Sickness Unto Death International Kierkegaard Commentary

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library <>/ Congress C

ataloging-in-Publication Data

The Sickness unto death. (International K

ierkegaard comm

entary; 19) Includes index. 1. K

ierkegaard, Seren, 1813-1855. Sygdomm

en til daden. 2. Sin. 3. D

espair. I. Perkins, Robert L., 1930-

. II. Series. B4376.I58

vol. 19 1984

198'.9 s 87-5614

[BT715] [248]

ISBN 0-86554-271-6 (alk. paper)

Contents

Acknowledgments

vii Sigla

ix Introduction

1 I. The D

efinition of the Self and the Structure of K

ierkegaard's Work

JohnD. G

lenn, Jr 5

II. Spirit and the Idea of the Self as a Reflexive Relation A

lastair Hannay

23 III. K

ierkegaard's Psychology and Unconscious D

espair M

erold Westphal

!. 39

IV. Kierkegaard's D

ouble Dialectic

of Despair and Sin

James L. M

arsh 67

V. The Sickness unto Death:

Critique of the M

odern Age Louis D

upre 85

VI. The Social Dim

ension of Despair

John W. Elrod

107 VII. O

n "Feminine" and "M

asculine" Forms of D

espair Sylvial. W

alsh 121

VIII. The Gram

mar of Sin and the C

onceptual Unity

of The Sickness unto Death

RobertC

. Roberts

135

Sigla

CI, The Concept of Irony. Trans. Lee C

apel. New

York: H

arper &

Row, 1966; Bloom

ington: Indiana University Press, 1968. (O

n Begrebet Ironi, by S. K

ierkegaard, 1841.) EO

Either/Or. V

olume 1. Trans. D

avid F. Swenson and Lillian

Marvin Sw

enson. Volum

e 2. Trans. Walter Low

rie. Second ed. rev. H

oward A

. Johnson. Princeton: Princeton Univer-

sity Press, 1971. (Enten-Eller, 1-2, ed. Victor Erem

ita, 1843.) ED

Edifying Discourses, 1-4. Trans. D

avid F. Swenson and Lillian

Marvin Sw

enson. Minneapolis: A

ugsburg Publishing House,

1943-1946. (Opbyggelige Taler, by S. K

ierkegaard, 1843,1844.) FT Fear and Trem

bling. Trans. How

ard V. and Edna H

. Hong.

Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983. (Frygt og Bseven,

by Johannes De Silentio, 1843.)

R Repetition. Trans. How

ard V. and Edna H

. Hong. Princeton:

Princeton University Press, 1983. (G

jentagelsen, by Constan-

ts Constantius, 1843.)

PF Philosophical Fragments and Johannes Clim

acus. Trans. How

ard V

. and Edna H. H

ong. Princeton: Princeton University Press,

1985. (Philosophiske Smuler, by Johannes C

limacus, ed. S.

Kierkegaard, 1844; "Johannes C

limacus eller D

e omnibus dub-

itandum est," w

ritten 1842-1843, unpubl., Papirer IV B

1.) CA

The Concept of Anxiety. Trans. Reidar Thom

te and Albert B.

Anderson. Princeton: Princeton U

niversity Press, 1980. (Be-grebet Angest, by V

igilius Haufniensis, ed. S. K

ierkegaard, 1844.)

International Kierkegaard C

omm

entary

TCS

Three Discourse:- on lin,i^in,?d O

ccasions [Thoughts on Crucial Sit-

uations in Hunuiii I itrl

I tans. David F. Sw

enson, ed. Lillian M

arvin SVW

MM

HI

Minneapolis: A

ugsburg Publishing House,

1941. (he lulf

. rdt.viiktc Leiligheder, by S. Kierkegaard, 1845.)

SLW

S/,-.';.,'<'• "'•' ' I'*' • Way. Trans. W

alter Low

rie. Princeton: Prince-ton I .'nu riM

Iv I'rcss, 1940. (Stadierpaa Livets Vej, ed. Hilarius

tW.hn.ler,

I.S45.)

CU

P i .»(, lulling U

nscientific Postscript. Trans. D

avid F. Swenson

.mil W

alter Low

rie. Princeton: Princeton University Press for

Am

erican-Scandinavian Foundation, 1941. (Afsluttende uvi-

demkabelig Efterskrift, by Joahannes C

limacus, ed. S. K

ierke-gaard, 1846.)

TA

Two Ages: The Age of Revolution and the Present Age. A Literary

Review. T

rans. How

ard V. H

ong and Edna H

. Hong, Prince-

ton: Princeton University Press, 1978. (En literair Anm

eldelse. To Tidsaldre, by S. K

ierkegaard, 1846.)

OA

R

On Authority and Revelation, The Book on Adler. T

rans. Walter

Low

rie. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1955. (Bogen

om Adler, w

ritten 1846-1847, unpubl., Papirer VII 2 B

235; VIII 2

B 1-27.)

PH

Edifying Discourses in Various Spirits. (O

pbyggelige Taler i for-skjellig Aand, by S. K

ierkegaard, 1847.) Part One, Purity of H

eart ["En Leiligheds-Tale"]. Second ed. T

rans. Douglas Steere. N

ew

York: H

arper, 1948.

GS Part T

hree and Part Tw

o: The Gospel of Suffering and The Lilies

of the Field ["Lidelsernes Evangelium" and "Lilierne paa M

arken og H

imlens Fugle"]. T

rans. David F. Sw

enson and Lillian Mar-

vin Swenson. M

inneapolis: Augsburg Publishing H

ouse, 1948.

WL

Works of Love. T

rans. How

ard V. H

ong and Edna H

. Hong,

New

York: H

arper & R

ow, 1962. (K

jerlighedens Gjerninger, by

S. Kierkegaard, 1847.)

C

The Crisis [and a C

risis] in the Life of an Actress. Trans. Stephen

Crites. N

ew Y

ork: Harper &

Row

, 1967. (Krisen og en K

rise i en Skuespillerindes Liv, by Inter et Inter. Fsedrelandet, 188-91, 24-27 July 1848.)

The Sickness unto D

eath xi

CD

C

hristian Discourses, including 77K Lilies of the Field and the Birds

of the Air and Three Discourses at the C

omm

union on Fridays. T

rans. Walter L

owrie. L

ondon and New

York: O

xford Uni-

versity Press, 1940. (Christelige Taler, by S. K

ierkegaard, 1848; Lilien paa M

arken og Fuglen under Him

len, by S. Kierkegaard,

1849; Tre Taler ved Altergangen om Fredagen, by S. K

ierkegaard, 1849.)

SUD

The Sickness unto D

eath. Trans. H

oward V

. Hong and E

dna H.

Hong, Princeton: Princeton U

niversity Press, 1980. (Sygdom-

men til D

oden, by Anti-C

limacus, ed. S. K

ierkegaard, 1849.

TC

Training in Christianity, including "T

he Wom

an Who W

as a Sinner." T

rans. Walter L

owrie. L

ondon and New

York: O

x-ford U

niversity Press, 1941; rpt.: Princeton: Princeton Uni-

versity Press, 1944. (Indovelse i Christendom

, by Anti-C

limacus,

ed. S. Kierkegaard, 1850; En opbyggelig Tale, by S. K

ierke-gaard, 1850.)

AN

Arm

ed Neutrality and An O

pen Letter. Trans. H

oward V

. Hong

and Edna H

. Hong. B

loomington and L

ondon: Indiana Uni-

versity Press, 1968. (den bevxbnede Neutralitet, w

ritten 1848-1849, publ. 1965; Foranledigt ved en Yttring afD

r. Rudelbach mig

betrseffende, Fxdrelandet, no. 26, 31 January 1851.)

PV

The Point of View for M

y Work as an Author, including the ap-

pendix " The Single Individual/ T

wo 'N

otes' Concerning M

y W

ork as an Author," and O

n My W

ork as an Author. T

rans. W

alter Low

rie. London and N

ew Y

ork: Oxford U

niversity Press, 1939. (Synspunktet

for min Forfatter-Virksom

hed, by S.

Kierkegaard, posthum

ously published 1859. Om

min Forfat-

ter-Virksomhed, by S. K

ierkegaard, 1851.)

FSE For Self-Examination.

Trans. H

oward v. H

ong and Edna H

. H

ong. Minneapolis: A

ugsburg Publishing House, 1940. (Til

Selvprovelse, by S. Kierkegaard, 1851.)

JFY Judge for Yourselves! including For Self-Exam

ination, Two D

is-courses at the C

omm

union on Fridays (trans. David Sw

enson) and The U

nchangeableness of God (trans. W

alter Low

rie). Princeton: Princeton U

niversity Press, 1944. (Dom

mer Selv! by S. K

ier-kegaard, 1852; to Taler ved Altergangen om

Fredagen, by S. Kier-

kegaard, 1851; Guds U

foranderlighed, by S. Kierkegaard, 1855.)

xii International K

ierkegaard Com

mentary

KA

UC K

ierkegaard's Attack upon "Christendom," 1854-1855. Trans.

Walter Low

rie. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1944.

(Bladartikler I-XX

I, by S. Kierkegaard, Feedrelandet, 1854-1855;

Dette skal siges; saa vsere det da sagt, by S. K

ierkegaard, 1855; 0ieblikket, by S. K

ierkegaard, 1-9, 1855; 10, 1905; Hvad Chris-

tus domm

er om officiel Christendom

, by S. Kierkegaard, 1855.)

JSK The Journals of Seren K

ierkegaard. Trans. Alexander D

ru. Lon-don and N

ew Y

ork: Oxford U

niversity Press, 1938. (From S0-

ren Kierkegaards Papirer, I-X

P in 18 volumes, 1909-1936.

LY The Last Years. Trans. R

onald C. Smith. N

ew Y

ork: Harper &

Row

, 1965. (From Papirer X

P-XP, 1936-1948.)

JP Seren Kierkegaard's Journals and Papers. Trans. H

oward V

. Hong

and Edna H. H

ong, assisted by Gregor M

alantschuk. Bloom-

ington and London: Indiana University Press (1) 1967; (2)

1970; (3-4) 1975; (5-7) 1978. (From Papirer I-X

P and XII-X

III, 2d ed., and Breve og Akstykker vedrerende Seren K

ierkegaard, ed. N

iels Thulstrup, 1-2, 1953-1954.)

LD Letters and D

ocuments. Trans. H

endrik Rosenm

eier. Prince-ton: Princeton U

niversity Press, 1978. CO

R The Corsair Affair. Trans. H

oward V

. Hong and Edna H

. Hong.

Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982.

Introduction

This volume of essays on K

ierkegaard's The Sickness unto Death

addresses new questions about the significance of K

ierkegaard's w

ork and in so doing illustrates the breadth of his appeal to a younger generation of scholars w

ho have fresh insights and inter-ests. Y

et to say that is not to say there is a complete break, a dis-

continuity, between the earlier and the m

ore recent research. There is both continuity and discontinuity betw

een this collection of es-says and the older scholarship.

The greatest continuity between the older research and the w

ork in this volum

e is the regard for facts, for accuracy of interpretation. The w

orks of several (Hirsch and G

eismar am

ong others), but not nearly all, of the earlier scholars are paradigm

s of scholarly achievem

ent. The contributors to this volum

e have, like the best of fheir predecessors, attended to the detail of the text and to the w

ay that Kierkegaard develops his argum

ents. The m

ost profound difference between the older research and

research in this volume is a new

set of questions and concerns. This becom

es most obvious w

hen one notes the assumption shared by

most, if not all, of the contributors to this volum

e that Kierke-

gaard's thought has great importance for social philosophy and

even constitutes a major critique of m

odernity. This difference calls into question the stereotype of K

ierke-gaard as having no social and political thought. H

is individualism

has frequently been interpreted quite narrowly and apolitically. A

t best he has been interpreted as not having thought about the po-litical and social issues of his tim

e. At w

orst his thought has been interpreted as logically excluding the possibility of his thinking about these political and social issues. These tw

o views, taken to-

gether, have been the major variations of the com

mon interpreta-

2 International K

ierkegaard Com

mentary

tion till quite recently. So pervasive was this stereotype that it has

even been claimed, for instance, that he had no theology of the

church—in spite of the collection w

e conveniently call The Attack on Christendom

. That this collection does not contain a theology of the church in any strict or system

atic sense is obvious even to the casual reader. Still, im

plied in and underlying the polemic against

Christendom

is a well-considered understanding of the church and

society. While m

ost would agree, som

e perhaps grudgingly, with

this assertion, the objection has been raised against some of K

ier-kegaard's other w

ritings that he had no concern for the wider is-

sues facing modern society.

Yet, in all fairness to those w

ho have held to the better or the w

orse form of the usual interpretation, it m

ust be emphasized that

Kierkegaard never thought that the political and social issues of the

time reflected the fundam

ental ills of humankind. H

e was, to be

sure, neither a Hobbes, a Locke nor a M

arx. On the other hand,

the forms of life he criticized w

ere those forms of life he knew

. The

criticism of aestheticism

, speculation, Christendom

, the ethical optim

ism of Judge W

illiam, and so forth, all testify to the concern

he had for the social and political forms of his tim

e. Few

of his books could be construed to support the usual in-terpretation better than The Sickness unto D

eath. One can im

agine how

someone presenting the usual interpretation w

ould go on: The

rhetoric of the title, The Sickness unto Death, suggests that K

ierke-gaard w

as concerned with the individual. T

he title, again, sug-gests the hortatory or the literary, not sober social or political analysis. T

he subtitle, A Christian Psychological Exposition for Up-

building and Awakening, indicates the unpolitical and unsocial na-ture of the book. It is for upbuilding and aw

akening, that is, the book is religious and probably "preachy." It is, furtherm

ore, "psy-chological," again indicating a concern for the individual. Finally the book is authored by a pseudonym

, a favorite literary device of the G

erman rom

antics. The book is scarcely literature, but it is m

ore em

phatically neither politics nor sociology. The author is suggest-

ing so much in the title and subtitle that his intentions are not clear.

Yet one thing is clear: K

ierkegaard is not presenting substantial re-flections on, or interpretations of, m

odern society.

The Sickness unto Death

3

Several contributors to this volume have read the sam

e texts and have found K

ierkegaard to have a fundamental understanding of

society in both a secular and a Christian sense. H

e rejects the sec-ular, and the rejection is a considered one as those w

ho comm

ent on this issue in this volum

e show. M

ore remarkably, his C

hristian critique of m

odernity is not a conservative critique. Kierkegaard's

critique of modernity does not look backw

ard to a lost golden age. N

either is his critique a Marxist or a socialist one that looks forw

ard to a golden age yet to com

e if certain changes are made. W

hat Kier-

kegaard says against modernity cannot be used by any class inter-

est to batter another class. Rather, his critique, based as it is upon

a developing understanding of the historical and social conditions of his age, is at the sam

e time transcendental, theocentric, apoca-

lyptic, and prophetic. A

nother issue that emerges betw

een the older and newer

scholarship is the meticulous detail w

ith which the crucial text

(SUD

, 13-14) regarding the constitution of the self is analyzed. There are certain texts that sim

ply will not let go of a person, and

this is one of them. O

nly since the mid-sixties has the text received

the detailed analysis it deserves, or rather, provokes. The relation of K

ierkegaard's views to som

e other philosophic concepts of the self, the bearing of this concept on the w

ider issues of the book (edification and aw

akening), and the way this concept of

the self ties his authorship together, are examined in detail in this

volume. Further, the issue of the unity of the tw

o parts of the work

is clarified if proper attention is given to the definition of the self. K

ierkegaard's view of the self has been one of his m

ost fruitful ideas in the areas of psychotherapy and counseling, The Sickness unto D

eath frequently being read. The w

ealth of comm

ent on Kier-

kegaard by practitioners and scholars in these areas is pertinent and perceptive. B

ut as could be expected, philosophers have not been entirely appreciative of these efforts, in spite of the fact that K

ier-kegaard cast the m

ajor analogy of the book as sickness and heal-ing. Psychotherapists usually m

iss the philosophic import of the

book, but, on the other hand, they do find a dimension that phi-

losophers may not properly appreciate. T

he lack of mutual en-

lightenment betw

een these two fields speaks m

ore of the arridity of our artificial com

partmentalization of the m

atters of the spirit

4 International K

ierkegaard Comm

entary

than it does to any inherent difficulty or any conceptual division in The Sickness unto D

eath itself. W

ith rare exception, theologians have not exploited the mas-

sive contributions Kierkegaard m

akes to the doctrine of sin and the issue of the relation of revelation and reason (am

ong many other

topics) in The Sickness unto Death. R

emarkably, K

ierkegaard is more

thought about in academic philosophy than in academ

ic theology. Y

et in the philosophic comm

unity he is usually treated as if his cre-dentials left som

ething to be desired, and for this very reason he should be received w

ith more enthusiasm

by the theologians: K

ierkegaard is confessedly a radical Christian thinker and the ob-

ject of his authorship is upbuilding and awakening to the C

hris-tian sense of beings. (O

f course, philosophers have other objections to his w

ork: dislike of Kierkegaard's literary devices, objections to

specific arguments, and so forth.)

Much of the earlier w

riting on Kierkegaard w

as concerned with

his relation to the philosophy of existence. "Existentialism" is prob-

ably the most abused philosophic w

ord in the twentieth century. The

works of K

ierkegaard were first popularized and then neglected dur-

ing the rise and the gradual demise of that m

ovement, w

hatever it " w

as. The relation of Kierkegaard to existential philosophy is dis-

cussed in this book, but, whereas that w

as a major concern in m

any books w

ritten in the fifties, this concern is only one of several now.

Still, there is a sense in which the relation of K

ierkegaard to existen-tialism

needs to be investigated. Previous scholarship did not, as a rule, penetrate to close reading of the texts in a com

parative and an-alytical m

anner. Further, the historical studies were, to a large ex-

tent, superficial, and frequently broad generalizations were developed

on the basis of a minim

um of detail.

The concern of existentialism and phenom

enology with the

lived-world has carried over into the issues raised in contem

porary philosophy such as sexual identity. N

ew interests such as this one

measure K

ierkegaard, and Kierkegaard is m

easured by them.

Much rem

ains to be done in all the areas indicated above, but this collection m

arks an advance in every area addressed. We can

do better than our predecessors because of what w

e learned frorri them

. Our successors w

ill do likewise. They w

ill honor us by sur-passing us.

I

The Definition

of the Self and the Structure

of Kierkegaard's W

ork John D

. Glenn, Jr.

"A human being is spirit. B

ut what is spirit? Spirit is the self.

But what is the self?" (SU

D, 13) So begins the m

ain body of The Sickness unto D

eath. Kierkegaard

1 proceeds to define three dimen-

sions of human selfhood. The self is, he says: (a) a synthesis of polar

opposites—"of the infinite and the finite, of the tem

poral and the eternal, of freedom

and necessity;" (b) self-relating—"a relation that

relates itself to itself;" and (c) ultimately dependent on G

od—"a de-

rived, established relation, a relation that. . .in relating itself to itself relates itself to another" (SU

D, 13-14).

This definition is fundamental for the concrete exploration of

selfhood throughout the whole w

ork. The "sickness unto death"—

which K

ierkegaard identifies as despair, and also later as sin—is a

malady affecting all the dim

ensions of the self. It is a failure to will

to be the self one truly is—in other w

ords, a deficient self-rela-tion—

which involves also an im

balance among the com

ponents of the self as synthesis and a deficient G

od-relation. The health of the

'As it is generally recognized that K

ierkegaard "stands behind" the ideas ex-pressed in The Sickness unto D

eath in a sense that is not true of all the pseudony-m

ous writings, I w

ill dispense with references to "A

nti-Clim

acus."

6 International K

ierkegaard Com

mentary

self—w

hich he eventually identifies as faith—is an affirm

ation by the self of itself (that is, a positive self-relation), in w

hich the com-

ponents of the self as synthesis are in right relation, and the self is properly related to its divine foundation. It is a state in w

hich "in relating itself to itself and in w

illing to be itself, the self rests trans-parently in the pow

er that established it" (SUD

, 14). The definition of the self is, how

ever, not only crucial for un-derstanding the other m

ain concepts of The Sickness unto Death; it

is also the key to the work's concrete structure. A

fter some general

observations about the nature and universality of despair, Kier-

kegaard proceeds to dissect various forms of despair (a) insofar as

they involve misrelation am

ong the components of the self as syn-

thesis, and (b) insofar as they are characterized by varying degrees of self-consciousness and self-assertion; finally, he analyzes (c) de-spair as sin. These three sections of The Sickness unto D

eath corre-spond to the three dim

ensions of selfhood, so that the definition of the self provides the structure of the rest of the w

ork, while the

latter's details make concrete the m

eaning of the definition. I also hope to show

that a similar relation holds betw

een these dimen-

sions and the three "stages" of existence—the aesthetic, the ethi-

cal, and th

e religious—depicted

in Kierkegaard's

early pseudonym

ous works. T

his essay will explore these correspon-

dences in order to clarify Kierkegaard's conception of the self and

to show how

his definition provides a key for understanding both The Sickness unto D

eath and his broader work. I w

ill focus in turn on the three dim

ensions of the definition and on the related forms of

despair and "stages" of existence.

(A) The Self as Synthesis: The Psychological-Aesthetic D

imension of Selfhood

"A hum

an being is a synthesis of the infinite and the finite, of the tem

poral and the eternal, of freedom and necessity, in short a

synthesis" (SUD

, 13). Hum

an existence is a kind of paradox. A hu-

man being is neither god nor beast—

yet is somehow

like both. Is K

ierkegaard simply reasserting the traditional dualistic con-

ception of the human being as a com

posite of imm

ortal soul and m

ortal body? He does som

etimes refer (such as in SU

D, 43) to the

"psychical-physical synthesis." But his m

eaning emerges m

ore


7

clearly in the first major subdivision of his account of the form

s of despair, w

hich is entitled "Despair C

onsidered without R

egard to its B

eing Conscious or N

ot, Consequently O

nly with R

egard to the C

onstituents of the Synthesis" (SUD

, 29). That is, despair is here analyzed (so to speak) psychologically, as a m

ere state of the self, in abstraction from

the self-relation which m

akes the self responsible for it as an act and qualifies it ethically; it is also in general treated w

ithout focus on the God-relation w

hich qualifies it theologically and m

arks it as sin. This section thus corresponds precisely to the first dim

ension of the definition of the self, and its details clarify the m

eaning of the self as synthesis. The specific form

s of despair described in this section are char-acterized by an overstress on one aspect of the self as synthesis, w

ith a corresponding understress on (or "lack of") its polar op-posite. "Infinitude's despair" is a state in w

hich the self becomes

lost in vaporous sentimentality, in sheer proliferation of objective

knowledge, or in fantastic projects—

when by m

eans of the "infin-itizing" capacity of im

agination the self is "volatilized" (SUD

, 31) in its feeling, know

ledge, or will. 2 "Finitude's despair," in con-

trast, is characterized by worldliness, conform

ism, and a m

erely prudential attitude tow

ard life: Surrounded by hordes of m

en, absorbed in all sorts of secular mat-

ters, more and m

ore shrewd about the w

ays of the world—

such a person . . . finds it too hazardous to be him

self and far easier and safer to be like the others, to becom

e a copy, a number, a m

ass man.

(SUD

, 33-34)

Kierkegaard describes w

hat the right relation between the in-

finitude and finitude of the self would be in term

s that are remi-

niscent of the "double-movem

ent" of faith in Fear and Trembling,

though less paradoxical: To becom

e oneself is to become concrete. But to becom

e concrete is neither to becom

e finite nor to become infinite, for that w

hich is to becom

e concrete is indeed a synthesis. Consequently, the pro-

gress of the becoming m

ust be an infinite moving aw

ay from itself

in the infinitizing of the self, and an infinite coming back to itself

in the finitizing process. (SUD

, 30)

2See SUD, 30-33.

8 International K

ierkegaard Com

mentary

Where K

ierkegaard's initial definition posed freedom and ne-

cessity as polar opposites, in his discussion of the forms of despair

"possibility" replaces "freedom;" freedom

seems not so m

uch to be a single pole as to pertain to the synthesis of possibility and ne-cessity. H

e describes "possibility's despair" primarily as a fasci-

nation with possibility purely as possibility; here the self is aw

ash in a sea of possibilities, but does not proceed to actualize any of them

. "What is m

issing is essentially the power to obey, to subm

it to the necessity in one's life, to w

hat may be called one's lim

ita-tions" (SU

D, 36). "N

ecessity's despair," on the other hand, in-volves a lack of possibility, w

hich means "either that everything

has become necessary for a person or that everything has becom

e trivial" (SU

D, 40)—

that is, either a kind of fatalism or a m

entality w

hich reckons life within the narrow

compass of probability.

These analyses obviously reflect the definition of the self as syn-thesis—

and help to clarify it. They suggest, first, that the "infini-tude" of the self does not prim

arily mean the possession of an

imm

ortal soul, but the capacity to transcend one's own finite situa-

tion, either in such a way that this finite situation is som

ehow ne-

glected or that an expanded, ideal form of the self is envisioned and

movem

ent toward its actualization is m

ade possible. Moreover, they

indicate that the "finitude" of the self does not mean its bodily char-

acter per se, but its involvement in actual situations, particularly as this

entails a tendency to be absorbed in restrictive social roles—w

hat H

eidegger and Sartre identify as the "one." In its specific elabora-tion, then, K

ierkegaard's definition of the self as synthesis of infini-tude and finitude is not so close to traditional soul-body dualism

as it is to H

eidegger's account of Being-in-the-world as involving both

"facticity" and "existentiality" or to Sartre's conception of Being-for-itself as involving "facticity" and "transcendence." 3

The "necessity" of the self, similarly, does not here seem

to m

ean its subjection to either logical or causal necessity, but refers rather to its unsurpassable lim

itations. To that extent it might be

3See Martin H

eidegger, Being and Time, trans. John M

acQuarrie and Edw

ard Robinson (N

ew Y

ork: Harper &

Row

, 1962) 235-36; Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, trans. H

azel E. Barnes (New

York: Philosophical Library, 1956) 56.

Need it be said that both thinkers are greatly indebted to K

ierkegaard?


9

compared to H

eidegger's account of death as "not to be out-stripped," 4 though K

ierkegaard's later reference to the "thorn in the flesh" (SU

D, 77-78) and other features of his discussion indi-

cate that he primarily intends specific lim

itations of a self's actual situation. H

is references to hope, fear, and anxiety as characteris-tic attitudes tow

ard possibility suggest that he conceives the self to be defined both by active possibility—

what it can do—

and passive possibility—

what can happen to (or be done for) it. Later "existen-

tialist" thinkers—including the early H

eidegger and Sartre—have

tended to overemphasize the form

er aspect of selfhood; Kierke-

gaard's conception of the self is in this respect more balanced.

Kierkegaard does not here deal w

ith the self as synthesis of "the tem

poral and the eternal," but other works 5 help to clarify his in-

tent. As w

ith his accounts of the other "syntheses," Kierkegaard

is asserting that human selfhood involves certain inherent ten-

sions—in this case, a tension betw

een the self's capacity for unity through tim

e and the tendency of its existence to be dispersed into different m

oments. In this respect, the self's task is to give its ex-

istence a unifying meaning, a m

eaning that is "eternal" in the sense of transcending tem

poral dispersion, without becom

ing merely

abstract or stultifying. The correspondence betw

een aesthetic existence and the first di-m

ension of selfhood is perhaps clearest in the "Diapsalm

ata" in Vol-

ume O

ne of Either I Or. These lyrical and aphoristic paragraphs best

epitomize the reflective aesthetic existence of "A

," the pseudony-m

ous author of that volume, and provide a prelude to all the m

ajor them

es that are developed more fully later in the volum

e, while also

suggesting points that are not elsewhere elaborated. Because reflec-

tive aestheticism contains w

ithin itself, as subordinate "mom

ents," the characteristics of low

er types of aesthetic existence, these para-graphs in a sense represent the w

hole aesthetic "stage." W

hat the "Diapsalm

ata" reveal is an individual lacking in any positive se//-relation—

he is comm

itted above all to non-comm

itment,

and so his self-relation does not take the form of explicit w

ill, but rather

4Martin H

eidegger, Being and Time, 308.

5See below for brief discussions of this them

e as it pertains to the two volum

es of Either I O

r.

10 International K

ierkegaard Com

mentary

only of (often ironic) self-observation—and in any clarified G

od-rela-tion. H

is existence is thus dominated by the tensions betw

een the com

ponents of the self as synthesis. H

e is, for example, acutely aw

are of, and laughs bitterly at, the distance betw

een the infinite and the finite, the ideal and the actual: I saw

that the meaning of life w

as to secure a livelihood, . . . that love's rich dream

was m

arriage with an heiress;. . . that piety con-

sisted in going to comm

union once a year. This I saw, and I

laughed. (EO 1:33)

But he lacks a unifying will to resolve this tension in his ow

n ex-istence, and thus vacillates betw

een the infinitude and the finitude of his nature:

[My] desires concern som

etimes the m

ost trivial things, sometim

es the m

ost exalted, but they are equally imbued w

ith the soul's mo-

mentary passion. At this m

oment I w

ish a bowl of buckw

heat por-ridge. ... I w

ould give more than m

y birthright for it! (EO 1:26)

Similarly, "A

" fails to achieve an appropriate relation between

the possibility and necessity of his existence. He expresses a strong

preference for possibility over actuality: "Pleasure disappoints, possibility never. A

nd what w

ine is so sparkling, what so fragrant,

what so intoxicating, as possibility!" (EO

1:40) He attem

pts, in fact, to transform

his life, through the skillful exercise of mem

ory and im

agination, from the status of actuality into that of art—

that is, into the dim

ension of possibility. Yet his lack of com

mitm

ent, his refusal to w

ill to transform his existence in actuality, leaves him

ul-tim

ately prey to necessity (envisioned as fate): "And so I am

not the m

aster of my life, I am

only one thread among m

any. . . ."(EO

1:30) Thus he is subject, in turn, to "possibility's despair" and "ne-cessity's despair."

Finally, "A" fails to unify the eternal and the tem

poral aspects of his self-synthesis. H

e tries to "live constantly aeterno modo" by

keeping free of all temporal com

mitm

ents ("the true eternity does not lie behind either/or, but before it" [EO

1:38]), and goes so far as to call the gods "m

ost honorable contemporaries"! (EO

1:42) Yet

he is aware of the failure of this attem

pt, and complains at its re-

sult, which is that his existence lacks tem

poral cohesion:


11

My life is absolutely m

eaningless. When I consider the differ-

ent periods into which it falls, it seem

s like the word Schnur in the

dictionary, which m

eans in the first place a string, in the second, a daughter-in-law

. The only thing lacking is that the word Schnur

should mean in the third place a cam

el, in the fourth, a dust-brush. (EO

1:35)

The existence of the reflective aesthete is, then, lived in terms

of the first dimension of the definition of the self. 6 Failing to exer-

cise a positive self-relation, to will to shape and unify his ow

n ac-tuality, and lacking a clarified G

od-relation, the self is here buffeted betw

een the infinitude and finitude, the possibility and necessity, the eternity and tem

porality of its own nature.

(B) The Self as Self-Relating: The Ethical D

imension of Selfhood

"In the relation between tw

o, the relation is the third as a neg-ative unity. ... If, how

ever, the relation relates itself to itself, this relation is the positive third, and this is the self" (SU

D, 13). The

self is not a simple sum

of the factors that compose its synthesis;

its direction is not to be determined by m

ere analysis of the "vec-tors" of its com

ponent aspects. Everything about the self is subject to an independent variable—

namely, the stance w

hich the self takes tow

ard it. To say that the self is self-relating is to attribute to it the capac-

ity for such reflexive activities as self-love, self-hate, self-judg-m

ent, self-direction—and, above all, of faith or despair, of w

illing to be or not w

illing to be itself. It should be emphasized that w

hile self-consciousness is certainly essential to selfhood as self-rela-tion, K

ierkegaard ultimately stresses here the volitional rather than

the cognitive element of the self-relation. A

gain the issue is, Does

the self will or not w

ill to be itself? This is also the chief issue in the second m

ajor subdivision of K

ierkegaard's analysis of the forms of despair, w

hich is entitled "D

espair as Defined by C

onsciousness" (SUD

, 42). Here he first

discusses states that are really lower stages of aesthetic existence,

where the reason that the self does not w

ill itself to be itself is that

This is also true of m

ore "imm

ediate" aesthetic individuals, except that their rxistence lacks A

's self-awareness and dialectical com

plexity.

12 International K

ierkegaard Com

mentary

it is unaware of being a self in any but the m

ost superficial sense. H

e notes, however, that "it is alm

ost a dialectical issue whether it

is justifiable to call such a state despair" (SUD

, 42), and his chief focus is on despair's higher form

s. These fall into tw

o main classes. The first is term

ed "despair in w

eakness" (SUD

, 49). Here the self is not w

illing to be itself be-cause of som

e factor in its existence—som

ething present, or past, or even a m

ere possibility—w

hich it finds unacceptable. The sec-ond is described as "in despair to w

ill to be oneself: defiance" (SUD

, 67). H

ere the self in a sense wills to be itself, but is yet in despair

because it does not will to be the self that it truly is. It m

ay in Pro-m

ethean fashion will to be its ow

n lord and creator, but refuse to accept as itself its concrete, finite being, or to acknow

ledge any au-thority over itself w

hich can give seriousness to the task of being it-self. (Every w

ord of Kierkegaard's analysis here can be read as a

prophetic critique of the atheistic existentialism of thinkers such as

Nietzsche and Sartre). O

r, finally, it may recognize that it cannot

abstract itself from som

e "thorn in the flesh," some suffering or

defect in its finite nature, but yet, refusing to accept any possibility of aid, w

ill to be itself in its very imperfection as a spiteful protest

against existence. 7

Kierkegaard's purpose in these analyses is to show

the insuf-ficiency of an unaided self-relation, that the self alone is unable to put its existence aright, that this can be done only through a right relation to G

od. This is also a major concern in his depiction of eth-

ical existence in the early pseudonymous w

orks—m

ost notably in V

olume Tw

o of Either/Or. It m

ay seem arbitrary to link the form

s of despair just discussed, culm

inating as they do in demonic de-

fiance, with the m

oral earnestness of Judge William

, the pseud-onym

ous author of that volume, and K

ierkegaard's paradigm of

ethical existence. Yet I believe the link holds. For w

hat this "ethi-cist" stresses above all, w

hat he takes as absolute, is his own self

as self-relation, as capacity of self-choice, as will, as freedom

:

What is it I choose? Is it this thing or that? N

o. ... I choose the absolute. A

nd what is the absolute? It is I m

yself in my eternal va-

7See SUD

, 67-74.


13

lidity. Anything else but m

yself I can never choose as the absolute. B

ut what, then, is this self of m

ine? ... It is the most abstract

of all things, and yet at the same tim

e it is the most concrete—

it is freedom

. (EO 2:218)

Judge William

's conception of the self as active self-relation, as freedom

, in effect incorporates the first dimension of selfhood, the

-.elf as synthesis. Recognizing the presence of disparate elem

ents w

ithin the self, he holds that these can be harmonized, that a right

telationship between the different elem

ents of selfhood can be •if hieved, through a self-choice in w

hich the self as freedom takes

responsibility for the development of the self as synthesis.

This is the meaning of the title of the second m

ajor portion of i'tther/O

r, Volum

e Two: "Equilibrium

Betw

een the Aesthetical and

(he Ethical in the Com

position of Personality" (EO 2:159). "T

he •M

'sthetical" refers here to the given aspects of the self, to its mul-

tiplicity of needs, desires, conditions, relations, and capacities; "the rthical" refers to the freedom

with w

hich the self directs its own

Incoming. 8 To postulate their "equilibrium

" is to assert that ethical **elf-choice does not extirpate or im

pose a narrow discipline upon

the aesthetic aspects of existence, but merely relativizes them

, while

.it the same tim

e directing them to a harm

onious fulfillment. T

hus Judge W

illiam argues that m

arriage—w

hich he regards as a prime

exemplar of ethical existence—

does not destroy, but actually en-hances the beauty of "first love" (a beauty w

hich "A" prizes

highly). Similarly, m

arriage ennobles the natural necessity that is expressed in erotic attraction by bringing it into the sphere of eth-ical com

mitm

ent. That ethical existence involves a unification of the diverse as-

pects of the self as synthesis is also indicated by Judge William

in rem

arks such as this:

"See EO 2:182. The ethicist does not seem

to make a clear distinction betw

een f he freedom

of the self and the "higher" aspects of the self as synthesis. This may

indicate that Kierkegaard had not, w

hen Either/Or w

as written, form

ulated ex-plicitly, even for him

self, the definition of the self, but that he may have arrived

,»» it through the early writings. A

t any rate, my claim

is that it is a key for inter-fwting these w

orks; I do not intend to advance any thesis about the development

of his ideas.

14 International K

ierkegaard Com

mentary

Man's eternal dignity consists in the fact that he can have a his-

tory, the divine element in him

consists in the fact that he himself,

if he will, can im

part to this history continuity, for this it acquires only w

hen it is not the sum of all that has happened to m

e . . . but is m

y own w

ork, in such a way that even w

hat has befallen me is

by me transform

ed and translated from necessity to freedom

. (EO

2:254-255)

Again, he finds the highest expression of this in m

arriage: The m

arried man . . . has not killed tim

e but has saved it and pre-served it in eternity. ... H

e solves the great riddle of living in eter-nity and yet hearing the hall clock strike, and hearing it in such a w

ay that the stroke of the hour does not shorten but prolongs his eternity. (EO

2:141)

Marriage unites the eternal and the tem

poral by providing the dif-ferent m

oments of life w

ith continuity and a unitary meaning.

How

ever, despite the attractiveness with w

hich Judge William

describes—

and represents—the ethical life in general, and m

ar-riage in particular, K

ierkegaard does not regard ethical existence as the highest "stage," just as he does not regard free self-relation as the ultim

ate dimension of selfhood. H

is reservations about the sort of claim

s made by Judge W

illiam on behalf of the ethical are

hinted at by a careful reading of Either/Or, and are suggested in the

very paragraphs of The Sickness unto Death w

here the self is de-fined. The definition of the self as a "derived, established relation" expresses, he says, "the inability of the self to arrive at or to be in equilibrium

... by itself." (SUD

, 13-14) W

hat is the root of the difficulty? It is that, despite the vague religiousness expressed by Judge W

illiam, the individual at the

ethical stage of existence attempts to rely ultim

ately only on his own

freedom, assum

ing for himself the pow

er to make his ow

n life right. H

e preaches, in effect, a doctrine of justification by works, the

"works" in this case being expressions of an essentially K

antian ideal of universality and autonom

y. It is this ultimate self-reliance

that he has in comm

on with the defiant types of despair described

in The Sickness unto Death. H

e undertakes an unconditional self-af-firm

ation, whereas K

ierkegaard thought that affirmation of our true

selves is ultimately dependent on a "condition" that can be given


15

only by God. 9 Judge W

illiam's confidence that through ethical ex-

istence one can "succeed in saving his soul and gaining the whole

world" (EO

2:182) underestimates both the reality of sin in the self

and the difficulty of shaping the world according to ethical pur-

poses—and thus in effect ignores hum

an dependence on God.

CO The Self as D

ependent on God:

The Religious Dim

ension of Selfhood

"The hum

an self is ... a derived established relation, a rela-tion that relates itself to itself and in relating itself to itself relates itself to another" (SU

D, 13-14). T

he self-relation of every self in-volves also a relation to "the pow

er that established it," whether

the self is aware of this relation or not. The self-relation and the

God-relation are not—

as Feuerbach would have it—

identical, yet they go hand in hand. To w

ill to be oneself in the fullest sense is also to take up an affirm

ative stance toward one's foundation; to

despair, to refuse to will to be oneself, is also to turn against that

foundation. In more explicitly theological term

s, to say yes or no to one's ow

n existence as gift and task is to say yes or no to one's C

reator. Tw

o important issues im

mediately arise here. I have suggested

that, according to Kierkegaard's definition of the third dim

ension of selfhood, every self-relation also involves a G

od-relation, w

hether or not the self is aware of its foundation in God. Such

awareness is one aspect of the "transparency" to w

hich his defi-nition of faith refers: "that the self in being itself and in w

illing to be itself rests transparently in G

od" (SUD

, 82). Just what does this

"transparency" mean? H

e does not explicitly define it, though he clearly considers it a m

atter of degree, and he does analyze pene-tratingly the subtle interplay of w

ill and knowledge involved in a

self's lack of transparency (its "darkness and ignorance" [SUD

, 48]) regarding its ow

n spiritual state. In general, "transparency" seems

to mean this: the self's aw

areness of its ontological and ethical sta-tus (in particular its creaturehood and sinfulness), both as part of the hum

an race and as a specific individual, especially in its rela-tion to G

od as Creator, Judge, and R

edeemer.

9See, for example, the various references to "the condition" in PF.

16 International K

ierkegaard Com

mentary

The second issue concerns Kierkegaard's identification of the

"power"

on which the self is dependent (or in w

hich it is "grounded," as in the older translation) w

ith God, as G

od is con-ceived in C

hristianity. It is this that makes the third aspect of his

definition theological, rather than simply ontological or m

eta-physical; for there are view

s of the self (such as Sartre's) that agree in general w

ith Kierkegaard's up to this point, but conceive differ-

ently of the self's ultimate foundation. H

as Kierkegaard anything

to say to those who question this identification?

He w

ould not, of course, cite the traditional theistic proofs; he regards these as theoretically inconclusive and as diverting atten-tion from

the "subjective" task of being oneself. Yet there is in his

writings som

ething analogous to Kant's "m

oral proof"—to the

claim that the self's m

oral task is attainable only if God exists. K

ier-kegaard holds that only if the self's ultim

ate foundation is God,

rather than some lesser reality or "pow

er," can despair finally be overcom

e. He says:

The synthesis is not the misrelation; it is m

erely the possibility, or in the synthesis lies the possibility of the m

isrelation. If the syn-thesis w

ere the misrelation, then despair w

ould not exist at all, then despair w

ould be something that lies in hum

an nature as such. . . . N

o, no, despairing lies in man him

self. If he were not a synthesis,

he could not despair at all; nor could he despair if the synthesis in its original state from

the hand of God w

ere not in the proper relationship. (SU

D, 15-16; m

y emphasis)

That is, only because the human being is G

od's creature is despair as state (as m

isrelation among the different com

ponents of the self as synthesis) not inherent in the hum

an condition; only thus is de-spair as act possible, "inasm

uch as God, w

ho constituted man a re-

lation, releases it from his hand, as it w

ere—that is, inasm

uch as the relation relates itself to itself' (SU

D, 16); and only thus, through

divine aid and forgiveness, can despair be overcome.

The title of the last major section of The Sickness unto D

eath is "De-

spair is Sin" (SUD

, 77). The sickness that was first conceived psycho-

logically, and then ethically, is now identified theologically. This

identification is based in the third dimension of K

ierkegaard's defi-nition, and its im

plication that the self's refusal to be itself is also a rejection of its foundation—

disobedience to its Creator.


17

Kierkegaard m

akes it clear that the self's dependence on God

is as much axiological as ontological. G

od is not only the self's Cre-

ator, but is also its "criterion and goal" (SUD

, 79). 10 The self is not—

.»s a purely ethical standpoint would have it—

measured ultim

ately by a criterion im

manent to itself, but by G

od; and it gains"infinite reality ... by being conscious of existing before G

od" (SUD

, 79). This m

eans, however, that the m

ore "transparent" a self is in its G

od-relation—that is, the greater its conception or conscious-

ness of God—

the more sinful is that self's despair. The self's real-

ity is even more "intensified" in relation to C

hrist, "by the

inordinate accent that falls upon it because God allow

ed himself to

be born, become m

an, suffer, and die" (SUD

, 113) to offer it for-giveness and salvation; but, accordingly, this com

pounds the sin of a self that rejects this salvation. The G

od-relation thus accen-tuates the freedom

and individuality of the self even more than did

the purely ethical emphasis on its responsibility for and to itself.

These claims are not, of course, m

ere consequences of the definition of the self, but they flesh it out in such a w

ay that there is a clear cor-respondence betw

een the definition of the self as dependent on God

and the account of despair as sin. Is the same true of the depiction of

the religious "stage" of existence in Kierkegaard's early pseudony-

mous w

ork? That this depiction must in som

e manner concern the

self s God-relation is, of course, trivially true. B

ut I would like to show

that it bears an intim

ate relation to the whole definition of the self. I w

ill focus on Fear and Trembling, the com

panion to the two volum

es of Either/O

r, because these three volumes taken together contain

Kierkegaard's richest account of the "stages."

Johannes de Silentio, the pseudonymous author of Fear and Trem

-bling, deals w

ith religious existence by reflecting on a paradigm of

faith—A

braham, in his response to G

od's comm

and to sacrifice Isaac. Johannes depicts faith through tw

o related, but nevertheless differ-ent, contrasts—

first with the stance of "infinite resignation," and then

with "the ethical." M

y specific thesis here is that this twofold con-

!0Kierkegaard does not discuss here the relation betw

een one's ontological and itxiological dependence on G

od, nor the sense in which G

od is the self's "criterion and goal." H

is later statement that "only in C

hrist is it true that God is m

an's goal ,m

d criterion" (SUD

, 114) suggests that what he has in m

ind in the latter instance is the "im

itation of Christ."

18 International K

ierkegaard Com

mentary

trast shows how

the self's God-relation affects, first, the self as syn-

thesis, and then the self as self-relation—and thus both m

irrors and illum

inates the whole definition of the self.

Johannes first presents infinite resignation and faith as alter-native possible responses of som

eone who, like A

braham (or like

Kierkegaard him

self in his relation to Regina), is called upon to

sacrifice the object of all his worldly hopes. T

he "knight of infinite resignation" m

akes the sacrifice but thereafter has no joy or hope in the finite; instead, he seeks repose in a m

ore-or-less stoical tran-scendence of all w

orldly concerns. The "knight of faith," too, pre-

pares the sacrifice, and m

akes the spiritual movem

ent of resignation—

but also and at the same tim

e makes another m

ove-m

ent; "by virtue of the absurd" (FT, 35) he believes that this sac-rifice w

ill not be required of him, or that he w

ill receive again what

he has sacrificed. T

he contrast between faith and "the ethical" centers on the

question of a "teleological suspension of the ethical." Was A

bra-ham

justified in being willing to sacrifice his ow

n child? Not ac-

cording to "the ethical," Johannes says—and here "the ethical"

connotes an ethics based on autonomy, rationality, and univer-

sality. All such standards—

and, indeed, any standard that takes the hum

an as its ultimate point of reference—

are breached by A

braham's action. If A

braham is justified, it can only be because

there is a higher source of obligation than "the ethical," one which

at least on occasion warrants its "suspension." Either the latter is

true, and Abraham

stands in a direct relation to God, a relation not

mediated through m

oral norms—

or he is a murderer. Take your

choice, Johannes says; there is no neutral standpoint from w

hich the issue can be adjudicated.

, To penetrate m

ore deeply into the meaning of these contrasts,

one question needs to be posed—nam

ely, how does this w

hole treatm

ent of faith apply to those who are not required, like A

bra-ham

, to give up the "Isaacs" of their lives? Johannes, who repeat-

edly claims not to understand faith, offers no explicit answ

er to this question. B

ut a careful reading of Fear and Trembling suggests, I

think, these reflections: The existential dilem

ma to w

hich both infinite resignation and faith are responses seem

s, fundamentally, to be this—

that every


19

human self is by nature concerned w

ith finite goods. Yet all finite

goods are contingent and relative; none can be securely possessed; none can, w

ithout some m

easure of impoverishm

ent or distortion of the spirit, be m

ade its absolute end. Were the self a god, it w

ould (or so our theological tradition im

plies) in its infinitude transcend contingency and relativity; w

ere it merely a beast, it w

ould be so im

mersed in finitude as to be unable to conceive of its situation as

problematic. B

ut the human being, neither god nor beast, yet in

part like each, is both subject to and able to conceive of contin-gency and relativity, is both im

manent in and som

ehow transcen-

dent of the finite. W

hat stance, then, can the self take towards its situation? In "in-

finite resignation," the attitude of the ancient Stoic (with som

e Ro-

mantic feeling added), the self expresses its recognition of the

contingency and relativity of the finite by giving it up spiritually, even before losing it or being called upon to give it up in actuality. Thus the "infinitude" of the self, its transcendence of the finite w

orld, is m

anifested—though this attitude, how

ever "deep," is a type of what

The Sickness unto Death labels as "infinitude's despair."

In any event, faith, Johannes says, goes further. For illustration he sketches the fam

ous imaginary exam

ple of a contemporary

"knight of faith" who

one would sw

ear . . . was the butcher across the w

ay vegetating in the gloam

ing. . . . And yet, yet. . . this m

an has made and at

every mom

ent is making the m

ovement of infinity. H

e drains the deep sadness of life in infinite resignation, he know

s the blessed-ness of infinity, he has felt the pain of renouncing everything, the m

ost precious thing in the world, and yet the finite tastes just as

good to him as to one w

ho never knew anything higher. ... H

e resigned everything infinitely, and then he grasped everything again by virtue of the absurd. H

e is continually making the m

ove-m

ent of infinity, but he does it with such precision and assurance

that he continually gets finitude out of it. (FT, 40-41)

The knight of faith is, then, no merely im

mediate individual; he is

aware of the contingency and relativity of everything finite, but he

does not negate the significance of the finite by giving it up spiri-tually. H

e accomplishes a prodigy, a "double-m

ovement" of faith,

a simultaneous m

ovement of w

ithdrawal and return in his relation

to the world.

20 International K

ierkegaard Com

mentary

All this Johannes tells us, though he continually professes not

to comprehend how

it is possible—not to understand this "knight

of faith" who is nevertheless the product of his ow

n imagination!

And perhaps w

e cannot understand him, if to "understand" m

eans to assim

ilate to our "natural" attitudes—for he is a challenge to

these attitudes, to our tendency to alternate between im

mediacy

and hopelessness. Yet if to understand is to grasp his existence as

a challenge then perhaps we can understand him

. His "secret," it

seems, is this: that recognizing the contingency and relativity of

every finite good, he neither takes it as secure and absolute, nor expends all his energy in spiritually distancing him

self from it; but

he accepts all that he possesses as a gift from the hand of G

od, to be enjoyed and loved as such, yet to be released, if need be, w

ith trust in G

od and His pow

er to help us deal with every loss and ad-

versity. Only thus, by virtue of relating to G

od in faith, can the self exist as both finite and infinite, both involved in and transcending the w

orld. Johannes' explicit reflections on the relation betw

een faith and the ethical seem

to lead, I have indicated, to an either/or which can-

not be adjudicated. But som

e of his statements—

as Louis Mackey

has argued11—

hint at a somew

hat different conclusion. They sug-gest that K

ierkegaard is not here concerned only with a few

excep-tional figures like A

braham, that rather the "suspension of the

ethical" which ultim

ately concerns him is one that takes place in

each individual life—nam

ely, sin. For every individual self, as a sin-ner, is already "beyond" the ethical, has already "suspended" it.

How

, then, can the self deal with the reality of its ow

n sin? W

here can forgiveness be found? It cannot be found, Kierkegaard

(using Johannes as his "messenger" 12) suggests, w

ithin the con-text of an ethics of rationality and autonom

y. For in such a context, w

ho can forgive? Can the self forgive itself? Such leniency w

ould be highly suspect—

an honest self would rather condem

n itself. Can

it be forgiven by the ethical law, or by the ideal self w

hich is its eth-ical telos? N

o, for these can only stand over against the self as un-

"Louis Mackey, K

ierkegaard: A Kind of Poet (Philadelphia: U

niversity of Penn-sylvania Press, Inc., 1971) 224-25.

12See FT, 3.


21

yielding measures of its deficiency. A

self can only be forgiven by (hat w

hich is also in some sense personal; only if the self's obli-

gation ultimately com

es from G

od can a breach of that obligation be forgiven—

by God. Thus, as a careful reading of V

olume Tw

o of iither/O

r already suggests, an existential stance that acknowl-

edges no authority or power higher than the self and its ethical

choice of itself founders on the reality of sin. A defect in the self-

relation, the self's self-estrangement in sin, can be healed only

through its relation to God—

only by divine grace received in faith. If these are sound interpretations of Fear and Trem

bling—w

hich is by any account a m

any-dimensional w

ork—then there is clearly

a close relation between the pseudonym

ous presentation of the re-ligious "stage" and the w

hole definition of the self. Just as the eth-ical self-relation supervenes upon and affects the self as synthesis, so the self's G

od-relation supervenes upon and affects both the self as synthesis and the self's relation to itself. The tw

o contrasts drawn

in Fear and Trembling illum

inate aspects of this "double affection." The contrast betw

een infinite resignation and faith indicates one w

ay, at least, in which faith m

akes possible a harmonious relation

between different aspects of the self as synthesis. O

nly in faith, it suggests, can the self exist w

ithout despair both as finite—inevi-

tably involved in and concerned about concrete actuality—and as

infinite—capable of som

e sort of transcendence of that actuality. Sim

ilarly, the contrast between faith and "the ethical" suggests that

faith both relativizes and restores the self's ethical self-relation. Only

if the self stands related to a power and authority beyond itself can

the breach that sin inevitably brings into our existence be healed. K

ierkegaard's definition of the self is a remarkable instance of

his dialectical and literary skill. Yet it is m

ore than that; it provides a key for understanding the structure and content of The Sickness unto D

eath, as well as the "stages" of existence depicted in his early

pseudonymous w

ritings. It forms a crucial part of w

orks that were

intended to help his readers on the road to self-understanding and self-fulfillm

ent.

II

Spirit and the Idea of the Self

as a Reflexive Relation Alastair Hannay

T he Sickness unto Death opens forthrightly enough by declaring that a human being is "spirit," and amplifies this by saying that

spirit is "the self." This latter notion is then elaborated as "a rela-tion that relates itself to itself," an intriguing suggestion but hardly forthright and the reader awaits some clarification. But is clarifi-cation forthcoming? The notorious passage that follows has seemed to many an attempt on Kierkegaard's part, not to help the reader understand this idea of a self-relating self, but to parody the im-penetrability of Hegelian prose. Anti-Climacus continues:

[T]he self is not the relation but is the relation's relating itself to it-self. A human being is a synthesis of the infinite and the finite, of the temporal and the eternal, of freedom and necessity, in short a synthesis. A synthesis is a relation between two. Considered in this way, a human being is still not a self. . . . In the relation between two, the relation is the third as a negative unity, and the two relate to the relation and in the relation to the relation; thus under the qualification of [soul] the relation between [soul] and [body] is a relation. If, however, the relation relates itself to itself, this rela-tion is the positive third, and this is the self. (SUD, 13)1

^or purposes of exposition I prefer the more direct translations of 'Sjel' and 'Legeme' as 'soul' and 'body' to the Hongs' 'the psychical' and 'the physical.'

24 International Kierkegaard Commentary

If this were no more than a dig at Hegelian obscurity, one might conclude that the idea of a self-relating self is not in need of clari-fication, but only obscure when clothed in pretentious philosoph-ical jargon. Perhaps, whatever difficulties attend an analysis of the notion, the notion itself is nothing more exotic than that of the self-evident ability of human beings to reflect upon what they do and think, and to form their own self-images.

But Anti-Climacus's definition of the self as a relation that "re-lates itself to itself" is neither empty parody nor a pretentiously decked out truism. It states elegantly, and I believe accurately, a crucial principle of Kierkegaard's thought—only, however, to the appropriately programmed reader. By this I mean a reader familiar with the tradition from which Kierkegaard's terms derive their connotations: the Hegelian tradition. It is now of course some-thing of a formality among Kierkegaard scholars to warn against letting Kierkegaard's unrelenting onslaught on Hegel blind one to the extent of the shared assumptions on which that onslaught is based. Yet often it is quite general, methodological assumptions that are referred to (the notions of 'negativity,' 'dialectic,' for ex-ample), or mere points of terminology where Kierkegaard uses Hegel's terms to deny what Hegel asserts (the identity of thought and being, and so forth). But there are several points of agreement in basic framework too, and an important one of these is the con-cept of self-consciousness.

Hegel makes two sets of distinctions. One, within the general cat-egory of "subjective spirit," distinguishes 'consciousness,' 'immedi-ate self-consciousness,' and 'universal self-consciousness,' (see Samtliche Werke 6, §§307-44).2 These, in outline, are phases in a de-velopment from simple awareness of a distinction between inner and outer (see Phenomenology, 143), through a sense of the inner as the center of things but with these things themselves quite independent, to a grasp of the inner and outer as combined in the unity of con-sciousness and reality (Samtliche Werke 6, §400; Phenomenology, §394).

2Quotations from Hegel are from Samtliche Werke, ed. H. Glockner (Stuttgart: Fromann, 1927-1930); Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. A. V. Miller (Oxford: Clar-endon Press, 1977); Logic (pt. 1 of The Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences [1830]), trans. W. Wallace (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975) (abbreviated Enc.); Philosophy of Right, trans. T. M. Knox (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1952).

The Sickness unto Death 25

The latter phase—though each phase itself contains a develop-ment—provides the terms for defining 'spirit,' or reason as full awareness of itself as being all of reality (Phenomenology, §438). The second distinction is between "natural" consciousness, or soul, and spirit. In the Phenomenology Hegel talks of the "path of natural con-sciousness . . . the way of the soul which journeys through the series of its own configurations as though they were the stations appointed for it by its own nature, so that it may purify itself for the life of the Spirit." This path "presses forward to true knowledge" or "Science," and the goal of the journey is to give the soul a "completed experi-ence of itself," in which it finally achieves "awareness of what it really is in itself" (Phenomenology, §77).

These passages contain all three of the terms used by Anti-Cli-macus in the opening passage of The Sickness unto Death to define the self as a self-relating relation. We have 'self,' 'soul,' and 'spirit.' My suggestion is that what Kierkegaard wants us to understand by his idea of a self as a self-relating relation is something that co-incides to a considerable extent with what Hegel says about soul, consciousness, and spirit, yet departs from Hegel radically at a point to be determined; and my discussion here is an attempt to determine that point.

7.

Let us begin with Hegel's metaphor of a path that the soul goes along to purify itself for the life of the spirit. For Hegel 'soul' (Seele) denotes a set of possibilities ranging from those limited to (as with Aristotle) organic life as such (see Phenomenology, §265), through those inherent in animal life, to those specific to human life. The "paths" of these possibilities are of different length; that of human life (or consciousness) is one on which the soul progresses through its "appointed stations" to "purify itself for the life of the Spirit." One could read this as saying that the soul can itself acquire the characteristics of spirit, as if spirit was a qualification of the specif-ically human soul, something it can become and still remain soul. But Hegel would want us to read it the other way around. Spiritual life is already contained in posse in the initial soul, which in its most general characterization is the "animating principle of the body" (Enc, §34). Spirit is what, in the human case, this animating prin-

26 International K

ierkegaard Com

mentary

ciple is destined to become. It is the hum

an end-state, the human

soul's "completed experience of itself" and "aw

areness of what it

really is in itself." As noted, for H

egel this means not just a grasp

of human consciousness as an actually existing subject-pole in re-

lation to its "negative," the "other" (see Phenomenology, §§347-359),

but awareness of a unity betw

een thought and being themselves.

A full philosophical account of self-consciousness is one that gives

a total grasp of the relation of mind, or consciousness as reason, to

its objective environment, and sees this goal of com

prehension as a potentiality not just of "natural consciousness" but (having es-caped the lim

itations of a merely natural consciousness) of the nat-

ural and social world itself.

This conveniently, but I think not altogether accidentally, picks out for us the target of K

ierkegaard's criticism of H

egel's philoso-phy. If the term

'science/ as in Hegel, is taken to em

brace knowl-

edge not only of the environment but of a harm

ony between it and

thought—a harm

ony so total as to give self-consciousness, among

other things, the status of "the principle of right, morality, and all

ethical life" (Philosophy of Right, §21)—then, says the criticism

, sci-ence is not at all the end-state of natural consciousness. W

hat end-state w

ould Kierkegaard propose instead? A

nd what w

ould be the corresponding K

ierkegaardian life of the spirit? One plausible sug-

gestion regarding the end-state would be "aw

areness of the fact that there is no such com

pleted experience of itself." As for K

ier-kegaard's life of the spirit, the apt answ

er would be to say that w

hile for both H

egel and Kierkegaard the life of the spirit is the life of

clear-sightedness, in Hegel's case the clarity is that of the "stand-

point of Science" (Phenomenology, §78), taking this to include all

ethical life, while in K

ierkegaard's it is that of scepticism. This

would allow

us to see Kierkegaard's "journey" along the path of

natural consciousness as merely an abrupted version of H

egel's. For, according to H

egel, natural consciousness proves only to have the idea, or notion, of itself as know

ing not—as it itself believes—

the reality of that; and for it the path to spirit proves to be one of loss of its status of real know

er: "what is in fact the realization of

the Notion [of know

ledge], counts for it rather as a loss of its own

self . . . [t]he road can therefore be regarded as the pathway of

doubt, or more precisely as the w

ay of despair . . . [f]or this path is


27

the conscious insight into the untruth of phenomenal know

ledge" (Phenom

enology, §78, original emphasis). H

egel is saying that nat-ural consciousness has to give w

ay to spirit, which is for him

the standpoint of science, from

which know

ledge of appearance has given w

ay to "true" knowledge (cf. Phenom

enology, §76). The na-ture/spirit distinction used here is a traditional one, going back at least as far as A

ristotle's pneuma, a kind of divine stuff (com

pared by A

ristotle in one place to the aither) that preserves the unity of the organism

which w

ould otherwise dissolve into its constituent

elements if these w

ere allowed to obey their natural law

s of mo-

tion. 3 In Hegel's use of the distinction, nature is w

hat appears to consciousness as external, w

hich appearance is replaced in the standpoint of science—

of spirit—by true know

ledge. If the spiri-tual developm

ent is inhibited one receives only the "doubt," "de-spair," and "loss of self" of the aw

areness that phenomenal

knowledge is not real. This sounds rem

arkably like Anti-C

lima-

cus's account of the individual's path to despair, in light of the fail-ure of people even to "try this life" (SU

D, 57). In the journals (JP

6:6794) Kierkegaard draw

s the distinction in exactly Hegel's term

s by talking of a "w

orld of spirit" lying "[b]ehind this world of ac-

tuality, phenomena...." M

ight we not sim

ply say, then, that the life of the spirit for K

ierkegaard is the life of one who realizes, on

the one hand and like Hegel, that the natural w

orld is only phe-nom

enal, but on the other that there is no standpoint of science from

which true know

ledge (including knowledge of right, m

o-rality, and ethics) can be attained, and squarely faces the conse-quent uncertainty about hum

an nature's standing and also the prospect of nihilism

? It is clear, how

ever, that this is not what A

nti-Clim

acus would

have us call the life of the spirit. Such a life would, in K

ierkegaard's as w

ell as Hegel's term

s, be purely negative; it would involve no

more than the realization of loss—

loss of presumptive know

ledge and of self. Spirit, again for K

ierkegaard as well as for H

egel, has a positive content; it involves the realization that hum

an existence is grounded in an eternal telos.

3See M. C

. Nussbaum

, De m

otu animalium

: Interpretive Essays (Princeton: Princeton U

niversity Press, 1978) 159-60.

28 International K

ierkegaard Com

mentary

Every human existence that is not conscious of itself as spirit or

conscious of itself before God as spirit, every hum

an existence that does not rest transparently in G

od but vaguely rests in and merges

in some abstract universality (state, nation, etc.) or, in the dark

about his self, regards his capacities merely as pow

ers to produce w

ithout becoming deeply aw

are of their source, regards his self, if it is to have intrinsic m

eaning, as an indefinable something—

every such existence, w

hatever it achieves, be it most am

azing, what-

ever it explains, be it the whole of existence, how

ever intensively it enjoys life esthetically—

every such existence is nevertheless de-spair. (SU

D, 46)

The passage says that a life not grounded transparently in God is

a life of despair; but it appears also to say that the life of spirit has to be one that is grounded transparently in G

od, and so not a life of despair. Since for A

nti-Clim

acus the opposite of despair is faith, it looks as though the end-state he envisages, faith, and the life of spirit are the sam

e. Of course the hum

anly existing subject cannot know

that it has God as the source of its pow

ers to produce; at most

its "becoming aw

are" of where it has them

from is a m

atter of faith. B

ut then that, on this interpretation, would be the K

ierkegaardian alternative to the H

egelian spirit's self-knowledge. T

o reinforce the interpretation w

e can turn to Anti-C

limacus's rem

ark that pagans "lacked the spirit's definition of a self" because they "lacked the G

od-relationship and the self" (SUD

, 46). They lacked the G

od-re-lationship because pagan belief finds G

od in nature, and what A

nti-C

limacus m

eans by a God-relationship presupposes C

limacus's

account of the "break with im

manence" (C

UP, 506); and they

lacked the self because they had no sense of an identity other than in term

s of what they shared w

ith (and owed to) other hum

ans (cf. SU

D, 46).

Should we say then that w

hat we have here is A

nti-Clim

acus's version of the life of the spirit in its properly positive guise? M

uch of The Sickness unto D

eath can be read in this light, for example pas-

sages like that in which A

nti-Clim

acus says that the only one whose

life is truly wasted is he w

ho has been "so deceived by life's joys or its sorrow

s that he never became decisively and eternally con-

scious as spirit, as self, or, what amounts to the sam

e thing, never be-cam

e aware and in the deepest sense never gained the im

pression that there is a G

od and that 'he/ he him

self, his self, exists before


29

this God—

an infinite benefaction that is never gained except through despair" (SU

D, 26-27, em

phasis added). Much also gain-

says the proposal. For instance we have the starkly unam

biguous assertion that "the devil is sheer spirit" (SU

D, 42). C

learly the devil (in G

reek diabolos, or defamer) stands in nothing that A

nti-Clim

a-cus w

ould call a God-relationship. So it looks as if A

nti-Clim

acus here em

ploys a more neutral concept of spirit. A

nd since it is the devil's "unqualified consciousness and transparency," and the fact that in him

there is therefore "no obscurity . . . that could serve as a m

itigating excuse," that earns him the description "sheer spirit,"

it might look rather as though w

e were forced back upon our orig-

inal "negative" notion. Yet that is not so. A

lthough (like Hegel's

natural consciousness) the devil despairs, he does not doubt, nor does he suffer any loss of self—

at least not as far as we are directly

told. Indeed Anti-C

limacus says "[t]he m

ore consciousness, the m

ore self [and will]" (SU

D, 29, em

phasis added), though also "the greater the conception of G

od, the more self ..." (SU

D, 80 and

113); but it is easy to imagine som

eone having a strong conception of G

od without yet having faith. In fact the devil does not despair

analogously to Hegel's natural consciousness, for his despair is not

that of uncertainty, but of "the most absolute defiance" (SU

D, 42),

and that presupposes not only a conception of God but som

ething like a standing assum

ption that God exists and has pow

er to exert. The devil could not be a defam

er if there were no one for him

to defam

e. (According to early ecclesiastical w

riters the devil was cre-

ated by God as an angel, Lucifer, w

ho for his rebellion against God

was punished by being throw

n into the abyss where he becam

e the prince of darkness.) A

nd this seems generally true of w

hat Anti-

Clim

acus classifies as despair. The despairer of The Sickness unto

Death, the one w

ho lacks faith, is one who w

ill not affirm w

hat is recognizably the standing assum

ption that God exists and that one

ought to stand before God. True, at the very end of The Sickness unto

Death w

e are told of a form of despair, the axlm

inating despair, that denies C

hrist, "declares Christianity to be untrue, a lie," and m

akes of C

hrist "an invention of the devil" (SUD

, 131). Yet calling C

hris-tianity an invention of the devil still acknow

ledges the God that

created the devil. Moreover, that A

nti-Clim

acus says this denial of "all that is essentially C

hristian: sin, the forgiveness of sins, etc."

30 International Kierkegaard Commentary

is itself a "sin against the Holy Ghost" (ibid.), indeed sin's "high-est intensification," shows quite clearly that for him the frame-work of the standing assumption, and the assumption itself, remain sacrosanct. In other words if Anti-Climacus were to claim further, from within this framework, that nihilism too was an invention of the devil, he would not be taken seriously by the nihilist; for nihilism denies the framework and so cannot be grasped by one who must consider it to be defiance in Anti-Climacus's sense. Anyone who as-serts that nihilism is the invention of the devil must assert it diag-nostically from a point of view not shared by the one whose beliefs he diagnoses. I strongly suspect that Kierkegaard intends Anti-Cli-macus's diagnoses to be ones that those in the conditions he de-scribes are predisposed, however unwillingly, to acknowledge.

It appears then that Anti-Climacus's 'spirit' embraces not only faith but despair. There is much to support this interpretation. "[T]he condition of man, regarded as spirit (and if there is to be any question of despair, man must be regarded as defined by spirit), is always critical" (SUD, 25). Unlike a normal illness where the issue of health or sickness is topical for so long as the illness lasts, within the category of spirit the issue is always topical, 'spirit' connotes a perpetual tension between faith and despair. Apart from The Sick-ness unto Death itself, the reading is supported by most of what Kierkegaard says elsewhere, in the pseudonymous works and the Journals, about spirit. Kierkegaard consistently links the idea of spirit with such partly "negative" attitudes as irony and indiffer-ence (to the worldly) as well as resignation—all preliminaries to fundamental choice (CUP, 450; FT, 46; JP 1: 843). In Anxiety, al-though spirit (like truth and freedom) is said to be "eternal," spir-itual consciousness seems to require no more than the possession of the concept of time or temporality as such sub specie aeternitatis, that is, from a position as it were outside time, or perhaps in the intersection of time and eternity in the "moment" (CA, 83-84, 88-89). Finally, scattered throughout the Journals are numerous re-marks on spirit as transcendence of nature. Spirit is also linked with individuality as such, and with the individual's task of fulfillment itself (see, for example, Papirer X,4 A 888, 307; JP 2: 2065; 3: 2986; 4: 4350).

The Sickness unto Death 31

II.

Let us then return to where we began, with the question of how to interpret the idea of a self as a reflexive relation. The passage (with the translation slightly modified) reads as follows:

The human being is spirit. But what is spirit? Spirit is the self. But what is the self? The self is a relation which relates itself to itself, or that in the relation which is its relating itself to itself. The self is not the relation but the relation's relating itself to itself. The hu-man being is a synthesis of infinity and finitude, of temporality and eternity, of freedom and necessity, in short a synthesis. A synthe-sis is a relation between two. Looked at in this way a human being is still not a self. . . . In the relation between two the relation itself is the third as a negative unity, and the two relate themselves to the relation, and in the relation to the relation; this is the way in which the relation between soul and body is a relation when soul is the determining category. If, on the other hand, the relation re-lates itself to itself, then this relation is the positive third, and this is the self. (SUD, 13) The passage may be read in three ways: (1) as a description of

"health" (faith), (2) as a description of "crisis," or (3) as a mixture of (1) and (2).

According to (1), we read the identity of spirit and the self as the identity of spirit and the true self (Anti-Climacus says that the "opposite" of despair, that is faith, is "to will to be the self that he is in truth" [SUD, 20]). The idea of a self as a relation relating itself to itself can then be identified as that of the (to use a neutral term) subject's conforming itself to what we have called the standing as-sumption—that there is a God and a need to stand before that God. In order to give point to the distinction between a synthesis in which soul is the determining category and one where the self (and thus spirit) is "positive," one must then say something like this: when the self fails to relate itself to itself and is in despair, then the fact that the true self is not related to is due to the soul's rather than spirit's being the determining category. This could suggest a gloss on Haufniensis's remarks on the "bondage of sin" (CA, 118). In sin a person is willing to be "determined" by temporal goals and is in "an unfree relation to the good" (CA, 119). The claim that, "re-garded as spirit," man's condition is "always critical" could then be understood as asserting that, even when the subject does relate

32 International K

ierkegaard Comm

entary

himself to his true self, the situation still rem

ains critical because the possibility of a reversion to despair is alw

ays present (cf. SUD

, 114). Indeed A

nti-Clim

acus actually says that when the hum

an being is regarded spiritually it isn't just sickness that is critical, but health too (SU

D, 25).

According to (2), spirit is not to be equated w

ith the true self, but w

ith the self aware of the options of health and sickness from

the standpoint of either, though initially from

that of sickness, that is the standpoint from

which conform

ing to the true self is a task. H

ere the point of distinguishing spirit (and self) from soul, w

here the relation is a "negative unity," could be the follow

ing: human

beings live initially "imm

ediate" lives, in the sense that (in a way

corresponding to Hegel's "natural consciousness") their goals are

located outside them as external sources of satisfaction, and in such

a way that they do not yet conceive of the finite w

orld (their "en-vironm

ent") as a whole as som

ething in relation to which they are

not properly at home. H

ere they are not yet selves because they have so far no consciousness of som

ething "eternal" in them (SU

D,

62), and since despair proper (that is, as a "qualification of the spirit" [SU

D, 24]) is alw

ays "despair of the eternal or over oneself" (SU

D, 60) they have yet to reach the threshold of crisis. Such im

-m

ediacy inevitably gives way to a sense of selfhood as transcend-

ing the world of tem

poral goals. The self m

akes an "act of separation w

hereby [it] becomes aw

are of itself as essentially dif-ferent from

the environment and external events and from

their influence upon it" (SU

D, 54). The scene is now

set for the "posi-tive" third factor's travails in the realm

of spirit. The "critical con-

dition" in which the subject finds itself is one that em

braces both the health and the sickness of spirit. M

oreover, even in sickness (that is, despair) it is not true that the bondage of sin is a condition in w

hich the soul takes over from spirit, for "despair ... is not

merely a suffering but an act" (SU

D, 62). H

owever hedged around

by "mitigating excuses," despair is itself an action of the spiritual

subject unwilling to conform

to its true self, the mark in varying

degree of the open defiance of the devil's "sheer spirit." A

ccording to (3), while 'spirit' denotes the realm

of task and travail, the idea of the self as a reflexive relation is that of the goal, the true self, of the self conform

ing to its proper ideal. Here the


33

distinction between soul and spirit rem

ains as in (2)—the task of

spirit begins when the subject em

erges from the psychophysical

enclosure of imm

ediacy to become a self that is "essentially differ-

ent" from the environing w

orld. And the critical condition is that

in which this self seeks to becom

e and, once it has become, to re-

main a "positive" third factor in the synthesis. A

lternatively, though m

uch less plausibly, the mixed interpretation m

ight invert the m

ixture and make spirit the true self and the reflexive self the

essentially differentiated self in its travails. O

f these three readings (or four if we count the inverted m

ix-ture) the second seem

s overwhelm

ingly to be preferred. It is more

consistent than the first with respect to w

hat Kierkegaard and his

pseudonyms say elsew

here of spirit and the self; and it is clearly m

ore internally consistent than the third in that, in conformity w

ith the text, it preserves the identity of spirit and self throughout. A

s far as external consistency is concerned, w

e have Johannes de si-lentio's assertion that the w

orld of spirit is the one in which one

must w

ork to "get bread" (FT, 27). Haufniensis, for w

hom 'spirit'

and 'freedom' are interchangeable, says that the "secret of spirit"

is that it "has a history" (CA, 66), and he talks of tw

o "syntheses." O

ne is the initial fusion or unity of soul and body in which spirit is

not yet "posited," while positing spirit is the sam

e as spirit's pos-iting the "second" synthesis, that of tim

e and eternity, as an "expression" of the first (CA

, 88, cf. 85). The point seems to be this:

prior to positing the second synthesis, the two term

s, soul and body, are understood from

the point of view of im

mediacy as form

-ing a synthesis on their ow

n, or rather (since "synthesis" in a He-

gelian context implies the union of apparently incongruent term

s under the auspices of a third) a unity w

ith these two aspects, as

though naturally unified as in the case of psychophysical organ-ism

s lacking a spiritual possibility. This is the case in natural human

consciousness before spiritual consciousness emerges; but the

emergence of spiritual consciousness is itself the idea that w

hat appears initially to be a unity is really a juxtaposition of opposites. This realization is evidently w

hat Kierkegaard m

eans by the emer-

gence of spiritual consciousness; for spiritual consciousness, or positing spirit, is recognizing an identity apart from

and overor-dinate to the finite m

entality of the first synthesis. Spirit here is the

34 International K

ierkegaard Com

mentary

emergence of a problem

. Since both The Concept of Anxiety and The Sickness unto D

eath have as their topic the obstacles to its solution, it seem

s likely that, in having his author describe the human being

as spirit in the first sentence of the main text of The Sickness unto

Death, K

ierkegaard is drawing the reader's attention to a feature of

human consciousness w

hich, once it emerges, presents a specifi-

able set of problems. T

he set itself is indeed specified in the triad of opposites, that is, (in their consistent order) infinity and fini-tude, eternity and tem

porality, freedom and necessity, m

entioned in the opening passage. T

he latter element in each pair represents

a limitation for a subject, now

a self, that has emerged from

"im-

mediacy" to "eternal consciousness." Traditionally finitude is the

limitation of distinctness, necessity that of rational constraint, and

temporality that of exposure to change. In A

nti-Clim

acus these be-com

e something like the lim

itations of mere particularity, genetic

and environmental determ

ination ("facticity" in Sartre's sense), and lack of a stable center in w

hich to reside or "repose." (The most

crucial departure from the tradition is the use of 'necessity' in con-

nection with factual rather than logical constraint.) A

human being

subject to the limitations but not conscious of them

as such, lives the life of im

mediacy, though such a life is also attem

pted (ac-tively) by those w

ho do feel them as lim

itations yet due to anxiety w

ill not venture beyond the closure of imm

ediacy. According to our

preferred reading the category of spirit applies as soon as the lim-

itations are felt as such, and therefore applies even to those who

try to revert to imm

ediacy. If w

e are to read the opening passage of The Sickness unto Death

consistently in this way, w

e will also have to understand the "syn-

thesis" of the limitations w

ith their opposites as the setting of a task rather than as, w

hat might seem

more plausible term

inologically, its com

pletion. This means that there is at least one prim

a facie He-

gelian analogy to discard. In Hegelian philosophy w

e think of syn-thesis as a resolution of opposites.

My proposal here is that "synthesis" in both Anxiety and The

Sickness unto Death be linked to w

hat was earlier called the "stand-

ing assumption." T

he standing assumption is that the eternal is not

a negative category but positive in the sense that it "posits" a telos outside nature and the task of holding the elem

ents—for exam

ple,


35

freedom and necessity—

together in a way that expresses this fact.

It is useful here to call attention to Kierkegaard's notion of "finite

spirit," of which he says it is the "unity of necessity and freedom

... of consequence [Resultat] and striving ..." (JP, 2: 2274). Else-w

here we are told that spirit posits the synthesis as a contradiction;

spirit "sustains" the contradiction (CA

, 88), it doesn't resolve it. C

onceptually, however, a synthesis cannot consist m

erely of a contradictory pair (C

A, 85); there m

ust be some fram

ework for

conceiving the opposites as congruent. In Anxiety the "mom

ent" is the intersection of tim

e and eternity, and the idea of "finite spirit" com

bines necessity and freedom as "consequence," or product,

and "striving," or effort, in human existence. W

e might say that

the "unity" of the opposites is sustained, as in Spinoza, by a conatus in suo esse perseverandi w

hich here beams in on the absolute telos. W

hat "synthesis" actually m

eans on this reading, then, is the conceiving of the opposites in the light of the presum

ption that it is right to side w

ith infinity, eternity, freedom. This belief is essential to spirif s being

more than a m

erely negative notion (of doubt, despair, and loss of self), but it is not yet the faith of the true self. T

he presumption can

always be defied, even w

hen it is not denied. There is still a problem

. Anti-C

limacus describes despair as a

"misrelation" (M

isforhold) (SUD

, 14). This can easily suggest that despair and the relation (Forhold) are m

utually exclusive, and then w

e are back at the idea that it is only the true self that the expres-sion "relates itself to itself" applies to, w

hich would force us back

either to the first or to the first mixed interpretation. Y

et this prob-lem

, too, can be overcome. W

hat Anti-C

limacus actually says is that

"the misrelation of despair is not a sim

ple misrelation but a m

is-relation in a relation that relates itself to itself" (SU

D, 14, em

phasis added). In other w

ords, what he says is that the reflexive relation

already exists as a precondition of the possibility of a misrelation.

From w

hat we have said, this precondition can be identified as the

self with its spiritual conatus. T

he self relates itself conatively to what

it fundamentally recognizes, accepts, or perhaps has chosen as its

ideal self. The m

isrelation is then an inability to sustain, or direct defiance of, spiritual inertia, prom

pted by the contrary inertial in-fluence of the natural, instinctual "synthesis" w

hich the despair-ing individual exploits as a protective device in the anxiety of

36 International K

ierkegaard Com

mentary

spiritual emergence. A

nti-Clim

acus does not simply say that the

relation in which the m

isrelation occurs relates itself to itself, but also that it is "established" by another (SU

D, 14). The m

isrelation is the self-relating relation's unw

illingness to orient itself to God.

III. This interpretation has the im

portant consequence that with-

out the standing assumption there is no synthesis. The synthesis

is "sustained" by spirit only so far as 'spirit' is understood posi-tively, though only in task term

s. This raises important questions

of the interpretation of Kierkegaard's w

orks as a whole. W

hy, for instance, do the pseudonym

ous works not envisage a nihilistic al-

ternative, in which, according to the above, a "synthesis" w

ould not be an initial part of the fram

ework but itself an option? D

oes the standing assum

ption have some transcendental status, for ex-

ample as a regulative idea? O

r are the pseudonymous w

orks de-liberately confined to a fram

ework in w

hich the standing

assumption has the status of an axiom

? And if so, can that be seen

as deliberate strategy on Kierkegaard's part, or is it rather an in-

dication of his failure to take account of a more com

prehensive kind of despair?

Answ

ering these questions is beyond this essay's scope and its author's capacity; but I can usefully conclude by plotting the space of possibilities in w

hich the answers m

ight be sought. Let us take that space to be bounded by tw

o extremes. O

n the one hand Kier-

kegaard's acceptance of the Christian fram

ework can be read as

culturally determined and passive. W

e know he broke w

ith Chris-

tianity briefly in his early twenties, but this w

as also a crisis in his relationship w

ith his father, so we are not forced to conclude that

the resumption of the fram

ework w

as other than simply a return

to normal. O

n this view, K

ierkegaard's own belief, or disposition

to believe, in the truth of Christian doctrine is essential to the w

ay w

e read him; and K

ierkegaard himself is w

ell placed in the context of a society w

hich, for the most part unlike ours, professed C

hris-tian doctrine. A

t the other extreme K

ierkegaard's own belief is not

essential at all—the im

portant thing is that his readers professed C

hristian faith. Positing the Christian fram

ework as an axiom

is sim

ply a piece of strategy on Kierkegaard's part: his aim

is to show


37

his readers what their professions of faith really com

mit them

to. W

hy? Not, on this interpretation, because K

ierkegaard himself ac-

cepts the content of that faith, though that is surely also true, but because he w

ould insist that whatever a person believes (and in the

case of his intended readers it happens to be Christian doctrine),

his belief should be formed in full clarity about the options be-

tween w

hich it adjudicates. This reading, contrary to the first, gives us a radically decontextualized K

ierkegaard who m

ight conceiva-bly be transported into the present and put on the fram

ework of

disbelief in order to test modern m

an against the over-complacent

acceptance of agnosticism and atheism

. Surely neither extrem

e captures the truth of Kierkegaard's au-

thorship. Nor indeed is it even likely that the m

otivational com-

plex behind his activity can be referred to any single point between

them, not even if w

e confine ourselves to just one phase, say that of 'A

nti-Clim

acus.' As a suggestion on how

the space of possibil-ities m

ight be exploited, I have proposed elsewhere that w

e pick out tw

o different points corresponding to a "passive," or unre-flective, "problem

" aspect and an "active," deliberate "solution" aspect. 4 The passive aspect corresponds to a need, the kind of need that leaves one w

anting a religious framew

ork, and the active ele-m

ent to the adoption of that framew

ork as a solution to the need. W

hatever else may be said of the proposal, it at least has the m

erit of providing a ready explanation of the exclusion of the nihilistic alternative in A

nti-Cliamcus's w

orks. Anti-Clim

acus speaks for the solution, from

a point of view for w

hich the nihilistic alternative does not exist; denying C

hrist is either backsliding within the

framew

ork and to be described as the framew

ork specifies, as fall-ing in w

ith the devil's invention for example, or it is leaving the

framew

ork of the solution and stepping back into that of the need. Problem

and solution thus stand in two different "stages." Put

succinctly, the reason why the fram

ework is a solution is because

it does not contain the conceptual resources for describing the need that gave rise to it. The fram

ework heals the breach by leaving no

room for the problem

; instead, by "engaging] man [in eternity]

4See my "R

efuge and Religion," in Faith, Knowledge, Action: Essays to Niels

Thulstrup, ed. G. L. Stengren (C

openhagen: Reitzel, 1984) 43-53.

38 International K

ierkegaard Com

mentary

absolutely" and making life "infinitely m

ore strenuous than . . . w

hen [one is not] involved in Christianity" (JP 1: 844), it redefines

our needs. Once G

od is there the need is to stand transparently be-fore him

, which is quite different from

the need for there to be a G

od to be able to stand transparently before. A

ny account of the "problem" stage w

ill be colored by the fram

ework in w

hich it is given. Much of K

ierkegaard, particularly A

nti-Climacus, reads as though all that goes before is to be grasped

from the point of view

of what com

es last, namely religiousness.

In the aesthetic works, how

ever, religiousness is approached pro-spectively, from

a dialectical distance, reminding us of H

egel. Just as natural consciousness breaks dow

n on close scrutiny but in the sam

e mom

ent points beyond itself to a higher unity, so the psy-chophysical closure (w

here soul is the determining category) opens

in a splitting of finite and infinite, leaving the self no saving option but to grant its constitution by "another" in eternity and to relate itself to that ideal. But—

as Anti-C

limacus does not m

ake explicit—

that there is this saving option is not given unless we adopt the re-

ligious framew

ork, and before doing that we w

ill have to grant that nihilism

might equally be true. That is the problem

to which the

framew

ork is the solution. W

hether coloring the account of what goes before in the dis-

passionately anthropological way of this proposal takes us nearer

to the heart of Kierkegaard or further aw

ay is, I think, an open question. But to grant that it does take us nearer is to allow

still deeper questions to be raised. Is the need for w

hich the framew

ork is a solution itself "passive" in the sense of our first extrem

e, and thus local in cultural tim

e and place (as Marx claim

s), or has Kier-

kegaard unearthed a universal spiritual need? Secondly, is the fact that C

hristian doctrine comm

ends itself as the only solution also passive in that sense, or is it really the only w

ay out? The vindi-cation of K

ierkegaard's thought for our or any time w

ould seem to

call for the latter answer in each case. 5

5I would like to express m

y gratitude to Robert Perkins for helpful advice on the final disposition of this essay, and to G

rethe Kjaer and lulia Watkin for som

e very practical assistance.

Ill

Kierkegaard's Psychology

and Unconscious D

espair M

erold Westphal

If W

alter Kaufm

ann had written a book on K

ierkegaard, it might

have borne the title Kierkegaard: Philosopher, Psychologist, Chris-

Han. 1 A

nd it might be argued that the three descriptions appear in

an order of ascending importance. If it is obvious that K

ierkegaard thinks of him

self as a Christian thinker first and forem

ost, it is per-haps less evident but no less im

portant that he thinks of himself as

a philosopher. It could even be argued that he calls himself a psy-

chologist to express his role as antiphilosopher. Perhaps Kauf-

mann's subtitle should read: Christian, Psychologist, Antiphilosopher.

Through their subtitles Kierkegaard identifies four of his w

rit-ings as explicitly psychological. Repetition is "A

n Essay in Experi-m

ental Psychology." The Concept of Anxiety is "A

Simple

Psychologically Orienting D

eliberation on the Dogm

atic Issue of H

ereditary Sin." The essay, "Guilty?/N

ot Guilty?" in Stages on Life's

Way is "A

Psychological Experiment." A

nd the work before us, The

Sickness unto Death, is "A

Christian Psychological Exposition for

Upbuilding and A

wakening."

What K

ierkegaard means by psychology is not easy to say.

Sometim

es it seems to connote nothing m

ore than the acute per-ception of the hum

an scene, which is, for exam

ple, the indispens-aThe title of his book on N

ietzsche is Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Anti-christ.

Sickness Unto Death International Kierkegaard Commentary

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