Existentialism Essay #1: Kierkegaard

This was my first essay for a tutorial here in Oxford. It's... not as good as it might have been. In my defense, however, my primary text was Kierkegaard's Journals, which are nigh-incomprehensible. They are, quite literally, his diary entries over a period of twenty years. Yeah. You try sorting through those in an attempt to get at some philosophical worth. It was quite an experience, but it was dang hard. So, here it is: Essay #1, Søren Kierkegaard vs. the Church

As a child, Søren Kierkegaard may have "seemed to be very conservative, to honor the king, love the Church, and respect the police," but in later years he would become famous for standing against the Danish Church and all that it stood for (Kirmmse 11). His radical philosophy and theology not only helped create a new form of Christianity which was significantly different than anything else suggested at the time, it laid much of the groundwork for the 20th century Existentialist movement. Many of his ideas sprang originally from his dissatisfaction with the Church of Denmark and, indeed, all of what he called "Christendom." Though he found many things about the state Church upsetting, much of his criticism seemed to center around two different, though interrelated, themes: the predominance of an emotionless, Hegelian emphasis on the objective and a general trend in the Church towards the de-emphasis of the individual Christian in the Church.

Kierkegaard's conception of Christianity was that of a highly private, individual and subjective experience. It was not a collective journey towards redemption, but rather an individual "life-and-death struggle between man and God," (Journals 575). "Christianity," he felt, "does not unite people-- no, it separates them-- in order to unite every single one with God" (Journals 574). The Church, he felt, was not allowing for this true life and death struggle between an individual man and his Creator, but was rather expending "every effort… to have us all look alike," to treat all of the individual Christians not, indeed as individual Christians at all, but rather as part of a vast body. It was this tendency that caused him to rebel against the Church and lay the foundations of his own proto-existentialist theology.

Many of the Christians of Kierkegaard's day, namely the Danish People's Church, were attempting to adopt Hegel's concept of the "Absolute" for their own use by equating it with their own form of Christianity. Kierkegaard opposed this adoption of Hegelianism because he believed it distracted the Christian away from what he viewed as the true purpose of Christian theology: the actions of Christ. For Kierkegaard, "Christian dogmatics must be an explication of Christ's activity… since Christ established no teaching, but was active," (Journals 14). Hegelian Christianity, however, as Kierkegaard saw it, "teaches that there is something absolute, and demands of the Christian that his life express that something absolute exists" (Journals 331). In other words, the Christian's life should easily show the objective nature of the Absolute that is God. Kierkegaard, however, is quick to point out that he has "never seen anyone whose life expressed that," and that despite all their exhortations for objectivity, their lives "express that man exists in relativity," (Journals 331). Kierkegaard argues that this emphasis on a cold, objective Absolute calls for a life which no person can really live. It is impossible to live in a way which really speaks to the existence of this objective truth, because it is the nature of man's daily life that he must exist in subjectivity. Not only is this impossible, but this emphasis paints Christianity as a cold, purely mental series of discussions about an abstract concept rather than as a dynamic and highly personal way of life.

Why, then, Kierkegaard asks, would one want to be a Christian? Kierkegaard argues that the life of a Christian is a difficult one, and that there are two answers to this question. The first, the Hegelian one, is in Kierkegaard's own rather entertaining words, "Shut up! Christianity is the absolute, you just have to!" (Journals 342). This is not a very compelling answer, Kierkegaard argues. Simply ordering someone to be a Christian so that he can be in line with the march of some abstract Absolute is not terribly convincing. The other answer is Kierkegaard's own subjective, emotional appeal that "because the consciousness of sin within [the Christian] grants him no peace, the pain of it gives him the strength to bear all else if only he can find redemption," (Journals 342). In other words, if a person believes he can find redemption through Christianity, he will have the strength to bear anything. One should not become a Christian simply because one has to be in line with the march of history, but rather because it gives one the strength to carry on despite one's sin and guilt. Any other reason is "quite literally lunacy" (Journals 342).

Kierkegaard's other worry was that the church was radically de-emphasizing the importance of an individual's own search for truth. He fears that as the church is constantly attempting to prove its own authority through creeds and attempting to "hit people over the head with the Bible" it is discouraging any individual pursuit of truth (Journals 43). Hegel and many of the other "profound thinkers" argue that "isolated subjectivity" is evil, and that objectivity is the "saving factor" (Journals 468). Kierkegaard agrees that true isolated subjectivity is an evil, but that the way to cure it is to "go all the way through to 'the single individual' -- face to face with God" (Journals 468). The problem with isolated subjectivity is not that it is subjective, it is that it is isolated the solution is to continue in the subjective path to the point where God is once again a subject and not merely an object. In the Church's attempts to standardize Christian beliefs across the board, they are reducing God to the status of an object, an impersonal Something rather than a Someone. By encouraging people to seek their own, subjective truths, rather than standardizing an objective truth, they will ensure that the people who come to Christianity in this way will view God as a subject, a Someone, and not merely as a collection of scattered ideas without any real emotional content.

Faced by the onslaught of objectivity, Kierkegaard feared that real Christianity was practically nonexistent in "Christendom," replaced only by a hollow, state-sanctioned church which perverts the purpose of Christian theology and suppresses the individual's true spiritual needs. In response, Kierkegaard founded a theology based entirely on subjective experience, on searching for the "truth for me," rather than an impersonal objective truth (Journals 32). In contrast to the cold, Hegelian rationalism, Kierkegaard argues for a Christianity of which love is the "mainspring" and "fear and trembling" is the "balance in the watch" (Journals 101). His Christianity, rather focusing primarily on a series of creeds and professions of faith, turns them loose under their own power to determine the meaning of Christianity by themselves. Indeed, it is unclear (from his journals, at least) whether or not Kierkegaard wished for there to be any form of organized religion at all. Indeed, when he says that there is "nothing so dangerous in Christianity as an official priest and professor," he may well be arguing for no Church at all (Journals 575). But it may be in his discussion of the proper nature of worship that we find his most interesting addition to traditional Christian theology.

Kierkegaard explains that Christ came to the world as a "prototype," constantly telling his disciples to follow his example, but that the people "turned the relation around" and "preferred to worship the prototype" until eventually, "in Protestantism it became presumption to want to emulate the prototype" (Journals 585). Again, "the apostle" does the same thing, but again, the people prefer to worship him rather than emulate his example. Kierkegaard, however, declares that "the only kind of worship God demands is imitation" (Journals 585). The proper way to worship God is not to sing hymns and go to church, it is rather to emulate the example of his prototypes. The appropriate way to live is to change one's life such that one begins to act like someone else entirely. It is in this idea, along with the basic idea of the subjective truth, that lays the foundation for the Existentialist notion of "essence creation." It is not best to simply memorize a series of creeds and to attend church regularly, but rather to consciously change one's own behavior after a model, and to seek out the truth for oneself, unhampered by any official priests or professors who "hypocritically falsify" Christianity (Journals 575). Thus, although Kierkegaard did have a desire to see "what the Deity really wants [him] to do," and he therefore probably would not have gone so far as to say that "existence precedes essence," he does believe that one can radically alter one's own behavior based on an imitation of someone else, and that one can seek out the truth on own's one and not simply take things on authority alone (Journals 32).

Faced with the notion that all of life's problems could be solved rationally, Kierkegaard created a theology that relies heavily upon emotions and subjectivity, requiring a "leap of faith" rather than a purely logical argument. Rather than suggest that authority should conform people to its pre-ordained idea of the perfect Christian, Kierkegaard argued that Christians should seek their own truths and their own ideas. Rather than deal with a passive theology which strove primarily to teach the concept of the "Absolute," Kierkegaard placed the emphasis firmly back upon Christ's actions, and exhorted people to imitate Christ if they wished to worship God. These emphases upon action, subjectivity and personal responsibility laid the basic foundations for the 20th century Existentialist movement. By taking the responsibility for a person's spiritual development out of the hands of Authority and placing it firmly in that person's own hands, Kierkegaard planted the seed for the Existentialist notion of personal "essence creation."

Hope you enjoyed it.