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Søren Kierkegaard, Truth As Subjectivity
Søren Kierkegaard, Truth As Subjectivity
Abstract: Søren Kierkegaard's life and works are briefly outlined with emphasis first on the
dialectic of stages on life's way and second on truth as subjectivity.
1. To a large extent, the works of Søren Kierkegaard (1813-1855) are inseparable from
his life. The central concern is his work is to expose what it means for an individual to
exist.
1. His works can be sorted into five main categories:
1. Imaginative Fiction
1. Either/Or
2. Repetition
3. Stages of Life's Way
2. Conceptual or Ideational Works
1. Concluding Unscientific Postscript
2. Philosophical Fragments
3. Concept of Dread
4. Sickness Unto Death
3. Devotional or Religious Works
1. Edifying Discourses
2. Purity of Heart
3. Prayers
4. Fear and Trembling
4. Polemical Works
1. Attack on Christendom
2. The Present Age
5. Personal Works
1. Journals
2. The Point of View for My Work as an Author
2. Personal issues in his life are incorporated into his philosophy.
1. His life was punctuated by a troubled devotion to his father.
2. A engagement to Regina Olsen was broken for unclear reasons: did it
involve his melancholy, was it a vocational decision (a martyrdom for
humanity), perhaps affected by his physical abnormality, or perhaps
even his lack of wealth?
3. Other significant events include his graduate studies in seminary and
his disputes with a tabloid periodical.
4. Kierkegaard's life was spent "in service of the Idea" although he
thought his works were "too polemical."
5. His motto was "Periissen nisi periiisem" — "I had perished, had I not
perished." Compare his motto to the idea that once one dies, there is
nothing left to live up to.
6. Other significant self-descriptors include, "Alas I was never young,"
"What I am to do or be, not what I am to know."
7. His resolution was to become a Christian writer in Christendom—a
resolution leading to the "question of questions": "How can I become a
Christian?" This question has two enemies according to Kierkegaard:
the Hegelian philosophy and the practices of the unreflective
churchgoer.
8. Kierkegaard wrote over the decade of the 1840's—the same period as
the Communist Manifesto of Marx and Engels, the positivism of
Auguste Comte, the utilitarianism of J.S. Mill, and Voyage of the
Beagle, by Charles Darwin
2. The Dialectic of the Stages (the stages on life's way, the levels of existence, or points
of view) is the process whereby the spirit is actualized in the form of individuality.
The transition from one stage to another is accomplished by an act of will, a choice, or
a "leap" of faith.
1. Aesthetic or First Stage is a dimension of existence as an overall life-style of
living by means of the immediate or sensual self-dispersal and impulsive
action.
1. The capacity of living in the moment without reflection is immediacy.
The lack of reflection in decisions is similar here to the naivety of
children. But this stage also includes speculative intellectualism.
1. Hence the aesthetic stage is the style of the hedonist as well as
the practice of the detached Hegelian rationalist who avoids life
through his love of reflection.
2. The presence of the enjoyment of desires exemplifies the lack
of commitment to ideals.
3. To avoid boredom, the rotation method of activities must be
employed. This stage implies the right relation of forgetfulness
and remembrance while drifting through arbitrary actions.
2. In the aesthetic stage the individual is essentially uncommitted,
detached, and an on-looker. The qualities of this stage include
sensualism, aestheticism, and speculativism.
3. Examples of the aesthetic stage include ...
1. Kierkegaard's anonymous dilettante "A" who lives for pleasure
but realizes later that no life can be lived on impulse alone.
2. The musical analogue of this state is Mozart's "Don Juan" with
the music's "passion for immediacy."
3. Other examples include the Hegelian rationalist, the hedonist,
Jung's sensation type and introverted thinking type, as well as
the child in the pleasure and pain of the moment.
4. Difficulties with the aesthetic stage include the internal contradiction
between, first, impulse and planning and, second, spontaneity and
planning for future possibilities.
1. Although the aesthetic stage is like playing a game
successfully, one cannot derive existence out of that game. The
thinker seeks values in what he knows, and the hedonist seeks
value in what is sensed. Kierkegaard's neurosis of "what I am to
do or be" arises.
2. Boredom results—self-awareness is lacking in the presence of
pure immediacy. The absence of the mediation of self-
reflection results in boredom not only with the activity but also
boredom with self.
3. Finally, despair results as the recognition of complete self-
dispersal—what Kierkegaard terms "the death instinct," "the
sickness unto death," or the unwillingness to be oneself.
2. Ethical or Second Stage arises as one accepts ethical principles and the
consequent obligations by means of reason and so achieves a sense of
authenticity, duty, and commitment.
1. This stage arises from the "Either/Or" of a forced choice between
practical alternatives (I.e., not the Hegelian synthesis of a "Both/And."
The choice involves a necessary loss.
2. After the first stage, a sense of "infinite resignation" leads to a sense of
"eternal validity" achievable by resolute decision and commitment to
duty.
3. Consider the sentiment in Alfred Lord "Tennyson's "Charge of the
Light Brigade":