Søren Kierkegaard is one of the great philosophers. Often underrated or philosophically castrated due to his religious beliefs, he nevertheless produced some of the most brilliant and profound insights about what it means to be human. This essay will explore some themes of his work as it relates to living in this world.
Kierkegaard believed that we all face the task of becoming ourselves.1 Just as we understand that we require rather substantial physical development after we are born, and we require years of education for our intellectual development, so too do we require a spiritual development: the task of becoming ourselves.
Exploring what it means to "become ourselves" should be the task of philosophy, and yet Kierkegaard was incredibly dissatisfied with the philosophy of his time's attempts at answering those questions. He "criticized the abstractions of modern philosophy," believing instead that we must face this task of becoming ourselves, of working out who we are and how we should live right here in the middle of the very life we are trying to figure out.2
In Repetition, Kierkegaard wrote extensively on human freedom and responsibility. One of the ways Kierkegaard argues that we can break through the monotony and banality of daily life is, paradoxically, through repetition. While at first, this sounds completely backwards–we typically associate monotony and banality with the very repetitive daily routines that we become stuck in… "ruts" so to speak–it is in fact within these repetitions where we can find the more profound meaning and depth in our life.
We live in a culture that overrates novelty and underrates repetition. We boast about how many books we've read this year, not how many times we re-read the same book. Likewise, we look for new movies and tv shows instead of returning to our favorites to see what we might have missed. And we believe that we might find greater meaning in our lives through the breaking of routines, spontaneous trips to places we've never been. That sudden changes in our life will suddenly bring us the happiness and meaning we've long been searching for. But we know that isn't the case. We know the meaning isn't there. While there is value in those things, we would do well not to burden the joys of traveling with the weight of providing the meaning that should already be within us.
But, much like scientific experiments, we can only learn through repetition so we can learn from the changes that occur. And for Kierkegaard, it is human nature that is a changing, creative task for each individual.3 Therefore, we can only start to know what it is to be human when we stabilize our environment, when we experience repetition through our changing selves as we create ourselves.
Furthermore, we often think that "disconnecting" is the right answer to find meaning. While I'm a big advocate for disconnecting from the technologies that pervade our lives, often having shown up and infiltrated our daily lives without our consent, this is a disconnecting of a different sort. We think a retreat, or a spiritual experience that removes us from our bodies or worldly experiences, will give us greater access to the meaning of existence. Kierkegaard warns against becoming "knights of resignation," (which he compares to knights of faith in Fear & Trembling) who stand apart from the world, spiritually elevated and remote.4 Knights of resignation are like the prisoner in Plato's cave who, having escaped the realm of the shadows and have stepped out into the real world with its color and sunshine, refuses to return to the cave to help his fellow prisoners to freedom. If you refuse to go back into the cave, you miss something vital about the task of becoming yourself.
One of the most important pursuits an individual can undergo is the pursuit of truth. Yet, the truths that must be pursued are not truths that can be known or trapped, but must somehow be lived.5 It is not enough to know the truth. You have to live the truth. This begins by examining the fundamental aspects of human existence and experience. But this is a skill and method that we have eradicated from modern discourse.
Underlying our lives is a "spontaneous trust" in our perception, which is like a kind of faith.6 The greatest philosophers questioned this trust, this faith, that we hold in our perceptions. The philosopher Socrates, arguably the greatest to ever live the truth (and die the truth) questioned this faith. His questions led in "a new direction, away from what the world recognized as conventional wisdom, and towards a higher truth."7 Kierkegaard believed we have to return to this Socratic direction towards a higher truth.
Not long before Kierkegaard lived (in the early 19th Century), we mutated the idea of truth into the "correctness of human perception," or rather its correspondence to a reality independent of the mind.8 But the problem with this mutation towards mind-independent objectivity is that our very understanding of truth as objectivity necessitates a reliance on the notion of subjectivity.9 As Kierkegaard puts it, stop the train, disembark, and investigate life at a stand still. We are constantly chugging forwards down the track, and it is from this perspective alone that we can investigate life.
Historically, before the 17th Century paradigm shift that led to the mutation above, to inform, to come into contact with truth, was "transformative of character" rather than narrowly defining truth simply as that which "reduces uncertainty."10 We have since lost this transformative idea of truth.
Philosopher Martin Heidegger, no stranger to Socrates or Kierkegaard, believed that phenomenology was not so different from the questions we find in the Ancient Greek philosophical texts of (Socrates) Plato and Aristotle. It investigates that which moves within the horizon of ontology, the very space in which being takes place. It is in-the-world, not peering in from some external reality. Without this investigation, we begin to confuse our perception of the world with the really Real. We take our perceptions for granted, merging the meanings provided to us with the fundamental meanings inherent in the universe.11 This is very difference from what Kierkegaard advocates for. We must subjectively challenge our perceptions. Repetition enables us to examine ourselves, to become ourselves, and live our lives anchored in the truth that sustains us and the power that created us.
This is where Socrates is not enough. Kierkegaard turns to Christ. There is a strong parallel between Socrates and Christ: both infuriated their contemporaries to the point of execution.12 But where Socrates asks the Athenians who they were, and whether they knew themselves, Christ asks "Who do you say that I am?" But he did not ask because he needed an answer, but to make the listener confront themselves.13 Both Socrates and Christ used irony to reflexively force the individual to look inwards and investigate themselves. Unlike more direct language, irony is a "singularly indirect mode of communication," permitting Socrates and Christ to pose "surreptitious questions" and express what they could not say directly.14 It is a figure of speech or trope in which the speaker intends to communication something contrary to what is actually being said.15 This "ironic mask" allows Socrates and Christ to communicate to those who are ready to hear what they have to say, whilst concealing that thought from the rest.16 Irony can often be found in the hidden subtext "beneath" the text, the literal words themselves acting as a mask or veil for the true meaning hidden underneath. Most, if not all, classic texts contain this subtext. For example, F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby is popular because of its text--the story about rich people and their various relationships--but it lives forever because of its subtext.17 Kierkegaard used irony extensively. The most apparent example was his use of pseudonyms in his written publications. But it can also be found in the texts themselves, such as when he would write something deliberately naive or contrary to his actual position as a way of demonstrating what he actually knew and believed. For example, in his publication Either/Or, he famously wrote of the Seducer's Diary. There, he explicitly discusses the attempted seduction of a lady from the perspective of her seducer, not because Kierkegaard believed such acts were honorable or good for man, but to demonstrate the pitfalls of the aesthetic life he was criticizing.
Late comedian Norm MacDonald is perhaps one of the great modern ironists. He constantly presented himself as somewhat simple, unintelligent, and socially unaware. But it was precisely these characteristics that show you his unmatched complexity, intelligence, and social prowess. Or indeed, those with clinical depression will often use sarcasm and jokes as the "bottle" in which they send out their most potent screams for someone to care and help them.18 But Kierkegaard criticized the irony of his present day, arguing that it had no anchor.19 It "emptied everything out, draining nobility out of truth, virtue out of courage, until there's no reason to be honest or brave.”20 To what should irony be anchored? God.
In irony, then, the truth can be lived. What at first seems paradoxically opposed becomes the only way to truly achieve the living of truth.
The task of becoming ourselves is not a project that can be finished in a lifetime. To live is to change, to "encounter others who are also changing, and to learn how to inhabit a changing world."21 This presents a new task not only for each individual, but for each individual again each day. Learning to love is a new task for each individual.22 But if you are open to the truth, if you are content to let the truth trap you in your pursuit of truth, and if you are willing to accept the change and flux that we encounter every day, you might just succeed in the task of becoming yourself. And, though many philosophers would hate to admit it, the best way to do this is to first love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, and soul, and second to love your neighbor as yourself. The first commandment is your anchor, the second commandment is your purpose. Augustine believed you would never be happy or content without following these two commandments. Kierkegaard believed you would never become yourself without them. We would be wise to see if they're right.
Carlisle, Clare. Philosopher of the Heart: The Restless Life of Søren Kierkegaard, 2020. p. 61.
Id. at xiii.
Id. at 30.
Id. at 46.
Id. at 4.
Milbank, John, Catherine Pickstock, and Graham Ward, eds. Radical Orthodoxy: A New Theology. London ; New York: Routledge, 1999.
Carlisle, 8.
Carmen Paredes, Maria del. “Amicus Plato Magis Amica Veritas: Reading Heidegger in Plato’s Cave.” In Heidegger & Plato: Towards Dialogue, 108–20. Evanston, Ill: Northwestern University Press, n.d. p. 111.
Ibid.
Callister, Paul D. “Law and Heidegger’s Question Concerning Technology: Prolegomenon to Future Law Librarianship.” Law Library Journal 99, no. 2 (2007): 285–305. p. 297.
Berger, Peter L. The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion. New York: Anchor Books, 1990. p. 25.
Montgomery, John Warwick. History & Christianity. San Bernardino, CA: Here’s Life Pub., 1983. p. 12.
Ibid.
Carlisle, 11.
Johannesson, Asgeir Theodor. “Socratic Irony: What Is It?,” n.d., 25. p. 3.
Id. at 17.
See Klosterman, Chuck. But What If We’re Wrong? Thinking about the Present as If It Were the Past. New York: Blue Rider Press, 2016. Kindle Ed. loc 608.
See Wallace, David Foster. Infinite Jest. Back Bay 10th anniversary pbk. ed. New York: Back Bay Books, 2006.
Carlisle, 11.
Id. at 11.
Id. at 43.
Id. at 38.