Archetypes of Wisdom

1
Archetypes of Wisdom

• Douglas J. Soccio
• Chapter 15 The Existentialist Soren Kierkegaard

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Existenialism

• One of the most influential, intriguing, an
  arresting responses to the massing of society and
  the loss of genuine respect for the individual
  goes under the name existentialism.
• Existentialism refers to any philosophy that
  asserts that the most important philosophical
  matters involve fundamental questions of meaning
  and choice as they affect actual individuals.
• Existentialists point out that objective science
  and rationalistic philosophy cannot come to grips
  with the real problem of human existence, that
  general answers, grand metaphysical systems, and
  objective theories cannot address the concrete
  concerns of living individuals.

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Søren Kierkegaard

• The most important work of Søren Kierkegaard
  (1813-1855) was virtually ignored during his
  lifetime, partly because he wrote in Danish,
  partly because of what he wrote, and partly
  because of his brilliant use of sarcasm and
  irony.
• Because he rebelled against the system and
  against objectivity, Kierkegaards work confounds
  easy classification. His unscientific and
  unsystematc attacks on conventional Christian
  theology and dogma, on science, and professional
  philosophy took the form of satirical essays,
  parables, anecdotes, real and fictional
  journals.
• Kierkegaard saw himself as a disciple of
  Socrates. And like Socrates, Kierkegaards life
  and work make a seamless whole.

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The Family Curse

• Born in Copenhagen, Denmark, this youngest of
  seven children was deeply and permanently
  influenced by his father Michael, a strict and
  devout Lutheran.
• Michael Kierkegaard lived his life without peace
  of mind for his two great sins cursing God and
  having sexual relations with a housemaid right
  after his wife had died. And Søren carried his
  fathers legacy a sense of despair and
  melancholy and an obsession with the possibility
  of a finite individuals relationship with an
  infinite God.
• In 1830, Kierkegaard enrolled in the University
  of Copenhagen to study theology, but soon
  discovered it did not interest him as much as
  philosophy and literature, and spent the next ten
  years drinking and attending the theatre. In
  1838, just before his father died, Søren returned
  to theology, passing his exams with honors in
  1840.

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The Universal Formula

• At the age of 27, Kierkegaard fell in love with a
  14 year-old girl, named Regina Olsen - and the
  two became engaged when she turned 17.
• Almost immediately Kierkegaard broke off the
  engagement, but struggled for the rest of his
  life to explain why (one possibility is the
  conformity marriage suggested to him).
• But two weeks after his sacrifice of Regina
  Olsen, he fled to Berlin, where he wrote
  Either/Or, A Fragment of Life (1843), his first
  important work, and Repetition An Essay in
  Experimental Psychology (1843), through which he
  hoped to reestablish his relation with Regina.
• Kierkegaard interpreted the story of Isaac being
  returned to Abraham to mean that if you give up
  something for God, you get it back plus the love
  and salvation of God. Applying this formula to
  himself, he reasoned that if he gave up Regina
  to devote himself to God, he would get both.

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The Christian

• Struggling with the existential predicament of
  choice and commitment, Kierkegaard grew
  increasingly interested in what it means to be a
  Christian.
• But he became convinced that institutionalized
  Christianity suffers the same inauthenticity as
  other institutions.
• Inauthenticity results when the nature and needs
  of the individual are ignored, denied, obscured,
  or made less important than institutions,
  abstractions, or groups.
• Authenticity is the subjective condition of an
  individual living honestly and courageously in
  the moment without refuge in excuses or reliance
  on groups or institutions for meaning and purpose.

7
That Individual

• On October 2, 1855, Kierkegaard visited his
  banker brother-in-law to withdraw the last of his
  money. On his way home, he fell to the street,
  paralyzed from the waist down.
• Destitute, helpless, and weak, Søren Kierkegaard
  died quietly November 11, 1855, at the age of 42,
  and was buried in the huge Cathedral Church of
  Copenhagen.
• The most interesting epitaph for Kierkegaard is
  found in his own words The Martyrdom this
  author suffered may be briefly described thus He
  suffered from being a genius in a provincial town
  The standard he appliedwas on the average too
  great for his contemporariesYet he himself was
  that individual if no one else was, and became
  that more and more.

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Truth as Subjectivity

• The major existential issue is, How am I to
  exist?
• I must find a truth for me, to find the idea for
  which I can live and die.
• For Kierkegaard, no amount of objective, abstract
  knowledge could ever provide a meaning for life.
• Truth is a subjective condition not an objective
  one.
• Kierkegaard rejects any descriptive or systematic
  approach to dealing wit that individual.

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Objectivity as Untruth

• For the most part, philosophers have agreed that
  arguments should be evaluated rationally and
  objectively. But Kierkegaard vehemently
  disagreed, considering objectivity and
  impartiality to be dangerous delusions. Not only
  is impartiality impossible, but claims of
  objectivity and disinterestedness are always
  lies.
• Preferring objective impartiality to subjective
  involvement is itself a bias Favoring
  objectivity is a form of partiality. Moreover,
  reason is a mere abstraction, a noble-sounding
  term that conceals an individual, subjective
  choice.
• To complicate matters even more, the impersonal
  quality of objective language reduces the
  uniqueness of individual existence to mere
  generalizations, abstractions, and features held
  in common. What is individual is not described.

10
The Present Age

• Kierkegaard lamented what he termed the massing
  of society.
• In contemporary society the crowd overwhelms
  the individual yet the individual feels lost
  without the crowd.
• Modern people are anonymous creatures who depend
  upon experts to point the way towards salvation.
• Rather than being themselves modern people simply
  conform to an abstract type.
• Modern people are reduced to numerical equal at
  the expense of their own authenticity.

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Becoming a Subject

• For Kierkegaard I exist (specifically as a
  Christian) when I appropriate my belief by taking
  it up subjectively.
• There is a qualitative difference between what we
  often call existence and what Kierkegaard means
  by truly existing.
• To act is not merely to behave but to assent with
  my whole being, even though one lack sufficient
  objective information.

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Stages on Lifes Way

• The Aesthetic Stage is characterized by the
  pursuit of sensuous pleasure.
• The aesthetic stage is immoral and exemplified by
  Don Juan.
• The Ethical Stage is characterized by making
  commitments to the norms, principles and customs
  of ones society.
• The ethical stage is secularly moral and
  exemplified by Kantian ethics.

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Stages on Lifes Way

• The Religious Stage involves a teleological
  suspension of the ethical.
• This stage of life can only be brought about by a
  leap of faith.
• The religious stage is exemplified by Abrahams
  willingness to sacrifice his son Isaac.
• From any perspective but that of faith what
  Abraham did was absurd.
• Only faith allows us to be our authentic,
  existing selves.