Stages on Life’s Way

by Søren Kierkegaard

  If Quidam of the construction had had the spiritual balance to understand what he was doing, he would have been an entirely different person. But his troubled passion makes him tragic in his use of the deception, and I see the unity of the comic and the tragic precisely because he does the right thing but not for the reason he thinks—that in his sympathetic zeal he would have the power to wrest her loose from a real love affair. No, the comic is precisely this: the reason for the victory of his tragic foolhardiness is that her love does not go very deep.

  The reason that the esthetic quite consistently treats all self-torment comically is easy to see, simply because it is consistent. Esthetics maintains the hero in a sound condition on the basis of the immediate relation between strength and suffering (within/from without). Therefore it considers any inward direction a desertion, and since it cannot have the deserter shot it makes him ludicrous.

  I now leave the esthetic and go on to the religious. In composing my imaginary construction, I merely set the categories in motion in order to observe completely undisturbed what [VI 435] these require without caring to what extent someone has done it or can do it, whether Per left it alone because he was too weak, Poul because he was too smart, Mads because he saw the others leave it alone and thus he could leave it alone without any risk and be loved and esteemed, since he did not want to be better than others: in short, regardless of life-insurance wisdom, the outcome of which is, when one sheep goes to drink the other does also, what one fool does another fool does also.

  The religious does not consist in an immediate relation between strength and suffering, but in the internal, when this relates itself to itself. That the “self” is accentuated here is always sufficient to show that self-torment is to be regarded differently but is not sufficient, declares the religious person, to justify the jumbling of something together by individuals who have their whole existence in the esthetic and the failure of religious speakers, despite all their platitudes and sanctimonious words, to have pure categories.

  Insofar as self-torment, viewed esthetically, is comic, it is, viewed religiously, reprehensible. A religious healing is accomplished not by laughter but by repentance; self-torment is a sin like other sins.

  But while the esthetic, precisely because it is not involved with the internal, quite generally dismisses self-torment as comic, the religious cannot do so. The religious individual’s fear is precisely fear for himself; the religious healing consists first and foremost in arousing this fear, and from this it is easy to see that here the matter becomes more difficult. But how does the individual begin to fear himself without discovering by himself the danger he is in. A sly religiousness, to be sure, acts in another way. It says, “One must not evoke the dangers oneself; our Lord will surely send them if necessary.” One may well say that, but it will never do to say “Amen” and end with that, for that kind of talk is dubious. Despite the religious phrase “Our Lord,” instead of which someone, in order to talk even more religiously, might say “Our Savior” (as if the religious consisted of certain words and phrases), the categories are nevertheless half-esthetic. Although the talk is religious, the individual is seen only in an external relationship to God, not in an interior relationship to himself. The talk amounts to this: Our Lord can certainly bring danger and misery to your house; indeed, he can take your property, your beloved, your children, and he will surely do it if it is beneficial for you—ergo, since he has not done it, then there is no [VI 436] danger. This is esthetics with imitation religious gilding. From the religious point of view, the greatest danger is that one does not discover, that one is not always discovering, that one is in danger, even if one otherwise had money and the most lovable girl and adorable children and was king of the country or one of the quiet ones in the land, free from all cares.

  As stated, one may well say that, but one must not say “Amen” and end with that, for then one deceives. On closer inspection of the talk, this is again apparent. So, then, there is a man, a real favorite [Pamphilius] of fortune (this phrase is very appropriate to such religious talk), who is coddled and cared for and, unacquainted with danger, is edified by the thought that Our Lord will surely . . . . . if . . . . .. What a lucky esthete, who in addition to all the Heiterkeit [serenity] of the esthetic has a religious safe-conduct document! But to begin with, everyone has something called imagination. So our lucky fellow hears rumors of sufferings and misery in the world! Well, he is ready and willing to give and is praised for it. But imagination is not satisfied with that. It paints for him a horrible picture of suffering, and when it is most shocking, the thought strikes him and a voice says: It could indeed happen to you also. If there is any knightly blood in him, he says: Why should I be exempt in preference to others. (Tieck has treated this somewhere in a short story in which a rich young man despairs over his wealth, not because of spleen but because of his sympathy for mankind.549) Of this the talk says nothing at all, and yet here is the dividing line between the esthetic callousness that does not want to know that it exists and the religious elevation through suffering. That there is a crossroad such that one cannot buy exemption by paying the welfare tax and giving a bit more—about this nothing at all is said; our Pamphilius would be happy until Our Lord, when it was found necessary, sent danger. What is the speaker doing here? He is deceiving. Instead of taking him out into danger, he is helping him by way of religious fancy to play hooky from life. Any attempt to clog up receptivity to the fact that one is in danger is esthetic deviation—callousness—not toward poetry, but toward the esthetic, as it manifests itself in relation to actuality.

  If the one talking is a more religious speaker, he moves with ease in this difficulty and assists his listener in it. He speaks [VI 437] with the jesting of religiousness about fate and vicissitudes—our lucky Pamphilius becomes a little frightened, and the speaker has not deceived him. Now he is built up by the confidence of faith, and the religiously inspired speaker calls out to himself and to him: A religious person is always joyful.550 This is the most glorious statement made in the world—that is, if it is true that no one, no one on earth or in heaven knows what danger is and what it is to be in danger as does the religious person, who knows that he is always in danger.551 Thus he who truthfully and simultaneously can say that he is always in danger and always joyful is saying simultaneously the most disheartening and the most high-minded words spoken. And I, who am only an observer, poetice et eleganter [in a poetic and refined way] a street inspector, will already count myself lucky in daring to bow before such a person, but to speak about myself in my own categories: even though the gods have denied me greatness, that which is infinitely beyond my capacity, they have given me an uncommon ingenuity in paying attention to people, so that I neither take off my hat before I see the man nor take it off to the wrong one.

  There is many a man who has been immer lustig [always merry] and yet stands so low that even esthetics regards him as comic. The question is whether one has not become joyful in the wrong place; and where is the right place? It is—in danger. To be joyful out on 70,000 fathoms of water, many, many miles from all human help—yes, that is something great! To swim in the shallows in the company of waders is not the religious.

  It is now obvious what must be understood religiously by self-torment. It is a matter of discovering by oneself the full possibility of danger, and by oneself at every moment discovering its actuality (this the esthete would call self-torment, and the esthetic lecture would prevent one from it by imitation religious gilding), but it is simultaneously a matter of being joyous. Where, then, is the self-torment? It is at the halfway point. It is not at the beginning, for then I am speaking esthetically, but it is due to one’s being unable to work one’s way through to joy. And this, declares the religious person, is not comic; neither does it lend itself to evoking esthetic tears, for that is reprehensible and one shall work one’s way through. Anyone who does not make his way through has only himself to blame, for here there are not hard-hearted fathers a
s with the unhappy lovers in the tragedy; here there is not the superiority of the enemy, before which the hero in the tragic drama falls; here there is not the betrayal by the person one trusted most so that the outstanding person is caught in the trap—here there is only one who can be the betrayer, oneself, and next to him, but infinitely far removed, the speaker who would advise one to leave it alone instead of doing the [VI 438] only thing he can do—helping one out into the depths where there are 70,000 fathoms. And when this has happened and he now perceives that he can do no more, cannot do more to help the person he loved more than his own life (as is possible in the story of the play) but only in this anxiety discovers that he has 140,000 fathoms beneath him, there is still one thing left to do; he can shout to the beloved, “If you do not become happy now, then know this, know that it is your own fault.”

  And even if it is the opinion of many people, if they were to become aware of what is stated here, that such a speaker must be regarded as a national scourge and that it would be the most foolish thing of all to pay him because he made one unhappy, that is not my opinion. I would gladly pay him, and if I could become a speaker such as that I would imperturbably receive money for it, but I would not think I was rewarding him or was being rewarded, for money is incommensurable with that kind of instruction and is not even of such worth that one polemically accentuates it by refusing to accept it, as Socrates did.552

  So much with regard to self-torment. It is extremely simple; everyone knows it, and precisely in that I again see the unity of the comic and the tragic when I consider that everyone knows what a human being is, and the observer knows what everyone is.* It is not esthetic-comic because there is more [VI 439] than an immediate relation (for the comic lies in the misrelation between an imagined possibility and actuality). Diedrik Menschenschrek553 is comic because his courage is an imagined possibility and thus his actuality is dissolved into nothingness. But that possibility for everyone is no imagined possibility but a real possibility; he can become the highest, declares the religious person, because he is intended [anlagt] for the highest. It is tragic that he is not, but comic that he nevertheless is, for he cannot wipe out that possibility intended by God himself.554 Thus, everyone knows that a human being is immortal. The observer knows what everyone is, and yet everyone indeed is and remains immortal. Consequently his immortality was no imagined possibility, as was D. Menschenschrek’s courage, and, on the other hand, the person who, despite all the terrors of life and despite the cunning of the age and of habit, keeps faith in immortality present with him, does not become more immortal than anyone else.

  * Although I ordinarily do not desire any comment from the critics, I almost desire it in this case if, far from flattering me, it consisted of the blunt [VI 438] truth “that what I say everyone knows, every child, and the educated infinitely so much more.” That is, if it only remains fixed that everyone knows it, then my position is in order and I shall surely come to terms with the unity of the comic and the tragic. If there were anyone who did not know it, I would be thrown off balance by the thought that I could possibly teach him the requisite preparatory knowledge. What occupies me so much is precisely what the educated and cultured say in our time—that everyone knows what the highest is. This was not the case in paganism, not in Judaism, and not during seventeen centuries of Christianity. Fortunate nineteenth century! Everyone knows it. What a progress since those ages when only a few knew it. Would a balance possibly require that in return we assume that there is no one at all who would do it?

  Quidam of the imaginary construction is something of a self-tormenter. His first move is good and correct, but he remains in the sortie; he does not retrieve himself in joy quickly enough to repeat the movement again. Yet the point at which I have conceived him is indeed also his crisis. It is possible that things will go better for him if he is sufficiently sensible to regard a whole life as compatible with such a course of instruction and to reconcile himself to remaining a dawdler among those who are quickly finished, a retarded pupil among those who go infinitely further.

  That the girl is helpful in getting him out upon the deep, of that there is no doubt, and from my point of view I must say that his whole relationship with her is a happy one, for the man is always happy in love who finds a girl who is specifically designed to develop him. Thus Socrates was fortunate in being married to Xanthippe;555 he would not have found her match in all Greece, for that old grandmaster of irony needed such a person in order to develop himself. Therefore, if Xanthippe frequently had to hear herself maligned in the world, I, on the contrary, believe that she has the gratification that the commander in chief of irony, who towers a head over the human throng, owed no person as much as he owed Xanthippe’s housekeeping, where Socrates ironically debated pro summis in ironia honoribus [for the highest honors in irony]556 and in that connection debated himself into the ironic proficiency and [VI 440] equanimity with which he conquered the world.

  Thus the girl is entirely suitable to him, as is meet and proper for the imaginary construction. She is lovely enough to stir him, but also weak enough to misuse her power over him. It is the former that binds him, the latter that helps him out upon the deep but also saves him. If the girl had been more spiritually qualified and less femininely lovable, if she had been very magnanimous, she would have said to him in the middle of the deception: My dear, you distress me with your deceit. I do not understand you, and I do not know whether you are irresponsible enough to want to leave me because you want to be out in the world or whether you are hiding something from me and are perhaps better than you seem. But whichever it is, I do realize that you must have your freedom; I fear for myself if I were not to give it to you, and I love you too much to deny you it. So take it, without any recriminations, without any anger between us, without any thanks on your part but with the awareness on my part that I have done the best I could. If this had happened, he would have been crushed; he would have sunk into the ground for shame, for with his passion he can superbly bear all evil when he knows himself to be better, but he would not be able to forget that he became debtor to a magnanimity such as that, the greatness of which he would discover with demonic discernment. This would have done him an injustice, because from his viewpoint he also meant well. In the construction he is humbled not by a human being but before God.

  Anyone who otherwise has the desire and the aptitude to construct imaginatively with categories, without needing pageantry, settings, many characters, “and then the cows,” will see how many new constructions could be made from this point by changing him or her a little and seeing what would result for him and for her, how he might have been in order to crush her (if, for example, he had cruelly made her responsible for his life and perhaps terrified her so that she never recovered from it), which he simply cannot do, or how both must have been constituted for both of them to be crushed (if, for example, he had not had religious presuppositions and perhaps in desperate pride ended by celebrating their union with suicide) instead of both being helped as they are now.

  Readers of novels, of course, make other and greater demands and feel that when everything revolves around only two characters it must be boring, which it is indeed if it does not also revolve around the categories. If it does, even one character can be entertaining, and 6 billion 477,378,785 people cannot revolve around more. A reader of novels, of course, is [VI 441] excited only when something exciting is going on, as one says upon seeing a crowd. But if the crowd revolves around nothing, then there is still not anything going on.

  6.

  557To Repent of Nothing Is the Highest Wisdom—the Forgiveness of Sin

  Hand in hand with such negative principles as: Admire nothing,558 expect nothing, etc. is the negative principle: Repent of nothing or, to use other words that perhaps are not as ethically disturbing: Regret nothing. The real secret of this wisdom is that an esthetic principle has been embellished and given the appearance of an ethical principle. Understood esthetically from an ethical p
osition this is entirely true, for the free spirit essentially ought not to esteem the whole range of the esthetic so highly that he regrets something. For example, if someone has become poor, then it is correct to say: To regret nothing is the highest wisdom—that is, act by virtue of the ethical. Then the principle means: continually to cut down the bridge of the past behind one in order continually to be able to act at the moment. If you have devised a plan after thorough deliberation and the outcome seems to show that your plan was mistaken, then the point is to regret nothing but to act by virtue of the ethical. Beyond a doubt, much time is wasted in the world on this kind of looking backward, and to this extent the principle can be commendable.

  But if the plan was not made after due deliberation, if there was deceit in it—what then? Does it still apply: Repent of nothing in order not to be delayed? It depends upon the nature of the delay one could fear. If one fears delay and hindrance in sinking ever deeper, then it would certainly be best to shout: Repent of nothing, and to understand the poet’s words nulla pallescere culpa [no wrongdoing to turn us pale]559 to refer to the brazenness that does not turn pale at guilt, but in that case the principle is extremely unethical. However, there are many people who rush through life with the haste of anxiety. There [VI 442] is nothing they fear more than the dialectical, and when they say “Repent of nothing” with regard to the past, they could with the same right say “Deliberate about nothing” with regard to the future. Thus it is rather witty of a jolly fellow in one of Scribe’s plays to say that since he never made any plan, neither did he ever have the trouble of seeing it fail;560 women often act without deliberation in this way and come out very well. In another way a very sagacious person sometimes acts without deliberation or in desperation in order to obtain a criterion. When someone is stuck in something and does not know which end is up, when everything has become so devastatingly relative that it seems as if one is being suffocated, then it may be expedient to act suddenly at one point just to get something moving and some life in all that dead flesh. An interrogator, for example, when he is in a complete quandary and everything is equally probable, suddenly directs the inquiry at one individual, not because suspicion falls most upon him, for a definite suspicion is precisely what he lacks; he passionately pursues this arbitrary clue—at times the light dawns, but in another place. If one does not know whether one is sick or well, if this condition tends to make no sense, it is good to risk doing something desperate suddenly. But even if one acts without deliberation, there is still a kind of deliberation.