Part 2

About a year afterwards (1843) there appeared his first great work, "Either-Or," which at once established his fame. As in the case of most of his works it will be impossible to give here more than the barest outline of its plan and contents. In substance, it is a grand debate between the æsthetic and the ethic views of life. In his dissertation Kierkegaard had already characterized the æsthetic point of view. Now, in a brilliant series of articles, he proceeds' to exemplify it with exuberant detail.

The fundamental chord of the first part is struck in the _Diapsalmata_ aphorisms which, like so many flashes of a lantern, illuminate the æsthetic life, its pleasures and its despair. The æsthetic individual--this is brought out in the article entitled "The Art of Rotation"--wishes to be the exception in human society, shirking its common, humble duties and claiming special privileges. He has no fixed principle except that he means not to be bound to anything or anybody. He has but one desire which is, to enjoy the sweets of life--whether its purely sensual pleasures or the more refined Epicureanism of the finer things in life and art, and the ironic enjoyment of one's own superiority over the rest of humanity; and he has no fear except that he may succumb to boredom.

As a comment on this text there follow a number of essays in "experimental psychology," supposed to be the fruit of the æsthete's (A's) leisure. In them the æsthetic life is exhibited in its various manifestations, in "terms of existence," especially as to its "erotic stages," from the indefinite longings of the Page to the fully conscious "sensual genius" of Don Juan--the examples are taken from Mozart's opera of this name, which was Kierkegaard's favorite--until the whole culminates in the famous "Diary of the Seducer," containing elements of the author's own engagement, poetically disguised--a seducer, by the way, of an infinitely reflective kind.

Following this climax of unrestrained æstheticism we hear in the second part the stern demands of the ethical life. Its spokesman, Judge William, rises in defense of the social institutes, and of marriage in particular, against the slurs cast on them by his young friend A. He makes it clear that the only possible outcome of the æsthetic life, with its aimlessness, its superciliousness, its vague possibilities, is a feeling of vanity and vexation of spirit, and a hatred of life itself: despair. One floundering in this inevitable slough of despond, who earnestly wishes to escape from it and to save himself from the ultimate destruction of his personality, must choose and determine to rise into the ethical sphere. That is, he must elect a definite calling, no matter how humdrum, marry, if possible, and thus subject himself to the "general law." In a word, instead of a world of vague possibilities, however attractive, he must choose the definite circumscription of the individual who is a member of society. Only thus will he obtain a balance in his life between the demands of his personality on the one hand, and of the demands of society on him. When thus reconciled to his environment--his "lot"--all the pleasures of the æsthetic sphere which he resigned will be his again in rich measure, but in a transfigured sense.

Though nobly eloquent in places, and instinct with warm feeling, this panegyric on marriage and the fixed duties of life is somewhat unconvincing, and its style undeniably tame and unctious--at least when contrasted with the Satanic verve of most of A's papers. The fact is that Kierkegaard, when considering the ethical sphere, in order to carry out his plan of contrasting it with the æsthetic sphere, was already envisaging the higher sphere of religion, to which the ethical sphere is but a transition, and which is the only true alternative to the æsthetic life. At the very end of the book Kierkegaard, flying his true colors, places a sermon as an "ultimatum," purporting to have been written by a pastor on the Jutish Heath. Its text is that "as against God we are always in the wrong," and the tenor of it, "only that truth which edifies is truth for you." It is not that you must choose either the æsthetic or the ethical view of life; but that neither the one nor the other is the full truth--God alone is the truth which must be grasped with all inwardness. But since we recognize our imperfections, or sins, the more keenly, as we are developed more highly, our typical relation to God must be that of repentance; and by repentance as by a step we may rise into the higher sphere of religion--as will be seen, a purely Christian thought.

A work of such powerful originality, imposing by its very size, and published at the anonymous author's own expense, could not but create a stir among the small Danish reading public. And notwithstanding Kierkegaard's consistent efforts to conceal his authorship in the interest of his "indirect communication," it could not long remain a secret. The book was much, and perplexedly, discussed, though no one was able to fathom the author's real aim, most readers being attracted by piquant subjects such as the "Diary of the Seducer," and regarding the latter half as a feeble afterthought. As he said himself: "With my left hand I held out to the world 'Either-Or,' with my right, 'Two Edifying Discourses'; but they all--or practically all--seized with their right hands what I held in my left."

These "Two Edifying Discourses[4]"--for thus he preferred to call them, rather than sermons, because he claimed no authority to preach--as well as all the many later ones, were published over his own name, addressed to Den Enkelte "The Single Individual whom with joy and gratitude he calls his reader," and were dedicated to the memory of his father. They belong among the noblest books of edification, of which the North has not a few.

During the following three years (1843-5) Kierkegaard, once roused to productivity, though undoubtedly kept at his task by the exertion of marvelous will-power, wrote in quick succession some of his most notable works--so original in form, in thought, in content that it is a well-nigh hopeless task to analyze them to any satisfaction. All we can do here is to note the development in them of the one grand theme which is fundamental to all his literary activity: how to become a Christian.

If the second part of "Either-Or" was devoted to an explanation of the nature of the ethical, as against the æsthetic, conduct of life, inevitably the next task was, first, to define the nature of the religious life, as against the merely ethical life; then, to show how the religious sphere may be attained. This is done in the brilliant twin books _Frygt og Baeven_ "Fear and Trembling" and _Gjentagelsen_ "Repetition." Both were published over pseudonyms.

"Fear and Trembling" bears as its subtitle "Dialectic Lyrics." Indeed, nowhere perhaps is Kierkegaard's strange union of dialectic subtlety and intense lyrical power and passion so strikingly in evidence as in this panegyric on Abraham, the father of faith. To Kierkegaard he is the shining exemplar of the religious life; and his greatest act of faith, his obedience to God's command to slay Isaac. Nothing can surpass the eloquence with which he depicts the agony of the father, his struggle between the ethical, or general, law which, saith "thou shalt no kill"! and God's specific command. In the end, Abraham by a grand resolve transgresses the law; and lo! because he has faith, against certainty, that he will keep Isaac, and does not merely resign him, as many a tragic hero would have done, he receives all again, in a new and higher sphere. In other words, Abraham chooses to be "the exception" and set aside the general law, as well as does the æsthetic individual; but, note well: "in fear and trembling," and at the express command of God! He is a "knight of faith." But because this direct relation to the divinity necessarily can be certain only to Abraham's self, his action is altogether incomprehensible to others. Reason recoils before the absolute paradox of the individual who chooses to rise superior to the general law.

The rise into the religious sphere is always likely to be the outcome of some severe inner conflict engendering infinite passion. In the splendidly written _Gjentagelse_ "Repetition" we are shown _ad oculos_ an abortive transition into the religious sphere, with a corresponding relapse into the æsthetic sphere. Kierkegaard's own love-story is again drawn upon: the "Young Person" ardently loves the woman; but discovers to his consternation that she is in reality but a burden to him since, instead of having an actual, living relation to her, he merely "remembers" her when she is present. In the ensuing collision of motives his æsthetically cool friend Constantin Constantius advises him to act as one unworthy of her--as did Kierkegaard--and to forget her. But instead of following this advice, and lacking a deeper religious background, he flees the town and subsequently transmutes his trials into poetry--that is, relapses into the æsthetic sphere: rather than, like Job, whom he apostrophises passionately, "receiving all again" (having all "repeated") in a higher sphere. This idea of the resumption of a lower stage into a higher one is one of Kierkegaard's most original and fertile thoughts. It is illustrated here with an amazing wealth of instances.

So far, it had been a question of religious feeling in general--how it may arise, and what its nature is. In the pivotal work _Philosophiske Smuler_ "Philosophic Trifles"--note the irony--Kierkegaard throws the searching rays of his penetrating intellect on the grand problem of revealed religion: can one's eternal salvation be based on an historical event? This is the great stumbling block to the understanding.

Hegel's philosophic optimism maintained that the difficulties of Christianity had been completely "reconciled" or "mediated" in the supposedly higher synthesis of philosophy, by which process religion had been reduced to terms which might be grasped by the intellect. Kierkegaard, fully voicing the claim both of the intellect and of religion, erects the barrier of the paradox, impassable except by the act of faith. As will be seen, this is Tertullian's _Credo quia absurdum._[5]

In the briefest possible outline his argument is as follows: Socrates had taught that in reality every one had the truth in him and needed but to be reminded of it by the teacher who thus is necessary only in helping the disciple to discover it himself. That is the indirect communication of the truth. But now suppose that the truth is not innate in man, suppose he has merely the ability to grasp it when presented to him. And suppose the teacher to be of absolute, infinite importance--the Godhead himself, directly communicating with man, revealing the truth in the shape of man; in fact, as the lowliest of men, yet insisting on implicit belief in Him! This, according to Kierkegaard, constitutes the paradox of faith _par excellence._ But this paradox, he shows, existed for the generation contemporaneous with Christ in the same manner as it does for those living now. To think that faith was an easier matter for those who saw the Lord and walked in His blessed company is but a sentimental, and fatal, delusion. On the other hand, to found one's faith on the glorious results, now evident, of Christ's appearance in the world is sheer thoughtlessness and blasphemy. With ineluctable cogency it follows that "there can be no disciple at second hand." Now, as well as "1800 years ago," whether in Heathendom or in Christendom, faith is born of the same conditions: the resolute acceptance by the individual of the absolute paradox.

In previous works Kierkegaard had already intimated that what furnished man the impetus to rise into the highest sphere and to assail passionately and incessantly the barrier of the paradox, or else caused him to lapse into "demonic despair," was the consciousness of sin. In the book _Begrebet Angest_ "The Concept of Sin," he now attempts with an infinite and laborious subtlety to explain the nature of sin. Its origin is found in the "sympathetic antipathy" of Dread--that force which at one and the same time attracts and repels from the suspected danger of a fall and is present even in the state of innocence, in children. It finally results in a kind of "dizziness" which is fatal. Yet, so Kierkegaard contends, the "fall" of man is, in every single instance, due to a definite act of the will, a "leap"--which seems a patent contradiction.

To the modern reader, this is the least palatable of Kierkegaard's works, conceived as it is with a sovereign and almost medieval disregard of the predisposing undeniable factors of environment and heredity (which, to be sure, poorly fit his notion of the absolute responsibility of the individual). Its somberness is redeemed, to a certain degree, by a series of marvelous observations, drawn from history and literature, on the various phases and manifestations of Dread in human life.

On the same day as the book just discussed there appeared, as a "counter-irritant," the hilariously exuberant _Forord_ "Forewords," a collection of some eight playful but vicious attacks, in the form of prefaces, on various foolish manifestations of Hegelianism in Denmark. They are aimed chiefly at the high-priest of the "system," the poet Johan Ludvig Heiberg who, as the _arbiter elegantiarum_ of the times had presumed to review, with a plentiful lack of insight, Kierkegaard's activity. But some of the most telling shots are fired at a number of the individualist Kierkegaard's pet aversions.

His next great work, _Stadier paa Livets Vei_ "Stages on Life's Road," forms a sort of resume of the results so far gained. The three "spheres" are more clearly elaborated.

The æsthetic sphere is represented existentially by the incomparable _In Vino Veritas_, generally called "The Banquet," from a purely literary point of view the most perfect of Kierkegaard's works, which, if written in one of the great languages of Europe, would have procured him world fame. Composed in direct emulation of Plato's immortal Symposion, it bears comparison with it as well as any modern composition can.[6] Indeed, it excels Plato's work in subtlety, richness, and refined humor. To be sure, Kierkegaard has charged his creation with such romantic super-abundance of delicate observations and rococo ornament that the whole comes dangerously near being improbable; whereas the older work stands solidly in reality.

It is with definite purpose that the theme of the speeches of the five participants in the banquet is love, i.e., the relation of the two sexes in love; for it is there the main battle between the æsthetic and the ethical view of life must be fought out. Accordingly, Judge William, to whom the last idyllic pages of "The Banquet" again introduce us, in the second part breaks another shaft in defense of marriage, which in the ethical view of life is the typical realization of the "general law." Love exists also for the ethical individual. In fact, love and no other consideration whatsoever can justify marriage. But whereas to the æsthetic individual love is merely eroticism, viz., a passing self-indulgence without any obligation, the ethical individual attaches to himself the woman of his choice by an act of volition, for better or for worse, and by his marriage vow incurs an obligation to society. Marriage is thus a synthesis of love and duty. A pity only that Kierkegaard's astonishingly low evaluation of woman utterly mars what would otherwise be a classic defense of marriage.

The religious sphere is shown forth in the third part, _Skyldig--Ikke-Skyldig_ "Guilty--Not-Guilty," with the apt subtitle "A History of Woe." Working over, for the third time, and in the most intense fashion, his own unsuccessful attempt to "realize the general law," i.e., by marrying, he here presents in the form of a diary the essential facts of his own engagement, but in darker colors than in "Repetition." It is broken because of religious incompatibility and the lover's unconquerable melancholy; and by his voluntary renunciation, coupled with acute suffering through his sense of guilt for his act, he is driven up to an approximation of the religious sphere. Not unjustly, Kierkegaard himself regarded this as the richest of his works.

One may say that "Guilty--Not-Guilty" corresponds to Kierkegaard's own development at this stage. Christianity is still above him. How may it be attained? This is the grand theme of the huge book whimsically named "Final Unscientific Postscript to the Philosophical Trifles," _Afsluttende Uvidenskabelig Efterskrift_ (1846): "How shall I become a Christian, I, Johannes Climacus, born in this city, thirty years of age, and not in any way different from the ordinary run of men"?

Following up the results gained in the "Trifles," the subjectivity of faith is established once for all: it is not to be attained by swearing to any set of dogmas, not even Scripture; for who will vouch for its being an absolutely reliable and inspired account of Christ? Besides, as Lessing had demonstrated conclusively: historic facts never can become the proof of eternal verities. Nor can the existence of the Church through the ages furnish any guarantee for faith--straight counter to the opinion, held by Kierkegaard's famous contemporary Grundtvig--any more than can mere contemporaneousness establish a guarantee for those living at the beginning. To sum up: "One who has an objective Christianity and nothing else, he is _eo ipso_ a heathen." For the same reason, "philosophic speculation" is not the proper approach, since it seeks to understand Christianity objectively, as an historic phenomenon--which rules it out from the start.

It is only by a decisive "leap," from objective thinking into subjective faith, with the consciousness of sin as the driving power, that the individual may realize (we would say, attain) Christianity. Nor is it gained once for all, but must ever be maintained by passionately assailing the paradox of faith, which is, that one's eternal salvation is based on an historic fact. The main thing always is the "how," not the "what." Kierkegaard goes so far as to say that he who with fervency and inwardness prays to some false god is to be preferred to him who worships the true god, but without the passion of devotion.

In order to prevent any misunderstanding about the manner of presentation in this remarkable book, it will be well to add Kierkegaard's own remark after reading a conscientious German review of his "Trifles": "Although the account given is correct, every one who reads it will obtain an altogether incorrect impression of the book; because the account the critic gives is in the _ex cathedra style_ (docerende), which will produce on the reader the impression that the book is written in a like manner. But this is in my eyes the worst misconception possible." And as to its peculiar conversational, entertaining manner which in the most leisurely, legère fashion and in an all but dogmatic style treats of the profoundest problems, it is well to recall the similarly popular manner of Pascal in his _Lettres Provinciales._ Like him--and his grand prototype Socrates--Kierkegaard has the singular faculty of attacking the most abstruse matters with a chattiness bordering on frivolity, yet without ever losing dignity.

For four and a half years Kierkegaard had now, notwithstanding his feeble health, toiled feverishly and, as he himself states, without even a single day's remission. And "the honorarium had been rather Socratic": all of his books had been brought out at his own expense, and their sale had been, of course, small. (Of the "Final Postscript," e.g., which had cost him between 500 and 600 rixdollars, only 60 copies were sold). Hardly any one had understood what the purpose of this "literature" was. He himself had done, with the utmost exertion and to the best of his ability, what he set out to do: to show his times, which had assumed that being a Christian is an easy enough matter, how unspeakably difficult a matter it really is and what terribly severe demands it makes on natural man. He now longed for rest and seriously entertained the plan of bringing his literary career to a close and spending the remainder of his days as a pastor of some quiet country parish, there to convert his philosophy into terms of practical existence. But this was not to be. An incident which would seem ridiculously small to a more robust nature sufficed to inflict on Kierkegaard's sensitive mind the keenest tortures and thus to sting him into a renewed and more passionate literary activity.

As it happened, the comic paper _Korsaren_ "The Corsair" was then at the heyday of its career. The first really democratic periodical in Denmark, it stood above party lines and through its malicious, brilliant satire and amusing caricatures of prominent personalities was hated, feared, and enjoyed by everybody. Its editor, the Jewish author Meir Goldschmidt, was a warm and outspoken admirer of the philosopher. Kierkegaard, on the other hand, had long regarded the Press with suspicion. He loathed it because it gave expression to, and thus subtly flattered, the multitude, "the public," "the mob"--as against the individual, and because it worked with the terrible weapon of anonymity; but held it especially dangerous by reason of its enormous circulation and daily repetition of mischievous falsehoods. So it seemed to him who ever doubted the ability of the "people" to think for themselves. In a word, the Press is to him "the evil principle in the modern world." Needless to say, the tactics of "The Corsair," in particular, infuriated him.

In a Christmas annual (1845) there had appeared a blundering review, by one of the collaborators on "The Corsair," of his "Stages on Life's Road." Seizing the opportunity offered, Kierkegaard wrote a caustic rejoinder, adding the challenge: "Would that I now soon appear in 'The Corsair.' It is really hard on a poor author to be singled out in Danish literature by remaining the only one who is not abused in it." We know now that Goldschmidt did his best in a private interview to ward off a feud, but when rebuffed he turned the batteries of his ridicule on the personality of his erstwhile idol. And for the better part of a year the Copenhagen public was kept laughing and grinning about the unequal trouser legs, the spindle shanks, the inseparable umbrella, the dialectic propensities, of "Either-Or," as Kierkegaard came to be called by the populace; for, owing to his peripatetic habits--acquired in connection with the Indirect Communication--he had long been a familiar figure on the streets of the capital. While trying to maintain an air of indifference, he suffered the tortures of the damned. In his Journal (several hundred of whose pages are given over to reflections on this experience) we find exclamations such as this one: "What is it to be roasted alive at a slow fire, or to be broken on the wheel or, as they do in warm climates, to be smeared with honey and put at the mercy of the insects--what is that in comparison with this torture: to be grinned to death!"