is that the substance of erotic love is posited in the lovers’ passion. Take away the substance from the misunderstanders, and the misunderstanding is comic, for by their very misunderstanding the misunderstanders are disclosed in their emptiness, and the laughter [VI 390] over them is the judgment by which life is reconciled and receives satisfaction.

  467That the contrast is simultaneous is a consideration that is too dialectical for poetry. Even if romantic poetry places the comic and the tragic together, it is in the form of contrast and at most in a negative unity of a life-view not given in poetry but rising out of it, so to speak, as a presentiment. But it is not the same as that which is simultaneously comic and tragic; the contrast is rather the separating factor, which, with the same thrust by which it pushes down low-comedy, elevates the lyrical. —In immediacy there is continually the one, and the highest form of connection is this: when the one has been, the other follows.

  468In the Phaedo, Socrates develops this succession with regard to a sense impression—the pleasant and the unpleasant—so beautifully and in an illustrative situation (for one sees him sitting and rubbing with pleasure the leg from which the chain has been removed, by the removal of which he now senses pleasure, whereas it pained him when it was there), and thinks it would have been a task for Aesop to write a fable about it, how the gods, when they could not unite these opposing powers in any other way, joined them at their extremities.469 Presumably Socrates is in this way acknowledging that the pleasant and the unpleasant are not simultaneous, but in his ironic consciousness there is a negative unity of them.

  Similarly, the contrasts of poetry merely supersede each other. Therefore, poetry would never be able to comprehend the death of Socrates. Here everything is finished, and yet poetry would be able to choose only the one side—here probably the tragic. At most it would produce a comic contrast, although perhaps this is not easy. It cannot be denied that Xanthippe makes a comic figure with her screaming and noise, that her conduct is reminiscent of many a shrewish widow’s grief-stricken newspaper announcement about the deceased, nor can one deny that Socrates quite ironically lets a comic light fall on the scene of Xanthippe, with her se
nsitivity and her hidden screaming emotion saved up all these years for a solemn moment such as this, being transported out through the door,470 but this contrast would be a bit unfair and inadequate. Perhaps it would be better to create in fantastic style a chorus of a certain class of philologists whose “tear-jerking” [VI 391] comments on this paragon of a man and his martyr’s death form a good contrast to Socrates’ whole view. But then in turn the historical would vanish. Even Socrates’ friends are further advanced than poetry can go, for Phaedo himself says that as a witness to that event he found himself in a curious state, a rare combination of joy and sorrow—indeed, that those present, especially Apollodorus, were laughing one moment and crying the next. Not to mention Socrates himself, for the fact that those present laugh at one moment and cry the next only shows that they have not completely understood him. Socrates specifically posits a duplexity that poetry cannot express. If poetry wants to use the pathos of tragedy to depict Socrates’ suffering as a martyr, it had better look where it is going, for he does not suffer at all, he has already considered how droll it is that such a ἂτοπός τις [queer one]471 comes to his end by way of being executed. Poetry cannot comprehend him as comic, because his having by himself considered all the comic aspects proves specifically that he is not comic; and if there ever was anyone who was not comic it was Socrates. The tragic death of a hero is something simple, and poetry loves that, but if it simultaneously gets a hint that the man himself assumes that the situation could also be comic, then poetry must declare bankruptcy.

  472Before taking leave of poetry, however, I must make one more comment on misunderstanding when it is used esthetically. Poetry can also use misunderstanding in such a way that this exists for the single individual precisely because there is no point of contact for him with the person or persons who misunderstand him. This can become either comic or tragic, depending on the quality and the passion, but it cannot simultaneously be comic and tragic, because the point of contact is lacking that places the misunderstanders together in a unity or by which they situate themselves together in such a way that they simultaneously are kept together and yet apart in misunderstanding, and yet cannot be separated because the point of contact is there, and its existence is a relationship that is simultaneously comic and tragic. —It is tragic when an enthusiast speaks to a generation of dunderpates and is not understood, but it is tragic only because there is no point of contact between them because the dunderpates do not care at all for the enthusiast. Gulliver’s Travels473 is comic because of fantasy verging on madness, but the effect is only comic, and comic because the substance of qualitative passion is not present in [VI 392] the misunderstanding, although passion is present in the poet, for without passion there is no poet, not a comic poet, either. If the misunderstanding is entirely about unimportant matters, it becomes a careless jest. Life has plenty of examples of this. 474A deaf man is entering a meeting hall when the meeting is in progress; he does not want to disturb and therefore opens the big double door very gently. Unfortunately, a feature of the door is that it creaks. This he cannot hear; he believes he is doing it very well, and a long sustained creaking is produced by this slow opening of the door. People become impatient; someone turns around and shushes him; he thinks he may have been opening the door too fast, and the creaking continues. This situation is a jest, and therefore neither the tragic nor the comic can properly take hold of it. 475Yet there is a point of unity intimated here: he does not want to disturb, the assembly does not want to be disturbed, and he disturbs it. Add a dash of feeling and something else, and the result is the many situations over which one does not know whether to laugh or to cry. This is the tragic-comic, since no essential passion is posited; neither the comic nor the tragic is essentially present. In the comic-tragic both are posited and the dialectically infinitized spirit simultaneously sees both elements in the same situation.

  Now to my imaginary construction. I have placed together two heterogeneous individualities, one male and one female. Him I have kept in the power of spirit in the direction of the religious; her I have kept in esthetic categories. As soon as I posit a point of unity there can be plenty of misunderstanding. This point of unity is that they are united in loving each other. The misunderstanding, then, is not due to some third factor, as if they understood each other and were separated by some alien power—no, ironically enough, everything favors their misunderstanding. There is nothing to keep them from having each other and talking together, but right there the misunderstanding begins. Now if I take away the passion, then the whole thing is an ironic situation with Greek Heiterkeit [serenity]; if I posit passion, then the situation is essentially tragic; if I consider it, then I say that it is simultaneously comic and tragic. The heroine, of course, cannot see it as such—she is too immediate for that. If she sees it as comic, it must, according to the law of succession, come at a later moment, when the laughter would in turn make her comic herself, for to laugh at an essential error demonstrates that one is involved in a new one, and the person who laughs this way is as little healed as “he is free who mocks his chains.”476 The hero certainly is promptly aware of the presence of the comic, which [VI 393] saves him from becoming comic, but yet he cannot see the relationship as I see it, I who have laid it all out in the imaginary construction. This is due to his being in a state of passion, and the level of his passion is best shown by the fact that he fortifies himself in pathos by seeing the comic. He is in a state of passion. If I were to say to him, “Try to get over it,” he would promptly replace it with another one and say that it is an ignoble treatment of the girl. Thus he can certainly see the comic in the misrelation and the misunderstanding, but he perceives this interpretation as a subordinate authority, and out of it his passion evolves with ever greater pathos. The conjunction in this misunderstanding is that they love each other, but in their heterogeneity this passion must express itself in essentially different ways, and thus the misunderstanding must not come between them from outside but develops in the relationship itself that exists between them. The tragic is that two lovers do not understand each other; the comic is that two who do not understand each other love each other. That such a thing can happen is not inconceivable, for erotic love itself has its dialectic, and even if it were unprecedented, the construction, of course, has the absolute power to construct imaginatively. When the heterogeneous is sustained the way I have sustained it, then both parties are right in saying that they love. Love [Kjærlighed] itself has an ethical and an esthetic element. She declares that she loves and has the esthetic element and understands it esthetically; he says that he loves and understands it ethically. Hence they both love and love each other, but nevertheless it is a misunderstanding. The heterogeneous are kept separate by category, and in this way the misunderstanding is different from novelistic bartering and hindsight-opinions within purely esthetic categories.

  The male character in the imaginary construction, then, sees the comic, but not as a seasoned observer sees it. He sees the comic and with this fortifies himself for the tragic. It is this in particular that engages me, for this serves to illuminate the religious. Paganism culminates in the mental fortitude to see the comic and the tragic simultaneously in the same thing. In the higher passion, which chooses the tragic part of this unity, religiousness begins—that is, the religiousness for which immediacy is over—and in our day, so they say, it is supposed to be over for everybody. As animal creation, the human being has two legs (extremities); similarly, the comic and the tragic are necessary extremities of movement for the person who wishes to exist by virtue of spirit and after having abandoned immediacy. Anyone who has only one leg and yet [VI 394] wants to be spirit by virtue of spirit is ludicrous, be he ever so great a genius. In the balance between the comic and the tragic lies the condition for proper walking. Hence, the misrelation may also be described as limping, being bowlegged, club-footed, etc. —The trouble with my knight is that, when he is on the point of becoming integrated in religiousness, he
becomes extremely dialectical—more of this in another paragraph. Here I shall only say that he does not become dialectical in choosing the tragic higher passion out of the comic and the tragic, because then I could not make use of him at all, but he becomes dialectical in the final expression of this very passion. Without this, I could not use him, either, for therein lies precisely a demonic qualification of approximation to the religious.

  In order to throw light on the imaginary construction, I shall go over the structure.

  The form of the design exhibits the duplexity. In the morning he recollects actuality; at night he deals with the same story but is permeated with his own ideality. This ideality, therefore, is not an illusory anticipation that still has not seen the actuality but is an act of freedom after the actuality. This is the difference between esthetic and religious ideality. The esthetic is higher than the actuality prior to the actuality, that is, in illusion; the religious is higher than the actuality after the actuality, that is, by virtue of a relationship with God. The duplexity is expressed. A poet or a lover can certainly have an ideal conception of the beloved but cannot simultaneously have an actual consciousness of the extent to which it is true or an actual consciousness of the extent to which it is not true. Only the new ideality that comes after the actuality can endure this contradiction.

  477So the story begins twice. I have allowed a half year to intervene and assume that during this time he has lived in a kind of stupor, until suddenly passion awakens on the third of January. Other conceptions could also be introduced here—my choice is made in connection with the design.

  The two individualities relate inversely to each other. For her the critical point occurs in actuality, but he, who is virtually inexperienced with regard to the opposite sex, does not see it clearly and has only some intimations of it in his theoretical efforts. 478Shakespeare has declared somewhere—I do not remember where and cannot quote, but the sense of it is: [VI 395] at the moment before the cure of a violent illness occurs, at the moment of the change for the better, the assault is most violent; and every evil is worst when it is taking leave.479 The critical point for her, when the healing essentially begins, is the moment when she has staked everything in order to hold him fast, and he, then, completely consistent with his point of view, goes to the extreme to battle his way free from her. Psychologically her change for the better began the moment she felt the pain most acutely. His image, therefore, is already vanishing while he is present and when the separation is final vanishes more and more as a recollection; actuality must assist her. 480With him it is the reverse. In the period of actuality he is stronger because he has her only as an actuality. But the moment he is to see her again, not in actuality but in the light of his own ideality, she is transformed into a gigantic figure. What he has done in actuality, the deception, by which he has actually benefited her (for the relationship is so dialectical that the deception is basically truth to her—that is, she understands it best), he cannot maintain in relation to her as soon as he himself produces her [in ideality]. In order to believe in the significance of the deception, he must have his relationship to her in actuality and actually see her. His critical moment therefore comes on the third of January the next year, for he must be religiously healed, and in this respect her actuality disturbs him; he needs to have her ideal. Just as they have misunderstood each other from the beginning, so the misunderstanding continues after the separation and precisely now manifests itself most clearly. Just when she is on the point of having forgotten him because she does not see him and is already well on the road to recovery and he has become insignificant to her, at that very moment she has become supremely significant to him precisely because he does not see her. As soon as he sees her, is with her, speaks with her, he is clearheaded and strong; as soon as he himself creates her, he loses his understanding, does not dare believe it, and the religious must work itself ahead more definitely. A ghost is always terrifying, and she becomes that for him. But what a difference between a young girl, for whom his understanding is a match, and an ideal shape that comes terrifyingly toward him, against which his understanding is capable of nothing at all! His individuality [VI 396] was structured ethically-religiously. This is what he is to become. She also helps him, but not by her actuality. Here, then, lies the significance of his depression. It is the concentration of possibility. But when something like that is what it means, then all talk about a young girl’s cheerfulness and a marriage’s ability to dissipate it is foolish talk, for it should not be dissipated. On the contrary, the deep dark night of his soul should become still darker, for then he will recover. This she cannot discern and she acts altogether consistently. Neither can he see it, for then he would not receive the finishing blow of terror in the way it falls most tellingly when it strikes with his own guilt and her distress.