Kierkegaard
Page 23
The Crisis and A Crisis in the Life of an Actress
Published in the Fatherland over four parts, July 24–27, 1848.
Inter et inter
This was the second of only two pieces Kierkegaard published in 1848. It was deliberately released roughly in conjunction with Christian Discourses as a sort of bookend to the pattern begun with Either/Or and the Upbuilding Discourses in 1843, where signed works of religious seriousness accompanied pseudonymous philosophic and aesthetic experiments. “I would like to create a little literary mystification,” Søren says in his journal of Crisis (JP 6060). The pseudonym he chose to run alongside the signed Discourses was Inter et inter (Latin for “between and between”), which seems to refer to the fact that this little piece stands between the first phase of the authorship leading up to Johannes Climacus and the second phase ushered in by the soon-to-be-inaugurated pseudonym Anti-Climacus. The piece is also important to Kierkegaard for he wanted to signal to readers that although he was indeed a religiously serious author, he had not for that reason left appreciation for poetry, drama, and aesthetics behind.
The actress of the title is Joanna Luise Heiberg, wife of the literary doyen J. L. Heiberg. The crisis of the title is one any artist faces: Will they succumb to anxiety or succeed under pressure? A crisis is the one specifically for Mrs. Heiberg, who was facing the challenge of taking on the Shakespearean character of Juliet, almost twenty years after she first played the role. The piece interprets and appreciates her work, especially her ability to preserve self-possession in the face of the watching crowd. She does not crumble in the presence of anxiety. The piece moves on to take on art criticism and public appreciation in general, especially when they devolve into obsession over the private lives of artists, their age, or physical characteristics. Instead, Crisis puts forward a theory of the timeless quality of the essential ideas the actress conveys, regardless of her age or stage in life. The Heibergs appreciated the piece, and Joanna was especially full of praise for the way Søren, a non-actor, could put into words what she had many times felt but did not express.
The Lily in the Field and the Bird of the Air: Three Devotional Discourses
May 14, 1849
Søren Kierkegaard
To maintain the tradition of printing with the “left hand and with the right,” Kierkegaard arranged for these discourses to be published under his own name on the same day the second edition of Either/Or hit the shelves.
Kierkegaard loved nature and often reflected on the lessons one can learn from it. He often writes on the biblical treatments of nature and returns to the theme here with his discourses on a number of Jesus’ sayings taken from the Gospel of Matthew concerning the lily of the field, the impossibility of serving two masters, the birds of the air, and the grass of the field. There are three discourses. The first is about “silence” as a form of essential communication. Birds and flowers cannot speak, yet their silence is a teacher. The piece is an example of Kierkegaard’s mounting frustration with “the poetic” as the best way to communicate, and he pits the romantic notion of truth through poetry against the communication of the lilies endorsed by Jesus. “Because the human being is able to speak, the ability to be silent is an art” (10).
The second discourse concerns “obedience.” “Pay attention, then, to nature around you. In nature everything is obedience, unconditional obedience” (25). Birds and flowers are good examples of the peace that comes from only serving one master. But there is one crucial difference between nature and humans. Birds are naturally “obedient” because they do not have a will. People have to choose to obey God, a choice they usually do not make. In this, humans discover an aspect of God the birds and lilies will never know—that he is patient. God commands obedience (“thou shalt”) but also patiently takes humans by the hand and shows them the flowers of the field in order for us to learn what it is to live at peace with one, and only one, master.
The third discourse takes on “joy.” Birds trill ceaselessly and flowers ever bloom. Nature is filled with joy. This is not because nature is absent of pain and suffering. Kierkegaard is not sentimental enough to think the life of birds and beasts is anything but brutish and short (“The whole creation has been groaning,” Romans 8:22). Yet nonetheless, nature is joyful because it does what it is essentially supposed to do. Birds do this without willing it. Humans have to choose to be what they essentially are. “What is it to be joyful? It is truly to be present to oneself; but truly to be present to oneself is this today” (39). The joy of existence is the joy of being oneself, which is ultimately to be with and in God, for God is eternally “present to himself in being today” (39). This is the ever-present God of whom it is said, “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts” (Hebrews 3:15). “Oh what unconditional joy: his is the kingdom and the power and the glory—forever” (44).
Two Ethical-Religious Essays
May 19, 1849
H. H.
This manuscript was sent to the printers on May 5, 1849, Kierkegaard’s thirty-sixth birthday. It comprises two parts: “Does a Human Being Have the Right to Let Himself Be Put to Death for the Truth?” and “The Difference between a Genius and an Apostle.” Both essays were originally written in 1847. In his journals, Kierkegaard remarks this book does not belong to his “authorship” proper as it is instead a comment and point of view on the authorship as a whole. He struggled with himself whether the work should be published under his own name or even anonymously. In the end he attributed the work to H. H., who along with Anti-Climacus stands over and above Kierkegaard himself. The second essay is an excerpt of material later published posthumously in The Book on Adler and is discussed below. The first essay is drawn from a lot of ideas Søren had previously worked over in his journals. He tells us the draft of the manuscript was completed in eight hours. The essay is concerned with that most important of all Kierkegaardian categories: the martyr who is a true witness to the truth. Suppose a preacher were to eloquently expound on the glories of the history of martyrdom, and then suppose a naïve man in the pew comes forward and says he is ready to sign up? The preacher will be surprised. Become a martyr? Where in heaven did he get that idea? “Travel, find some diversion, take a laxative” (67). Confusion over the matter abounds in Christendom for preachers and audience alike. Kierkegaard tries to shed light on the situation by comparing the heroic death of Socrates with the crucifixion of Jesus. Unlike that merely human philosopher, Christ’s death was not martyrdom to an idea but atonement and redemption. Kierkegaard points out Jesus did not die for truth. He himself is the truth. Socrates died for his limited conception of the truth. Christ died for his enemies; his resurrection was the sign that love and truth (in other words: judgement) were united at that moment. The categorical difference between Jesus’ death and the death of anyone else at the hands of the crowd is that only Jesus’ death removed the crowd’s guilt. The man who willingly embraces martyrdom is bringing the crowd into guilt. Only God can remove guilt, and thus only God has the right to let himself die for the truth. Men, instead, should “lovingly to be concerned for the others, for those who, if one is to be put to death, must become guilty of putting one to death” (69).
Sickness unto Death: A Christian Psychological Exposition for Upbuilding and Awakening
July 30, 1849
Anti-Climacus
The sickness that is unto death is despair. Despair is to be differentiated from depression. Depression is sadness, melancholy, or, as modern science now tells us, unbalanced chemicals in the brain. One can be depressed without being in despair, and alternatively, one can live in full comfort but be despairing. Despair has to do with living a life without finding one’s true meaning, or, in Kierkegaardian language, without finding one’s authentic self. “But what is the self?” asks Sickness unto Death in a celebrated opening section. “The self is a relation that relates itself to itself or is the relation’s relating itself to itself in the relation; the self is not the relation but is the rel
ation’s relating itself to itself” (13). The convoluted formulation is, probably, partly a joke on similar sounding Hegelian terminology. But in the hands of Kierkegaard—or rather Anti-Climacus—the formulation also acts as a launch pad for a searching examination of human identity and why it sometimes, often, goes wrong. The self, it should be noted from the formulation, is more of a verb than a noun. It is an action. Despair is a phenomenon particularly related to the action of the self relating to itself, but in such a way that it is a mis-relation, hence a “sickness.” Despair (much like anxiety from the earlier book Concept of Anxiety to which this is a companion) presumes and requires a self, thus it represents a certain humanising and superiority of existence. Beasts do not despair because beasts are not capable of personhood. To despair is human, but it is not necessary for humanity. It is a mark of something potentially glorious gone wrong. “The possibility of this sickness is man’s superiority over the animal; to be aware of this sickness is the Christian’s superiority over the natural man; to be cured of this sickness is the Christian’s blessedness” (15). Despair is the action of not willing to be one’s authentic self. Enter God. God is the creator of all things and the ground of all existence. If one wants to find one’s authentic existence, then one has to be rightly oriented to God. The action of becoming a self happens always before God. Refusal to become a self also happens before God.
Hence, Anti-Climacus begins part two of his book with the heading “Despair Is Sin.” Some humans actively rebel against God or are offended at his revelation. They are not in a right relation with existence and thus will never become authentic. They are in despair. Other humans are fearful of the burden of being an individual. They hide in their mass herds and distractions. As a result they do not find authentic existence and are cut off from a right relation to the God who grounds all existence. They too live in despair before God, which is sin.
Sickness unto Death develops a category that will go on to become of great importance to Kierkegaard, namely the “possibility of offence.” “There is so much talk about being offended by Christianity because it is so dark and gloomy, offended because it is so rigorous, etc., but it would be best of all to explain for once that the real reason that men are offended by Christianity is that it is too high, because its goal is not man’s goal, because it wants to make man into something so extraordinary that he cannot grasp the thought” (83). Anti-Climacus goes to great lengths to counter the common idea (which he calls Socratic and pagan) that sin is ignorance. Christianly, sin is a matter of the will. “Therefore, interpreted Christianly, sin has its roots in willing, not in knowing, and this corruption of willing affects the individual’s consciousness” (95).
This is the first book by the pseudonym Anti-Climacus, a character devised by Kierkegaard to stand for an expression of Christianity Søren himself aspired to. He placed himself below Anti-Climacus but above Johannes Climacus. This book sets up major themes such as the becoming of a self as a religious act, the possibility of offence at Jesus, and a veiled “attack upon Christendom”: all will be put to great effect in Anti-Climacus’s next book, Practice in Christianity.
Three Discourses at the Communion on Fridays
November 13, 1849
Søren Kierkegaard
Altogether, Kierkegaard wrote thirteen “Friday Communion” discourses, three of which he delivered in person at the Church of Our Lady in Copenhagen. Seven Communion discourses were published as part of the Christian Discourses in 1848. One was included in Practice in Christianity in 1850. Three were issued as Three Discourses in 1849 and Two Discourses in 1851. A fourteenth piece on the woman who was a sinner in Luke 7 was originally intended as a Communion discourse but was instead published separately as an Upbuilding Discourse in 1850. Although the Communion discourses receive relatively little attention in comparison with his other works, Kierkegaard mentions in his journals how he likes to think the rest of his authorship was drawn together here, finding its rest at the altar of contemplation and communal worship.
The three 1849 discourses are “The High Priest” (Hebrews 4:15), “The Tax Collector” (Luke 18:13), and “The Woman Who Was a Sinner” (Luke 7:47). Here, Søren develops the theme that Christ as High Priest is the greatest sufferer who can understand one’s affliction more than any friend. In turn, Christ’s sacrificial love demands from the follower a new pattern of holiness. The Tax Collector is examined for his humility. Christendom has managed to turn acts of humility into a source of pride: one takes the lowest place with head up and eyes open, waiting to be ushered to the best seat. Instead, the man from Luke 18 stands afar from the crowd. With downcast eyes he waits, and it is thus he meets God. The woman who is a sinner is a favourite of Kierkegaard’s themes, and he returns to her often in his discourses. He highlights all the contrasts the story throws up: banquets as a place of confession, the Pharisee’s house as a place of grace, and the woman finding salvation by forgetting herself. In her love for Jesus she did not regard herself, and herein precisely lies the salvation of herself. “This woman was a sinner—yet she became and is a prototype. Blessed is the one who resembles her in loving much!” (142–43).
Practice in Christianity
September 27, 1850
Anti-Climacus (with S. Kierkegaard named as editor)
“If you cannot bear contemporaneity … then you are not essentially Christian” (65).
It is well known Jesus issued a lot of “hard sayings”: Turn the other cheek; Sell all you have and give to the poor; If anyone comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, even their own life, such a person cannot be my disciple; and so on. Anti-Climacus in Practice in Christianity alights on another saying, not often considered as a difficult command: “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28).
Christendom has forgotten this is a hard saying, because the citizens of Christendom have forgotten to live in the present with Jesus ever before them. The potential offensiveness of “come unto me” is nullified if we imagine the one speaking is obviously able to give desired rest to suffering souls; if the one speaking is obviously God. Christendom looks to the great number of years that have passed, people who call themselves Christian, or nations that are founded on Christian morality and concludes Jesus was God as a matter of common sense. The only reason someone does not believe in Jesus is because they do not know enough information about him and the history of the culture of his followers. Yet, Anti-Climacus is keen to remind us, this is not the person who the first disciples met. The “obviousness” of Jesus’ divinity is not apparent if one is standing directly before him. Thus, to have the faith of the disciples Jesus demanded cannot be to assent to the historical and intellectual data that comprises the Christian religion. Even the miracles recorded in the New Testament are not presented as proof of Jesus’ status. They are instead crisis points at which the people around him are brought up short before someone who looks and sounds and smells like a finite person and yet who talks and acts like an infinite one. “It is in the situation of contemporaneity with an individual human being, a human being like others—and he speaks about himself in such a manner! … he directly makes himself totally different from what it is to be a human being, makes himself the divine—he, an individual human being” (100).
The rest Jesus offers is authentic rest, which cannot be had apart from faith. Practice in Christianity suggests the opposite of faith is not doubt. It is offence. Only if an individual is presented with the potential offensiveness of Jesus the Christ, and wills not to turn away in disgust, can that person be said to have a right relation to the incarnation. This potential for offence can only be encountered in contemporaneity with Christ, by being aware of his call in the moment. The potential offensiveness comes in many forms, and Anti-Climacus charts them all. The first form of offence is the challenge Jesus poses to the institutions and morals of his day and ours. Anti-Climacus does not think this is a minor aspe
ct of Jesus’ life by any means, but it is not the essentially offensive thing about him as this form of offence is open to anyone who imitates Christ. The essential offence occurs in a “lofty” and a “lowly” form. The lofty offence is that this man before you is God. The lowly is that God is this man. In all cases, Jesus stands as a figure who represents the impossibility of direct communication. Even when he says direct statements to his divinity (“I and the father are one” [John 10:30]), or acts in divine ways (raising Lazarus from the dead), it is still this man who is doing and saying it, and thus the communication is rendered indirect. There is nothing Jesus does that automatically results in faith. The listener must choose how she or he will respond every time. The final section of Practice is a long reflection on John 12:32: “And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.” Its theme is crucifixion, suffering, and imitation. The cross is a sign of offence. It is also that to which Jesus calls his disciples. The ones who are not offended by the God-Man will obey and imitate him by denying themselves and taking up their own crosses. By doing so, Jesus’ disciples will be putting themselves in positions where they too will stand as signs of offence, acting as catalysts for others to be ushered into contemporaneity with Christ. “One becomes a Christian only in the situation of contemporaneity with Christ, and in the situation of contemporaneity everyone will also become aware” (102).