Stages on Life’s Way

by Søren Kierkegaard

  Quidam of the imaginary construction does not see it this way, for in his passion he clings to the god [Guden] in faith and in his own destruction does not see, as I do, the negative unity of the comic and the tragic and nothing more but sees his own rehabilitation; he sees himself as falling not by the hand of actuality but by the hand of God, and therefore he is rehabilitated. Religiously speaking, I must express myself differently, even though I here speak in a strange tongue: providence, which is infinitely concerned about each and every person, equips an individuality, to whom it gives unusual powers in relation to actuality. “But,” says providence, “lest he do himself too much harm, I tie this power up in depression and thereby hide it from him. What he is capable of doing, he will never find out, but I will use him; he is not going to be humiliated by any actuality—to that extent he is more pampered than other men, but within himself he is going to feel destroyed as no other person feels it. 523Then and there and only there is he going to understand me, but there he will also be certain that it is I whom he understands.” As a composer of imaginary constructions, I can well understand this, but otherwise not, for my mind is not at rest in passion but in impassivity.

  Consequently, repentance has become dialectical for him and remains so for him because he must wait for information from actuality about what he has really perpetrated. The dialectical reader will naturally be able to fashion many examples of this kind of dialectical repentance. I will merely suggest one. David has decided that Uriah must be put away in a subtle fashion so that Bathsheba can become his.524 I am assuming that he has sent a messenger with secret orders to the commander; I am assuming that it takes the messenger three days’ journey to reach the camp. The historic actuality makes no difference here. What happens? The very same night the messenger departed, David, trying to find the rest of sleep, does not find it but finds terror wide awake; it grips him, and he collapses in repentance—in the next paragraph, to be sure, comes the atonement. No, wait a minute. That same moment David realizes that it might still be possible to prevent the murder. An express messenger is sent, and David stays behind. I am assuming that this takes five days more. Five days—how much is that? After all, it is not a phrase in a paragraph; at most it is a particle, a “meanwhile” that merely begins a sentence, but five days could very well make a man gray-haired. Indeed, there is a great difference between having wanted to be a murderer and being one. Now David is in [VI 420] a dialectical suspension, and the composer of an imaginary construction who wants to describe his condition psychologically can employ many, many paragraphs. —Everyone easily perceives, however, that all this is a far easier case than the one in my imaginary construction. David has nevertheless wanted to make himself guilty of a murder, but Quidam of the construction wants simply to rescue. Inspired solely by sympathy, he takes an extreme risk, and just look, he has a murder on his conscience or, rather, he enters into dialectical agony. This agony is also more dialectical than it is in David’s situation because in David’s case the comic cannot emerge at all. For David, it could have been a relief if he could have succeeded in preventing Uriah’s actual death, but a jest it would never become. Quidam of the construction, on the other hand, can become almost ludicrous if he does not parry with the help of the idea.

  The dialectical form of the repentance here is as follows: he cannot begin to repent, because what it is he ought to repent of seems to be undecided as yet; and he cannot find rest in repentance, because it seems as if he were continually about to act, to undo everything, if that were possible. —That he gives way to this is the demonic; he should only pay attention to the possibility and entirely remove repentance from this. To the extent that he is kept in suspenso by the first reason (that what he is supposed to repent of is still undecided), he is ironic; to the extent that it is the second reason (that he continually has to act), he is altogether sympathetic. —There is still a third factor in his repentant situation. In the system, a person repents once and for all in ¶ 17 and then goes on to ¶ 18. But if healing is to begin for the existing person, the moment must come when one lets the act of repentance go. For one single moment this has a deceptive similarity to forgetfulness. But to forget guilt is a new sin. This is the difficulty. To hold firmly to guilt is the passion of repentance, and it proudly and enthusiastically scorns the prating of forgetfulness about relief and, troubled, is itself suspicious of it. And Quidam of the construction even believes he is thereby honoring the girl—a seductive thought, especially because it is beautiful; to let go of it, to remove it so it is not just as present at every moment, is necessary for healing. When everything goes so smoothly that ¶ 18 follows upon or after ¶ 17, an internal and really dialectical treading water such as this goes unnoticed.

  [VI 421] Appendix

  A Side-glance at Shakespeare’s Hamlet

  Börne has written a little review of Hamlet. It is only a final comment525 of his that engrosses me, and I do not even know if he himself attaches much worth to it—it is just a comment. On the whole, Börne, Heine, Feuerbach, and such authors are the individualities who have great interest for someone who is composing an imaginary construction. They frequently are well informed about the religious—that is, they know definitely that they do not want to have anything to do with it. This is a great advantage over the systematicians, who without knowing where the religious really is located take it upon themselves to explain it—sometimes obsequiously, sometimes superciliously, but always unsuccessfully. An unhappy, a jealous lover can know just as much about the erotic as the happy lover, and, similarly, someone offended by the religious can in his way be just as well informed about it as the believer. At present, when our age seldom has a great believer to show, we must always be pleased to have a few really clever ones who are offended. If someone really wanting to have something clearly explained is so fortunate that a rigorous believer in the seventeenth-century sense of the word and an offended nonbeliever in the nineteenth-century sense of the word both say the same thing—namely, that the one says, “It is thus and so, I know it for sure; therefore I do not accept it,” and the other says, “Thus and so it is; therefore I believe it,” and this thus and so agrees perfectly, then one can trustfully conclude his observation. Two compatible witnesses such as these provide a reliability lawyers do not know.

  526Börne says of Hamlet, “It is a Christian drama.” To my mind this is a most excellent comment. I substitute only the word a “religious” drama, and then declare its fault to be not that it is that but that it did not become that or, rather, that it ought not to be drama at all. If Shakespeare does not give Hamlet religious presuppositions that conspire against him in religious doubt (whereby the drama ceases), then Hamlet is essentially a vacillator, and the esthetic demands a comic [VI 422] interpretation. Hamlet says he has conceived his grandiose plan of being the avenger to whom vengeance belongs.527 If one does not simultaneously see him sink religiously under this plan (whereby the scene becomes introspective and his unpoetic doubts and misgivings in the psychological sense become a remarkable form of dialectical repentance, because the repentance seems to come too early), then one demands quick action, for then he is dealing simply and solely with the external, where the poet places no obstacles in his way. If the plan remains fixed, then Hamlet is a kind of loiterer who does not know how to act; if the plan does not remain fixed, he is a kind of self-torturer who torments himself for and with wanting to be something great. Neither of these involves the tragic. 528Rötscher quite correctly made him morbidly reflective.529 Rötscher’s explanation is excellent and also has an interest of another kind for someone who wants to see how systematicians are forced to use existence-categories.

  If Hamlet is kept in purely esthetic categories, then what one wants to see is that he has the demonic power to carry out such a resolution. His misgivings have no interest whatsoever; his procrastination and temporizing, his postponing and his self-deluding enjoyment in the renewed intention at the same time as there is no outside hindrance m
erely diminish him, so that he does not become an esthetic hero, and then he becomes a nonentity. If he is religiously oriented, his misgivings are extremely interesting, because they give assurance that he is a religious hero. At times people have a totally external concept of a religious hero. In Catholicism, for example, especially in the Middle Ages, there perhaps was many a one who was zealous for the Church the same way a Roman was zealous for his native land, and became a tragic hero for the sake of the Church just as the Roman did for his country, and then was regarded as a religious hero—that is, on the basis of purely esthetic categories passed through to the private oral religious examination. No, the religious is in the interior being and therefore misgivings have their essential significance.

  If Hamlet is to be interpreted religiously, one must either allow him to have conceived the plan, and then the religious doubts divest him of it, or do what to my mind better illuminates the religious (for in the first case there could possibly be some doubt as to whether he actually was capable of carrying out his plan)—give him the demonic power resolutely [VI 423] and masterfully to carry out his plan and then let him collapse into himself and into the religious until he finds peace there. A drama, of course, can never come from this; a poet cannot use this subject, which should begin with the last and let the first shine out through it.

  On a specific point, one may have a doubt, another opinion, and yet agree on the one opinion that has been the opinion of one and two and three centuries—that Shakespeare stands unrivaled, despite the progress the world will make, that one can always learn from him, and the more one reads him, the more one learns.

  5.530

  531The Hero—Suffering—Tragedy Aims to Purify the Passions through Fear and Compassion—The Spectator’s Sympathy Varies within the Different World Views

  The esthetic hero is great by conquering, the religious hero by suffering. To be sure, the tragic hero also suffers, but in such a way that he simultaneously conquers in the external. This is what uplifts the spectator while he weeps for the dying one.

  If Quidam of the imaginary construction was supposed to have been a kind of esthetic hero, he would have had to become that in the demonic (in the direction of evil) and could indeed have become one in that way, for the esthetic is not so physical that it pays attention mainly to the bloodshed or the number of the murdered in order to determine whether someone is a hero. It looks mainly at passion, except that, not emancipated from externals, it is not capable of penetrating to that solely qualitative qualification that is reserved for the religious, where a farthing is worth just as much as kingdoms and countries. So if he were to be a hero he would have to act by virtue of this consideration: I see my idea of existence being stranded on this girl, ergo, she must go; my road to a great goal runs over her downfall. Nor is it difficult to construct for him some brilliant idea or other he wants to fulfill. We would then see him reach his goal and the world order again bring a nemesis upon him. He would above all have to be egotistically sure of himself, and what one would see would be his undauntedness, and how he became supranatural—not as the religious [VI 424] individual becomes that by making sacrifices, but as the demonic oriented to evil becomes that by demanding sacrifices. But above all he must not be what he is in the construction, of a sympathetic nature, for then esthetics cannot understand his collision, and above all he must not, as in the construction, do just the opposite and regard it as the most important thing of all that he eventually suffers more than she, and be sure, as he wishes, that the step itself will become not the girl’s downfall but his own.

  Quaedam of the imaginary construction lies essentially within the esthetic. The unusual trait that constitutes an esthetic heroine would here be to possess within herself sufficient ideality to cling firmly to her love and in this strength, which preserved the love, to be heightened to something extraordinary and thus herself form a nemesis upon him. A girl of that quality could not be used in the construction if the special concern is to throw light on him and to have the unity of the comic and the tragic as the structuring principle. Therefore, I chose a girl of a rather ordinary kind. His sympathetic nature must be illuminated from all sides, and therefore I had to have a female character who can make the whole thing as dialectical as possible for him and among other things can bring him into the anguish of seeing her break with the idea, as he calls it, even if she does nothing else (if she does that) than that she, sine ira et studio [without wrath and partiality],532 without losing her feminine lovableness, acquires for herself a new partner in the dance of life—in other words, if a person cannot have the one, then take the other, unembarrassed by prolixity of ideas, and precisely for that reason lovable. Anyone could have told him this in advance, but that does him no good. Of course she, like any other girl, had a possibility of becoming great, and there are moments in their relationship when I had hoped that I could bow before her, for I, who am an observer and thus poetice et eleganter [in a poetic and refined way] a street inspector, I find great joy in bowing. I have never envied Napoleon his greatness, but I have indeed envied the two chamberlains who opened the door for him, the good fortune to be the one who opened the door, bowed deeply, and said: The Emperor! Because of the relationship this could not be done, and it is the relationship that gives me my dialectical satisfaction. I am not interested in how they happened to [VI 425] begin, in their individual fates. If I were, I would instantly be influenced essentially by his passion, and that would be the end of my equilibrium. As soon as I add passion and consider each one individually and his fate, then I must say of him that he is the one who eventually suffers more. He began, and by doing so he insulted her since he did not understand the distinctive characteristic of a female existence; he began, and therefore he deserved his suffering. Of her, I must say that she is the one to whom life does the greater wrong in the imaginary construction, that by having become involved with him she always appears in a wrong light from the moment he by his deception prevents her from expressing the sympathy she certainly could have felt. Because he exists in the deception, a comic light falls upon her whatever she may do, even if she chose to remain faithful to him. He is very sensible of this wrong against her, and yet from his viewpoint he is acting in sympathetic passion, and this is one of the coiled springs in his suffering—that from his viewpoint he is doing the utmost and yet the most lunatic thing he can do; because they do not have a common viewpoint, he does not form a contiguous angle with her. Neither from his viewpoint nor from hers is it like for like: feminine attractiveness, loveliness—and a spiritual existence by virtue of the dialectical. His most desperate efforts are of no help, do not make up for the disparity, for feminine attractiveness has a claim that demands precisely what he lacks. Here is the source of his suffering. On the other hand, the opposite holds, that a spiritual existence by virtue of the dialectical must ask with regard to feminine attractiveness as the mathematician asks: What does that demonstrate? This he does not do, for he is not in spiritual equilibrium but in passion and therefore is concerned about the former and here chooses his suffering.

  533Suffering he has in abundance, but because of the externality that is its element the esthetic has its own thoughts about suffering. Esthetics quite properly says that suffering itself has no significance and no interest; only when it relates to the idea is it a matter of concern. This is an indisputable truth, and thus it is entirely proper for esthetics to reject sufferings such as toothache and gout. But when esthetics has to explain in more detail what it means to relate to the idea, it once again must become obvious, as touched on in section 1, that it is only an immediate relationship that concerns esthetics—in other words, that the suffering must come from without, be visible, not within the individual himself. It is for this reason that a view, superbly developed by expert estheticians, has gradually become common property even for the poorest [VI 426] newspaper scribblers: Not every suffering concerns esthetics—for example, sickness.

  This is entirely correct, and the re
sult of such deliberations is: the esthetic hero, excelling by his quantitative difference, must possess within himself the conditions for being victorious, must be healthy, strong, etc.; then the difficulties come from the outside. I remember a little controversy carried on in Germany on this subject, in which one party cited the Greeks and Greek esthetics against a play in which blindness had been used as a tragic motif.534 The other party responded by citing Oedipus by Sophocles. Perhaps he could better have cited Philoctetes, which in a way is an exception to the universal esthetic concept but yet such that the exception by no means can invalidate it but rather itself lapses.