Stages on Life’s Way

by Søren Kierkegaard

  Consequently, this is an established point in esthetics. Now, when I leave the esthetic, I remove the externality and repeat the correct principle: only the suffering that is related to the idea is of interest. This remains forever true. When a relationship to the idea does not become visible in suffering, it is to be rejected in the esthetic sphere, condemned in the religious sphere. But since the religious is only qualitatively dialectical and commensurable for everything and equally commensurable, then any suffering can eo ipso acquire interest, precisely because everyone can have a relationship to the idea.

  There has been much talk about poetry reconciling one with life; it might rather be said that it leads one to revolt against life, for poetry does people an injustice by its quantifying; it can use only the chosen ones, but this is a mediocre reconciliation. I take, for example, illness. Esthetics responds proudly and consistently: It cannot be used. Poetry is not supposed to be a hospital. That is right, so must it be, and it is bungling to want to deal with such things esthetically. Now, if one does not have the religious, one is in an awkward position. Esthetics finally culminates in the principle concerning illness that Fr. Schlegel has stated: Nur die Gesundheit ist liebenswürdig [Only health is lovable].535 Lest it degenerate into blubbering and weinerliche [weepy] drama, poetry is obliged to declare against poverty (when it is constrained to answer people, in which constraint the fault lies with the people, [VI 427] something that will be touched upon later): Only wealth is lovable or conditio sine qua non [the indispensable condition] if I am going to be able to use the characters. Of course, I might be able to write an idyllic piece, but that is not poverty, either.

  It is certainly true that poetry, hospitable and affectionate as it is, invites everyone to lose himself in it and thus be reconciled, but it still assumes the distinction because it concerns itself only with the preferred sufferings and consequently demands more from the person who is experienced in life’s un-preferred sufferings, demands more power for him to lose himself in poetry. And here poetry has already undermined itself, for indeed it cannot be denied that someone who can lose himself in poetry despite life’s unpreferred pressures is greater than someone who does the same but does not suffer in this way, and yet poetry must say that it cannot find in such a person, even though he is greater, a subject for its interpretation.

  As soon as one leaves poetry, which, as a friendly power of divine origin far from wanting to offend anyone, does its best to reconcile, as soon as I transfer the esthetic principle from the fenced-in precincts of poetry into actuality, then such a principle, as, for example, that health alone is lovable, is that of an altogether contemptible person. Such a person is contemptible because he is without sympathy and because in his egotism he is cowardly.

  In this exigency, when that which one has learned from poetry does not reconcile one with actuality, the religious appears and says: Every suffering is commensurate with the idea, and as soon as the relation to the idea is there, it has interest—otherwise it is culpable and it is the sufferer’s own fault. It makes no difference in the matter whether the suffering is not to be able to carry out his big plans or to be hunchbacked; it makes no difference at all in the matter whether it is to be deceived by a faithless lover or to be so unfortunately misshapen that even a kindly person cannot help laughing when he sees such a one, with whom it would never enter anyone’s head to fall in love.

  This is how I have understood the religious in composing the imaginary construction. But what is the idea-relationship that could be to the point here? It is, of course, a relationship with God. The suffering is within the individual himself; he is no esthetic hero, and the relationship is with God. But once again restraint must be exercised, for otherwise the religious [VI 428] becomes so high-spirited that it goes to the very opposite extreme and says, “The lame, the crippled, the poor are my heroes—not the privileged”536—which would be unmerciful of the religious, which is indeed mercifulness itself.

  I know that this is the nature of suffering as seen from the standpoint of the religious, because I can place two men together who say the same thing. Feuerbach, who swears allegiance to the principle of health, says that the religious existence (more particularly the Christian) is a continual story of suffering; he asks one just to consider Pascal’s life,537 and he certainly has enough. Pascal says exactly the same: Suffering is a Christian’s natural condition538 (just as health is the sensate person’s), and he became a Christian and spoke out of his Christian experience.

  “A Story of Suffering” is also related to a reader just as the esthetic work is (except that one must note the dialectical difficulties underscored in section 3 and brought to consciousness in the form of the “imaginary construction”). On the relation of tragedy to the spectator, these are the words of the founder Aristotle: δι’ ἐλεόυ ϰαὶ φόβου πεϱαίνουσα τὴν τῶν τοιούτων παθημάτων ϰάθαϱσιν [by pity and fear accomplishing its catharsis of such emotions].539 Just as in the foregoing I kept the principle in the religious by removing the externality from the esthetic, so these words could also be maintained but must be understood more precisely. Aristotle’s meaning is clear enough. The ability to be affected on the part of the spectator is presupposed, and tragedy assists here by awakening φόβοζ [fear] and ἔλεοζ [pity, compassion], but it then takes away the egotism in the affected spectator in such a way that he loses himself in the hero’s suffering, forgetting himself in him. Without fear and compassion [Medlidenhed], he will sit in the theater like a clod, but if all he gathers within himself is selfish fear, then he sits there as an unworthy spectator.

  This is not difficult to understand, but this already does suggest that fear and compassion must have a specific nature [VI 429] and that not everyone who fears and is compassionate is therefore able to see a tragedy. The purely sensuous person has no fear whatsoever of that which preoccupies the poet—hence he feels neither fear nor sympathy. Suppose he sees a man walk a tightrope to Rosenborg Castle;540 then he fears, and for someone who is going to be executed he has compassion. Thus someone watching a tragedy must have an eye for the idea; then he sees the poetic and in his fear and compassion is purified of all low egotistical elements.

  But in turn the religious person has another conception of what awakens fear, and his compassion is therefore in another quarter. Illness and poverty do not concern the estheticist; he has no sympathy with this suffering; he has no fellow feeling for it. As Börne says somewhere, “He feels healthy and has no desire to hear anything about suffering.”541 But all healing power, that of poetry as well as of religion, is only for the sick,542 because the healing is through fear and compassion. Börne should not have made that last statement, for here the esthetic is already defined in relation to actuality, and thus it is narrow-mindedness or callousness not to want to know anything about it. If the esthetic is maintained in its pure ideality, one does not deal with such things; that is correct, and the poet offends no one. Therefore, it is a mistake for the religious to be angry at poetry, because poetry is and remains lovable. For the spectator it is another matter if he is aware that such things exist. It is, of course, stupidity or cowardly callousness to want to be ignorant of the existence of poverty and sickness because a person is himself healthy; for even if the poet does not make it manifest, nevertheless anyone who has thought two healthy thoughts about life knows that in the next moment he can be in the same situation. It is not wrong of the spectator to want to lose himself in poetry; this is a joy that has its reward, but the spectator must not confuse theater and actuality, or himself with a spectator who is nothing more than a spectator at a comedy.

  In the religious, again by means of fear and compassion, these passions are to be purified. But fear has become something different, and consequently compassion also. The poet does not want the spectator to fear what the crude person fears, and he teaches him to fear fate and to have compassion [VI 430] for the person who suffers under it—the subject, however
, must be great and quantitatively conspicuous.

  The religious man begins in another quarter; he wants to teach the listener not to fear fate, not to lose time in pity for the person who falls before fate. All this has become less important to him, which is why he, unlike the estheticist, sees all people, great and small, as equally exposed to the blows of fate. But then he says, “What you must fear is guilt, and your compassion must be for the person who falls in this way, for the danger is first here. Yet your compassion must not go astray so that you forget yourself over some other person.” He will teach the hearer to sorrow, as the parish clerk, that lowly servant, by virtue of his office, a humble-proud high priest of inner emotion, tells us “that we should sorrow over our sins,” something, of course, that the parish clerk does not dare say to the reverend superiors, the assistant professors in the pulpit. Fear and compassion are to be aroused by the presentation; these passions are also to be purified of egotism, but not by becoming lost in contemplation but by finding within oneself a relationship with God. “It is indeed egotism,” declares the poet, “if you cannot forget the blow of fate that has struck you when you see the tragic hero; it is egotism when, by seeing the hero become a tailor, you go home anxious”—“but to dwell on one’s own personal guilt,” says the religious person, “to be apprehensive about one’s own guilt is not egotism, for precisely thereby one is in a relationship with God!” For the religious person, fear and compassion are something different and are purified not by turning outward but by turning inward. The esthetic healing consists in this, that the individual, by staring himself into the esthetic dizziness, disappears from himself, like an atom, like a speck of dust, something thrown into the bargain along with what is the common lot of all human beings, of all humanity, disappears like an infinitely brief fractional consonance in the harmony of the spheres of life. The religious healing, conversely, consists in transforming the world and centuries and generations and millions of contemporaries to something vanishing, transforming jubilation and acclamation and esthetic hero worship into a disturbing diversion, the idea of being finished into a phantasmagoric hallucination—so that all that remains is only the individual himself—this particular individual [VI 431] placed in his relationship with God under the qualification: guilty/not guilty.

  This is the religious according to what I have ascertained in the composing of the imaginary construction. I do not see it this way, for in the relation between the esthetic and the religious I see again the unity of the comic and tragic that they form when they are placed together. Thus also in poverty I see the tragedy in the fact that an immortal spirit is suffering and the comedy in the fact that all revolves around two shillings. I do not go beyond the unity of the comic and the tragic in the balance of spirit. I have a notion that I, if I did go further and made a beginning in the religious, might not get into the predicament where it would be doubtful whether I was guilty, and therefore I remain outside. I am not an offended person, far from it, but neither am I religious. The religious interests me as a phenomenon and as the phenomenon that interests me most. Therefore, it is not for the sake of humanity but for my own sake that it distresses me to see religiousness vanish, because I wish to have material for observation. I say this without hesitation, and I also have sufficient time for it, for an observer has time in abundance. Not so with a religious person. When he speaks it is only a monologue; occupied only with himself, he speaks aloud, and this is called preaching; if there is anyone listening, he knows nothing about his relation to them except that they owe him nothing, for what he must accomplish is to save himself. Such a right reverend monologue that witnesses Christianly, when in its animation it moves the speaker, the witnessing, because he is speaking about himself, is called a sermon. World-historical surveys, systematic conclusions, gesticulations, wiping sweat from the brow, a stentorian voice, and pulpit pounding, along with the premeditated use of all this in order to accomplish something are esthetic reminiscences that do not even know how to accentuate fear and pity properly in the Aristotelian sense. For world-historical surveys do not awaken fear any more than systematic conclusions, and a stentorian voice does not shake the soul but at most the eardrums, and wiping sweat from the brow at most arouses only sensate sympathy for the sweater. A religious speaker who, inwardly moved, does not speak about himself but about everything else should remember Gert Westphaler.543 Gert could talk about anything, knew a great deal, and was so very perfectible that he perhaps could have managed to know everything; one thing he did not manage [VI 432] to know, that he himself was a Schwatzer [babbler]. Yet Gert is blameless, for he did not pretend to be a religious speaker.

  544The religious speaker who purifies these passions through fear and compassion does not in the course of his address do the astounding thing of ripping the clouds asunder to show heaven open, the judgment day at hand, hell in the background, himself and the elect triumphantly celebrating; he does the simpler and less pretentious thing, the humble feat that is supposed to be so very easy: he lets heaven remain closed, in fear and trembling does not feel that he himself is finished, bows his head while the judgment of the discourse falls upon thought and mind. He does not do the astounding thing that could make his next appearance lay claim to being greeted with applause; he does not thunder so that the congregation might be kept awake and be saved by his discourse. He does the simpler and less pretentious thing, the humble feat that is supposed to be so very easy: he lets God keep the thunder and the power and the honor and speaks in such a way that even if everything miscarried he nevertheless is certain that there was one listener who was moved in earnest, the speaker himself, that even if everything miscarried there was one listener who went home strengthened, the speaker himself, that even if everything miscarried and everyone stayed away there was still one person who in life’s difficult complications longed for the upbuilding moment of the discourse, the speaker himself. He is not lavish in the dispensing of an overabundance of words and information but is attentive to the yield of the upbuilding; he scrupulously sees to it that the exhortation binds himself before it goes to anyone else, that the comfort and truth do not leave him—in order to be communicated all the more prodigally. Therefore, says the religious person, if you were to see him in some lonely, out-of-the-way place, deserted by everyone and positive that he accomplished nothing by his speaking, if you saw him there you would see him just as inwardly moved as ever; if you heard his discourse, you would find it as powerful as always, guileless, uncalculating, unenterprising, you would comprehend that there was one person it was bound to upbuild—the speaker himself. He will not become weary of speaking, for attorneys and speakers who have secular aims or worldly importance with regard to eternal aims become weary when what they accomplish cannot be counted on their fingers, when crafty life does not delude them with the illusion of having accomplished something, but the religious speaker always has his primary aim: the speaker himself.

  This is the way, according to what I have ascertained in the composing of the imaginary construction, that the religious will effect the ennobling of these passions through fear and compassion. Any other method produces confusion by introducing [VI 433] semiesthetic categories: by making the speaker esthetically important and by assisting the listener to swoon away into an esthetic absorption in something universal.

  Appendix

  545Self-inflicted Sufferings—Self- Torment

  From the point of view of the esthetic, every heautontimorumenos [self-tormentor]546 is comic. In that respect, different ages produce different types. Our age is not the worst, for it seems as if the whole generation were tormenting itself with the fixed idea that it was called to the extraordinary, that any moment a message for it was bound to come by way of a deputation from the council of the gods, so that it could take its place in the council meeting, for this much is certain—familiar with its task, the future of the whole human race, it seems as if at any moment it would, like Hermann von Bremenfeldt, take off to whisper in God’s
ear what was the right thing to do. And how lamentable that Hermann von Bremenfeldt did not manage to speak with the Elector of Saxony!547 Moreover, as do all who suffer from fixed ideas, it has a strong tendency to see espionage and persecution everywhere, and just as rheumatic people feel drafts everywhere, so does it sense pressure everywhere, the misuse of power, and knows how to explain in a satisfying way the feeble signs of life in the public spirit not on the basis that its strength is merely symptomatic and imaginary but on the basis that it is cowed by governments, somewhat as the Busybody explains that he accomplishes nothing during the day, not on the basis that he is fussy and fidgety but on the basis of the many affairs that burst in on him.548 Enough of that.

  Precisely because it is esthetically correct that all self-torment is comic, one is psychologically wise in an actual situation to use the comic explorer before dealing with self-torment another way. One of course does not bring the patient to laugh immediately at his own fixed idea but by means of analogies comes closer and closer to him. If he laughs [VI 434] excitedly at the analogies, then it is possible that one can take him by surprise by means of a coup de main [surprise stroke]. However, this can be developed specifically only in practice, but in practice there is nothing more ridiculous than to see religious categories used in deep and dumb seriousness where one should use esthetic categories with humor and jest.

  Without being aware of it, Quidam of the imaginary construction acted quite correctly. With enormous passion he conceives the plan of making his whole love relationship into tomfoolery in the girl’s eyes. What I find laughable, from my point of view, is his prodigious passion—otherwise he is right. There is not always peril to life just because a person screams for help. If Quaedam of the construction had been suffering tragically, she would have kept him from having a chance to use the deception. She would have collected herself inwardly and restrained herself. These are always the dangerous phenomena. Instead of that, she went to the very opposite extreme: exaggerated as much as possible and tormented herself with wanting to be an unhappy lover on the largest possible scale. But precisely this suggests that a comic treatment is correct, for a woman who is unhappy in love on the largest possible scale is silent. If she had been kept in religious categories, she would not have acted that way, either; she would have feared for herself and therefore would have feared most the responsibility she could incur by making the matter as difficult as possible for him, not so much by her personality but by an erotic counterfeit that trespasses upon the ethical and the relationship of duty.