Stages on Life’s Way

by Søren Kierkegaard

  As a result of this, they are totally unable to understand each other. She does not even know the existence of what preoccupies him, and if he were to tell her about it, it would interest her no more than if he talked about Sennacherib and Shalma-neser.492 Nor does she ask for it, and this is very endearing of her, especially if the task had been the opposite—that to be of service to him she should not give it a thought. She of course does not grasp that her request and her dispensation do not counterbalance the ideas, and that not to express the idea not only disturbs him but that he regards it as an insult to her.

  So, then, he thinks. And this he is able to think—that he can have a murder on his conscience—but not to express the idea to him is unthinkable. For a thinker, a girl’s honor is the idea [VI 403] and consistency; for a self-thinker it is to cling firmly to it in life. If he has her honor on his conscience, then she has had his thought-existence on hers. She, of course, has had no intimation of this.

  (4) He is ethical-dialectical—she, esthetically immediate.

  From each of these standpoints, the concept of suffering is altogether different. He cannot understand what her suffering is essentially (if there is any), namely, to lose possession of another person; she does not understand at all what his suffering is essentially—responsibility and guilt.

  So they both become unhappy, and each has done the best for the other with regard to becoming unhappy: he by breaking the engagement, she by laying a murder on his conscience. To be sure, he would have had it anyway, but nevertheless she does it.

  (5) He is sympathetic—she in the sense of immediacy is innocently self-loving.

  Unbeautiful self-love is always distinguished by reflection. There is none of this in her; however, there certainly is the instinct for self-preservation, which by some Greek philosophers was laid down as a moral principle.493 Their mistake was that this cannot be done without reflection; she, however, is without reflection, and therefore this self-love is not unbeautiful and is a sign of a natural health.

  494Despite the partiality with which he generally views her, he nevertheless in a way does her an injustice by saying that there is not a trace of resignation in her. Not that he was wrong in saying it, for it is entirely true, but the reason is that she has no understanding at all of what it means, which at the same time can indicate her healthiness but perhaps also an erotic modesty. Moreover, he keeps her from understanding it. He uses the deception to conceal his own sufferings so that she will not be moved sympathetically. But then he forgets to take the deception into account, that it really is keeping her [VI 404] from becoming aware of the promptings of sympathy. But just as there is a contradiction here, so also is his dialectical position so difficult, so ambiguous, that one might think that he would simultaneously be just as reluctant to have her sympathetically moved for her own sake as for his own sake to have a vigorous expression of her magnanimity. But this he has realized, for he says that he has offered her the opportunity to give him his freedom, which he did in fact do, but this still does not mean that he is purely sympathetic at this point but rather bowing to what he regards as his duty. Inasmuch as he has made this offer, he is saved from becoming demonic in the direction of evil, which he could have become at this point; but neither is he purely religious, that is, it is possible. The trouble is that she does not want to understand him but only uses every new discovery of his feeling for her to fling herself at him with her devotedness.

  It is sympathy for her, consistent, please note, as it can be in his individuality (for his sympathy, of course, cannot speak in her tongue), that inspires him to the steps he otherwise would scarcely have ventured. I could have left it at that, but in order to throw light on him I had the thought enter his mind, and actuality seemed to encourage it, that it would nevertheless all end in a completely natural way with her being quite free and unrestrained again through a restitutio in integrum [restitution to the original state]. Here it will come to light whether he is sympathetic, or rather, since he is disposed to be sympathetic, it will come to light that he is suffering almost more now because he thinks she loses in idea-existence. Here his sympathy is manifested most powerfully, as it must be in a thinking person to whom idea-existence is the one and only—if he had been acquainted with the world and with the opposite sex, he would have come out better, that is, if he would have cared about this knowledge.

  So, then, he breaks the engagement, and the wedding ceremony performs the strange service of becoming the separating factor. The misunderstanding once again manifests itself in the latter. As said previously, she is already recuperating when he leaves her and is recuperating little by little; he suffers most afterwards. He is the one who acts, she the one who suffers, so it seems. Yet it is the reverse; he is the one who suffers, who did not venture what she ventured—to lay a responsibility such as that upon another human being. 495She [VI 405] believes that he has insulted and offended her by breaking the relationship, and yet he has offended her only by beginning it. He broke it out of sympathetic enthusiasm for her. His guilt, apart from beginning it, is that he applies too high a standard to her, and this is precisely to his honor. He is guilty, and she, so he thinks, is completely innocent. Yet this is not so: if he is guilty in having begun, then she is guilty of making use of the ethical side of the relationship to bind him to herself and of risking the steps the results of which she neither dreams nor is able to estimate. He sees the comic, but with passion, so that out of that he chooses the tragic (this is the religious and something that I, who see there both elements in equilibrium, cannot understand); she sees the tragic, and so clearly that she makes it the comic. He produces no effect whatsoever externally, except what any male could do just as well, that a girl wants to die etc.; he cannot even make a girl unhappy. She produces an enormous effect. She does not think of this at all, for she thinks that if she had been permitted to make him happy, then it would have been something. He does not think of the former, for he is obliged to think that he has crushed her. He is sure of one thing—that it will be the ruination of the girl to be united with him; perhaps the girl is more sagacious in thinking that she could very well make use of him. She is sure of easily being able to make him happy, and yet, as has been pointed out, that would unconditionally have been his downfall. He makes a fool of himself by his humble deference; she makes a fool of herself with her big words.

  But how, then, did he come to begin? This I believe I have clearly established. He begins with a complete life-view that he has formed for himself. I must make of him an approximation of a religious individuality, and therefore the view must be esthetic-ethical under illusion. So, in fact, it is, and it is quite in order that it must have satisfied his individuality. He sees the girl, has an erotic impression of her, but nothing more. She is taken up into his existence, and he does not want, as he says, to insult her by learning to know her more fully. One immediately sees the enthusiast, and an enthusiast he must be, but he will enter into another sphere. Time passes, he is resolute, but the erotic has not received its due at all. Now he is in it and views the matter ethically, while the religious possibility is continually deepest in his soul, as it already [VI 406] was in his first life-view except that he did not know of it. Now the ethical becomes clear to him in actuality, and he is shipwrecked. His affront was not breaking the engagement but, with such a life-view, to want to fall in love. The stages are structured as follows: an esthetic-ethical life-view under illusion, with the dawning possibility of the religious; an ethical life-view that judges him; he relapses into himself, and he is just where I want him to be.

  I have now very briefly made the rounds of my imaginary construction. I am continually circling it, for I certainly do grasp the unity of the comic and the tragic, but I do not understand from where he has the higher passion, which is the religious. Might it be ethics, which by its negative thrust helps him past the metaphysical (for that is where I am) into the religious? I do not know.

  496The upshot of the whole process of m
isunderstanding is really that they nevertheless do not really love. But that cannot by any means be said in the beginning, and this still continually remains, that each of them has a share of the elements of erotic love. He does not love, for he lacks the immediacy, in which there is the first basis of the erotic. If he could have become hers, he still would have become a spirit who wants to do everything to indulge her wishes—but not a lover. But if he does not have immediacy, he does have the ethical element, which she does not understand at all or care about. She does not love, that is, she has the impulses and persistence of immediacy; 497but in order to love, she must also have resignation so that it can become clear that she does not love herself.

  With that the imaginary construction is completed, but in another sense in its more detailed fulfillment it is not completed or brought to an end. (On the reason for that, more later.) If I were to assume as fact and event what he suspects and is quite probable—that she would fall in love again—what then? Then he might recover from his aberration. I continually put myself in his place and certainly do see that he is not to be helped as I, if I were in his place, would long ago have helped myself. I do not want to dispute about that; I want to construct imaginatively. 498His aberration is due to his letting her actuality disturb his integrating of himself in repentance, with the result that he cannot find peace in his repentance because she makes it dialectical for him. (More on that later.) Therefore, as soon as she is gone, he will simply have only himself to deal with; repentance unhindered will gain the [VI 407] ideality he needs, without being disturbed by pathos-filled passion into wanting to act or by comic sights that he himself does not bring about. To complete an individuality and put down a summary answer, that is for the great systematic thinkers, who have so much to traverse; to allow it to come into being in all its possibility is what interests one who composes imaginary constructions. Thus I could well imagine that, although I set myself this task, he would once more become dialectical. If that happens, he remains demonic. It is not the dialectical that makes a person demonic—far from it, but it is remaining in the dialectical.

  The reader who has read Constantin Constantius’s little book499 will see that I have a certain resemblance to that author but nevertheless am very different, and the person who composes imaginary constructions always does well to conform to the construction.

  3.

  The Tragic Needs History More than the Comic Does; the Disappearance of this Difference in the “Imaginary Construction”

  500I have often been engrossed by the circumstance that the tragic poet, in order to make sure of the proper impression on the spectators, in order to win for the play their belief and confidence and for the performance their tears, draws support from the historical, from the fact that his hero actually has performed something great, even though the poet does not simply render the historical. That this is the case no one, I am sure, will deny, and will not quote Lessing against me, since Emilia Galotti501 502 as the exception bears out the rule, and many comments by its author indicate that he himself has had the same view on the subject.503 It is by far the common practice to utilize the historical and with considerable reservation to understand the Aristotelian dictum that the poet is a greater philosopher than the historian because he shows how it ought to be, not how it is.504 The comic poet, however, does not need a historical foothold such as this. He may give his characters whatever names he pleases, he may have the episode [VI 408] take place wherever he wants it, if only the comic ideality is there so there is sure to be laughter; and, conversely, he does not gain by using Harlequin and Pierrot when he does not know how to use them except as names.

  Now, is it because people are more inclined to discover the weak points of others than to see what is great, is it because it is more acceptable to laugh at something with no guarantee of quality than to cry over it, as if it did not have its validity, that a fool laughs at nothing? 505Or may this be the reason, that the comic, lightly armed, searches its way past the ethical toward metaphysic’s freedom from care and merely wants to provoke laughter by making the contradiction become obvious, whereas the tragic, on the other hand, heavily armed as it is, remains stuck in an ethical difficulty, so that the idea certainly does win the victory but the hero succumbs, which is rather bleak for the spectator, insofar as he also wants to be a hero, and rather sarcastic if he considers that he has nothing to fear for his life since it is only the heroes who die?

  But whatever the reason is, what engrosses me is not the reason but the fact that the tragic seeks a foothold in the historical. This means, then, that poetry does not believe itself capable of awakening ideality in the spectator by itself, does not believe that the spectator has it, but that the historical, that is, the fact that it is historical, will probably help him to gain it. With regard to the comic, however, it never occurs to the poet to want to appeal to history or to undergird the comic figure with the help of history, for the spectator quite properly says: Make him appear to us as comic; then you may keep the historical.

  But, now, does it help one to believe in what is great by knowing it is historical? No, not at all. This knowledge merely assists one into an illusion that is infatuated with the palpably material. What is that which I know historically? It is the palpably material. Ideality I know by myself, and if I do not know it by myself, then I do not know it at all, and all the historical knowledge does not help. Ideality is not a chattel that can be transferred from one person to another, or something thrown in to boot when the purchase is a large one. If I know that Caesar was great, then I know what the great is, and this is what I see—otherwise I do not know that Caesar was great. History’s account—that reliable men assure us of it, that there is no risk involved in accepting this opinion since it must be obvious that he was a great man, that the outcome demonstrates it—does not help at all. To believe the ideality [VI 409] on the word of another is like laughing at a joke not because one has understood it but because someone else said that it was funny. In that case, the joke can really be omitted for the person who laughs on the basis of belief and respect; he is able to laugh with equal Emphasis [significance].

  From the heading of this section, the reader will easily perceive that it is not my intention to remain in the esthetic but that I want to go on to the religious. What the tragic hero is in the esthetic, the religious prototype (of course, I am here thinking only of devout individuals etc.) is for the religious consciousness. The poet here is speaker. Here one turns again to the historical. The prototype is presented, and then the speaker declares that it is positively certain, for it is historical, and the believing congregation believes everything, even that the speaker knows what he himself is saying.

  In order to grasp the ideality, I must be able to dissolve the historical in the ideality or do (to use a pious expression) what God is said to do for one who is dying: shine upon it. Conversely, I do not enter into the ideality by repeating the historical jingle. Therefore, anyone who, with regard to the same thing, does not reach the conclusion just as well ab posse ad esse [from possibility to actuality] as ab esse ad posse [from actuality to possibility] does not grasp the ideality in this same thing. He is nurtured only on fancies. Ideality as the animating principle does not automatically become historical. That which can be transmitted to me is a multiplicity of data, which is not ideality, and thus the historical is always raw material, which the person who appropriates it knows how to resolve in a posse [possibility] and assimilate as an esse [actuality]. There is nothing, therefore, more foolish in the religious sphere than to hear the commonsensical question that asks when something is being taught: Now, did it actually happen this way, for if it did one would believe it. Whether it actually happened this way, whether it is as ideal as it is represented, can be tested only by ideality, but one cannot have it historically bottled.

  506I have been made aware of this by producing the story of suffering I have carried out as an imaginary construction. Alas, if I were a famous author, then a read
ing public that is energetic about believing, indefatigably energetic, would be distressed, for it would worry about the book and ask: But did it actually happen—for if so we will surely believe it. What [VI 410] is it the reading public wants to believe? That it actually happened. Well, one does not get anywhere along that road. If a speaker disregards this, he may well be able to make a deep impression on his audience, but he also makes it into a satirical truth about himself, into what Socrates said about eloquence—that it is a fraudulent art.507 The more it is emphasized that it is historical and therefore etc., the more he deceives; and if he is paid so little that it is not worth talking about the money he receives, then it is just as certain that he is putting out chitchat, perhaps a good deal of chitchat—alas, for poor pay. A historicizing speaker such as that merely contributes his share to making the learners devoid of spirit. It is spirit to ask about two things: (1) Is what is being said possible? (2) Am I able to do it? But it is lack of spirit to ask about two things: (1) Did it actually happen? (2) Has my neighbor Christophersen done it; has he actually done it? And faith is the ideality that resolves an esse in its posse and then conversely draws the conclusion in passion. If the object of faith is the absurd, then it still is not the historical that is believed, but faith is the ideality that resolves an esse in a non posse and now wills to believe it.

  In order further to secure the religious paradigm, the religious is kept exclusively in pathos-filled categories of immediacy. The same thing happens with the speaker here as happens with the poet in regard to his tragic hero. One simply may not allow the comic to emerge. Thus the listener knows for sure that it is in earnest, and if it is in earnest then he surely can believe it. But just suppose this earnestness is a jest. Religious earnestness, like the religious, is the higher passion proceeding from the unity of the comic and the tragic. This I know precisely because I myself am not religious and have reached this standpoint (of unity) without skipping anything in advance and without finding the religious within myself. —If this is the way it is, then the historical need not trouble itself, for just as it can never help one to an ideality, it can least of all help one to a dialectical ideality. If I were a trustworthy man, it would look bad for the reading public who cannot find out in advance whether it is a jest or is in earnest. I would be forced into an explanation—there is always something good, after all, in not being trustworthy.