Kierkegaard s Allusions to Abraham and Socrates in Practice in Christianity

Transcription

1 1 in Practice in Christianity Introduction Practice in Christianity 1 is considered by the Hong translators to represent a decisive turn in Kierkegaard s philosophical corpus of pseudonymous authorship. Two facets of this turn are emphasized: (1) It represents the juncture at which Kierkegaard uses his own voice. As the Hongs note, the book was originally intended to bear his name but was ultimately authored by Anti-Climacus. This is highlighted by a footnote where Anti-Climacus references some pseudonymous writers who speak of the confusion between doubt and despair in modern philosophy (PC 81n). The Hongs interpret this as a reference to Postscript and The Sickness unto Death. The latter, however, having been written by Anti-Climacus, raises the question of authorship, of which the translators conclude, The reference is no doubt an unchanged remnant of Kierkegaard s idea of direct authorship before his decision to use a pseudonym (385n19). 2 (2) It marks the beginning of his sustained critique of Christendom. The Hongs write, In relation to later writings, Practice, together with For Self-Examination and the posthumously published Judge for Yourself, constitutes the beginning of Kierkegaard s attack on the established order of Christendom (PC xiv). 3 Upon closer examination of Practice, however, such sharp distinctions simply cannot hold. If, for example, Anti-Climacus s account of the offense of Christ in The Exposition (PC ) can be offered to provide insight into Kierkegaard s pseudonymous corpus, we discover that Practice neither represents a decisive shift in Kierkegaard s attitude toward Danish Christianity; nor does it symbolize a move from the indirect communication of pseudonymous

2 2 authorship to a direct authorship under Kierkegaard s own name. Rather, it reveals a common thread throughout Kierkegaard s philosophical works. It is better, in a way, to understand Practice in Christianity as a culmination of his pseudonymous authorship, with subtlety, refining and invoking many of his most decisive and original ideas, figures, and images. In The Exposition, Anti-Climacus considers the possibility of offense with regard to Christ not as one who claims he is God but simply as an individual human being who comes into collision with an established order (PC 85). On the surface, the text contributes to the explicit account of grace, Christ s invitation, and the absolute offense of Christ s divinity that set Practice apart from his previous pseudonymous texts. Yet, Anti-Climacus s exposition of Christ seems to have far more to do with two other archetypes of the single individual : Abraham and Socrates. Thus, in these pages, Anti-Climacus s account of the single individual is more of a synthesis of these figures and the earlier pseudonymous texts from which they manifest themselves than an accurate exposition of Christ s life. At the very outset of this section, Anti-Climacus writes, that the offense could involve anyone who stands up to the establishment (PC 85). Again, it is not Christ Anti-Climacus has in mind if the collision of the single individual with the establishment is a collision that appears again and again in Christendom (86). And still further, it would hardly seem appropriate for Anti-Climacus to speak of Christ as a human being whose living in fear and trembling signifies that there is a God, since Christ is God and need not believe in God or work out his own salvation (88; Phil. 2:12). 4 Thus, by specific appeal to Abraham and Socrates as a way of unpacking this section, the text comes to life and is inscribed with a fuller meaning.

3 3 The Exposition : Initial Observations First, a brief account of Anti-Climacus s more overt references to Abraham and Socrates may suffice to warrant this interpretation of Practice in Christianity. In the case of Abraham, first, we observe the extensive use of the phrase, fear and trembling (PC 88, 90). While the phrase borrowed from Philippians 2:12 is used in other Kierkegaardian texts outside of Fear and Trembling, 5 Anti-Climacus s use of the phrase four times in just three sentences would suggest an exaggerated emphasis that points to Fear and Trembling. Second, the critique of the use of the story of Abraham s sacrifice of Isaac in Christian preaching is used to illuminate how far Christendom has strayed from true Christianity (108). With regard to Socrates, on two occasions Kierkegaard speaks of the gadfly, a name Socrates gives to himself in the Apology (PC 65, 88; cf. 384n88). 6 And as Anti-Climacus writes later, the role of the single individual is to prod the established order out of self-complacency, which is precisely the purpose the original Gadfly saw for himself (90). 7 Other parallels suggest Anti-Climacus has Fear and Trembling in mind. Earlier in Practice, he criticizes Christendom for wanting virtues such as compassion and self-denial at a cheap price (PC 60). This parallels the first page of Johannes de Silentio s work: Everything can be had at such a bargain price that it becomes a question whether there is finally anyone who will make a bid. 8 Further, the note about the pseudonymous authors that the Hongs claim is a reference to the Postscript and The Sickness unto Death may well also be a reference to Fear and Trembling, where, on the very first page Johannes de Silentio criticizes modern philosophers who have doubted everything (FT 5). 9

4 4 The Offense is a Collision Anti-Climacus begins by describing what kind of offense is presently at issue: Is the single individual higher than the established order? (PC 85). To this collision with an established order (85, cf. 86), the establishment insists that itself, the objective, is higher than each and every individual, than subjectivity (86). This is, indeed, precisely the question wagered in Fear and Trembling, where Faith is namely this paradox that the single individual is higher than the universal (FT 55). 10 And, of course, the heightening of the subjective over the objective is the theme of Climacus s Postscript, 11 where faith, truth, and Christianity are all defined as subjectivity over objectivity (CUP , ). Interestingly, the notion of a collision crops up in Postscript with reference to Johannes de Silentio. Climacus states that the one who understands truth as inwardness faces a collision in which the ethical becomes the temptation (CUP 259). 12 Certainly, Climacus has Abraham in mind, for whom the ethical is the temptation (FT 115). For, two pages later, he describes Fear and Trembling as representing an existence-collision in an existing individuality (CUP 261). Anti-Climacus claims Christ s life represents this very collision with the establishment: Here Christ is in the more ordinary sense a teacher, a teacher of godliness, of inwardness, who with originality emphasizes inwardness in contrast to empty outwardness, a teacher who transforms outwardness into inwardness. This is the collision of pietism with the established order. The Pharisees and scribes are, namely, representatives of the established order (PC 86). We should note, first, that the contrast between inwardness and outwardness stretches to the very beginning of Either/Or where Victor Eremita, referring to Hegel, calls into question the accuracy of that familiar philosophical thesis that the outer is the inner and the inner is the outer. 13 And it is precisely through the story of Abraham Kierkegaard climactically responds to this thesis, adding his category of the religious to the aesthetic and the ethical where, The

5 5 paradox of faith is that there is an interiority that is incommensurable with exteriority (FT 69). To this, Anti-Climacus replies, When commensurability and congruity are accomplished then all fear and trembling is abolished (PC 90). 14 Second, note that here Christ is a teacher, but in Philosophical Fragments, he is the teacher. 15 It would appear Anti-Climacus has in mind another teacher, Kierkegaard s teacher: Socrates. 16 In fact, the similarities make it plausible he is drawing from Hegel s own description: And it was in Socrates the principle of subjectivity of the absolute inherent independence of Thought gained free expression. He taught that man has to discover and recognize in himself what is the Right and Good. Socrates is celebrated as a Teacher of Morality.... Socrates undertook to teach them what moral virtues, duties, etc. were. The moral man is not he who merely wills and does that which is right but he who has the consciousness of what he is doing. 17 It is Socrates who is the teacher, he who cannot pin down Euthyphro with a definition of piety, that is the depiction of pietism/morality, and is praised by Climacus for having all the passion of inwardness or subjectivity (CUP 202). The originality of Socrates is precisely this understanding of truth as inwardness, as found within the self. 18 Indeed, it would appear that the single individual s collision with the established order is a gloss of Hegel s account of Socrates when he writes that corruption occurs in a society when the social unit seeks to assert his individuality against the moral life of the community. 19 The Charge: The Single Individual is Acting More than Human To this pietistic individual, the established order responds: Who does this individual think he is? Does he perhaps think that he is God or at least that he is more than a human being (PC 86)? Since Anti-Climacus has straightforwardly said that the offense at hand in this section is not the

6 6 offense that Christ is God, clearly he has in mind an emphasis on the last two possible categories, both of which apply to Socrates and Abraham. Socrates Hegel points out, Socrates made himself an oracle, in the Greek sense. He said that he had a daimonion within him, which counseled him what to do. 20 Socrates claimed to have a singular, unique God-relation that gave him special directions by means of oracles and dreams (Ap 33c). As a result, Socrates viewed himself to have a special role within Athens, that he was god s gift to the city (30e). The particularity of Socrates call was precisely what led to his collision with the established order on two levels: (a) he lived irrationally against human nature and custom morality 21 both by neglecting his personal affairs for the sake of the city (31b), and as a result of the leading of his daimon, refused to defend himself in the expected manner (38de). 22 Further, (b) he claimed that his irrational absolute relation to god, both led him to badger the people of Athens 23 and exceed his duties to societal rule, stating emphatically, I will obey the god rather than you (29d). 24 Further, Socrates is also haunted by the charge that he acts as if he is more than human. Part of the charges levied against Socrates at his trial is that he is essentially a Sophist, and like them, charges a fee for his teaching (Ap 19d). Socrates, of course, denies being among the Sophists who are, according to him, wise with a wisdom more than human, which Socrates himself does not possess (20e). And yet, the image of Socrates as one standing on a higher level of reality than the average human is a hallmark of his tradition. In Aristophanes Greek play, The Clouds, Socrates speaks from a basket suspended above the earth: Why do you call me mortal? I m walking on the Air, Contemplating the Sun! I never could have sought out the

7 7 celestial things unless I poised my agile mind up here on air. 25 Many centuries later, Augustine also claimed that Platonic truths could only be discovered by becoming more than human. 26 For this very reason, it seems Johannes Climacus seeks to save Socrates from paganism as well as differentiate him from Plato in Postscript. While Socrates does have a unique Godrelation, it is not, Climacus argues, immediate, for that is an aspect of paganism of which he is quite critical: The direct relationship with God is simply paganism. All paganism consists in this, that god is related directly to the human being (CUP 243, 245; cf. 600). In contrast, Climacus claims, Socrates does not speak directly to God for fear of talking a lot of nonsense (90n), and the God of inwardness is not immediate but nothing at all remarkable he is so far from being remarkable that he is invisible (245). And by separating Socrates from Plato, he juxtaposes the Platonic tendency to be more than human with the aloofness of the speculative, Hegelian philosopher: Socrates continually parts with [Plato] because he wants to exist. To emphasize existence, which contains within it the qualification of inwardness, is the Socratic, whereas the Platonic is to pursue recollection and immanence (CUP 206n; cf. 48, 87-88, 121). Both Platonism and Hegelian thought, according to Climacus, teach an annihilation of the individual into the universal (the political or intellectual). In Platonism one undergoes a self-annihilation before God and is swallowed by the eternal (CUP 572, 573), and in Hegel, the individual must all the more forget himself, as the nature of science implies and requires. 27 Thus, by making this distinction, Climacus can claim that Socrates is guided by pathos and is insistent on being a single individual, while speculative thinkers continually forget to exist (305-06). Abraham

8 8 The same charge is made against Abraham and the same response given. In Hegel s early works, 28 Abraham is described as a wholly self-subsistent, independent man detached from both family and societal obligations, whose actions signify a disseverance which snaps the bonds of communal life and love. 29 In this spirit of self-maintenance, Abraham s encounters with others were marked with a desire for mastery and seclusion, wherein he had his own personal theophanies. In personal connection with his Object on High, Abraham was a stranger on earth, a stranger to the soil and to men alike. 30 Thus, in the case of the sacrifice of Isaac, Hegel remarks: Love alone was beyond his power; even the one love he had, his love for his son, even his hope of posterity could depress him, trouble his all-exclusive heart and disquiet it to such an extent that even this love he once wished to destroy; and his heart was quieted only through the certainty of the feeling that this love was not so strong as to render him unable to slay his beloved son with his own hand. 31 For Hegel, Abraham is a murderer since he does not keep his paternal obligation to love his son more than himself (FT 57) and cannot be ethical since his actions are not undertaken for the sake of the community. 32 Hegel and de Silentio agree: if Abraham does not love, the whole affair becomes an act of wickedness. 33 Yet Hegel deflates what Johannes de Silentio emphasizes as the paradox. For Hegel, Abraham wanted not to love, wanted to be free by not loving. 34 But this claim ignores what the text states, Then God said, Take your son, your only son, whom you love (Gen 22:2 NIV). The very reason the act is impervious to reason is because Abraham simultaneously loves and is willing to sacrifice Isaac. Ethically speaking, Abraham hates Isaac. But if he actually hates Isaac, he can rest assured that God does not demand this of him, for Cain and Abraham are not identical. He must love Isaac with his whole soul (FT 74).

9 9 Further, Abraham, while certainly living a nomadic life, does not at all appear to be one at odds with societal obligations and having a God-relation for a strictly personal gain. It is Abraham who gives his nephew, Lot, the first choice to choose the better, more fruitful land (Gen. 13:8-13). It is he who rescues Lot s family when they have been captured by marauding forces (Gen. 14:8-16). And Abraham intercedes on behalf of the people of Sodom and Gomorrah before God (Gen. 18:23-33). It is not Abraham who is a stranger on the earth, not the knight of faith who is aloof and detached from society, but the knight of infinite resignation who is meant to portray Hegelian ethical life. It is the knight of infinite resignation who resembles ballet dancers who jump up in the air and when they return to the ground, they cannot assume the position straightaway, they waver an instant and the wavering shows they are nevertheless strangers in the world. 35 The knight of infinite resignation participates in a mystical hovering and is a stranger and an alien to the earth (FT 50). According to Johannes de Silentio, Abraham and the knight of faith are thoroughly infused with a sense of the tangible world. The knight of faith is described as solid all the way through and belongs entirely to the world (FT 39). Abraham s faith is a faith for this life. In fact, if his faith had been only for a life to come, he certainly would have more readily discarded everything in order to rush out of a world to which he did not belong. But Abraham s faith was not of this sort (20; cf. 36). Abraham gives up Isaac not for the sake of the eternal but in the belief that he will receive him back again. 36

10 10 The Establishment and Deification of the Laws The criticism of the individual as more than human, according to Anti-Climacus, stems from Hegel who deified the established order (PC 87). The establishment claims that acts by the single individual are blasphemous, which actually reflects a projection from the impiety with which one venerates the established order as the divine (88). Here Anti-Climacus may be referencing Hegel s account of religion in which divinity is to be understood as a higher formative development of consciousness of the community. 37 The real conceptual meaning of the life and death of the God-Man is his resurrection as the universality of the Spirit who dwells in His community. 38 In this way, the political sphere becomes the final court of authority. Abraham This same understanding of Hegel s philosophy can be seen in Fear and Trembling: The ethical is the universal and as such it is also the divine (FT 68). Further, de Silentio continually suggests that if, indeed, the political sphere is the highest arbiter, then Abraham is lost and quite simply cannot be the father of faith and then faith has never existed in the world precisely because it has always existed (FT 55). 39 If Abraham remains outside the universal, then, in the face of a deified establishment, Abraham s piety is blasphemy, and can only be saved by recourse to the absurd. Anti-Climacus s single individual, likewise, must also resort to a teleological suspension of the ethical, one not quite like Abraham s sacrifice but is neither a jettison into the ethereal, but rather calls into question the political sphere as the final authority by recourse to the temporal: the individual person s God-relationship, shall be precisely what keeps every established order in suspense and with unconditional obedience, by being persecuted, by suffering, by dying, keeps the established order in suspense (PC 91, italics mine).

11 11 It seems, then, that Kierkegaard s critique of Hegel and Christendom are so intertwined they are practically interchangeable. The established order is both Hegel s Sittlichkeit and Christendom, and can be seen as yet another title for the ethical, the Church, the state, the speculative, or the world-historical. 40 As de Silentio writes, The idea of the Church is not qualitatively different from the idea of the state (FT 74), and the single individual is headed for a collision with both of them. If this is the case, however, Kierkegaard had been staging an attack on Christendom from the very beginning, 41 and not as a turn in his later writings. 42 This point is reiterated again by observing the clear parallels between Johannes de Silentio and Anti-Climacus s lambasting remarks about Danish preachers. Both pseudonymous authors ridicule those who misused the story of Abraham and Isaac. They recite the whole story in clichés, and such preachers do not even know what they are saying, preaching sermons devoid of meaning (FT 28, 29, 29n). And preachers who turn the religious account into a paradigm for any natural suffering, such as a husband who sacrifices his wife when she dies, dramatically change the paradox into a masterpiece of upside-downness (PC 108). In both cases, the listener can just as well go to sleep during the speech, for everything goes along splendidly without any trouble on either side (FT 52). Socrates Hegel may not call Socrates inward god-relation blasphemy, but he is highly critical. Indeed, Hegel claims Socrates emphasis on subjectivity marked the rupture with the existing Reality and led to the ruin of the Athenian state. 43 For Hegel, the preservation of society requires the elimination of any single individual who opposes the universal and thus, Socrates martyrdom can be seen as a necessary demise.

12 12 Here we encounter an interpretive tension in Plato s dialogues. Kierkegaard emphasizes the Socrates of the Apology, the one who follows the leading of his daimon, stands up to the men of Athens, and fearlessly accepts death by banking everything on the if there is an immortality (CUP 201). 44 And yet, in the Crito, we find a Hegelian Socrates who listens to and obeys the laws and the state. 45 Here, Socrates deifies the laws and will not call them into question. In the end, he remarks that he will remain in prison because this is the way the god is leading us (Cr 54e), but this is not the personal daimon that calls into question the customary laws and socially accepted opinions of Athens. Rather, it is a god identified with the universal and the political. Here the state is the highest tribunal, and the laws speak the truth (Cr 51c). Here, the laws/state is the god, and Socrates listens and obeys when the Laws chide him. 46 Clearly, an about-face has occurred from the Socrates that loudly proclaimed that it was better for him to serve god than man to the Socrates who is convinced he must be a slave and devoted votary to the State. It is as if, now Socrates is deflated, no longer strong enough to fight, and becomes a parrot of the universal or perhaps we are hearing more of Plato here than Socrates. 47 The Defense: The Single Individual Teaches What it Means to Be Human To the charges of the deified established order, the single individual responds that it does indeed seem as if he were making himself more than human. But he is not doing that at all, for he admits, after all, that every human being, unconditionally every person, has and is to have for his part the same relationship with God. But that single individual who teaches the most humble and yet also the most human doctrine about what it means to be a human being (PC 91) This is precisely how Johannes de Silentio describes faith and Johannes Climacus depicts existence. Abraham is not so proud as to think that his devotion to God made him uniquely the

13 13 greatest of all (FT 16), but rather, he recognizes that true greatness is equally accessible to all (81). And while the wisdom of Socrates is precisely his earnestness to not forget that the knower is an existing person (CUP 204), he is not too proud to acknowledge that becoming subjective is the highest task assigned to every human being (158). There is enough work to be done simply by courageously engaging oneself in the task of being human, in the mundane, the daily grind, and the seemingly irrelevant aspects of life. This is often offensive to the established order, because it is so rarely pursued and even more rarely achieved and the crowd is quick to become bored with the mundane and believe it has progressed further than previous generations. But, as de Silentio writes, no generation learns the essentially human from a previous one. In this respect, each generation begins primitively, has no task other than what each previous generation had. The essentially human is passion. But the highest passion in a person is faith, and here no generation begins at any other point than where the previous one did. As long as the generation is concerned only about its task, which is the highest, it cannot become weary, for the task is always adequate for a person s lifetime. (FT ) 1 Søren Kierkegaard, Practice in Christianity, ed. and trans. Howard V. & Edna H. Hong (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991). Henceforth, PC. 2 The Hongs also point to Kierkegaard s own words as a defense of this view, who surmised regarding Practice, Without a doubt it is the most perfect and truest thing I have written (cf. PC xviii). Later in the text, Anti- Climacus makes mention of Kierkegaard s self-authored, Works of Love (PC 222), an allusion which may further emphasize that Kierkegaard is speaking from his own voice in Practice. 3 Kierkegaard himsel claims that his last division of books is exclusively religious writing. Kierkegaard, The Point of View, ed. and trans. Howard V. & Edna H. Hong (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998), 31. Henceforth, PV. 4 Alastair Hannay, in his introduction to Fear and Trembling, however, points out that while fear and trembling signifies that God exists, the faith of Abraham is far more extensive than simple belief in God s existence: Resignation for Abraham would not be his denying himself the belief that God exists [but that] sacrifice will be the end of Isaac as far as he is concerned. What the test requires of Abraham is not that he believe that God exists, but that he believe that God both wants and will be able to give him back his opportunity to exercise paternal love. Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling, trans. Alastair Hannay (New York: Penguin Classics, 1986), Cf. Kierkegaard, The Sickness unto Death, ed. and trans. Howard V. & Edna H. Hong (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980), 120, 123; CUP 29, Plato, Apology in Five Dialogues, trans. G. M. A. Grube (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2002), 30e. Henceforth, Ap. 7 Ibid. I shall not cease to exhort you and in my usual way to point out to any one of you whom I happen to meet: Good Sir are you not ashamed of your eagerness to possess as much wealth, reputation, and honors as possible, while you do not care for nor give thought to wisdom or truth, or the best possible state of your soul? (29e). I never cease to rouse each and every one of you, to persuade and reproach you all day long (31a).

14 14 8 Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling, ed. and trans. Howard V. & Edna H. Hong (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983), 5. Henceforth, FT. [T]heology is willing to sell it [faith] off at a low price (FT 48); But to sell a cheap edition of Abraham and yet forbid everyone to do likewise is ludicrous (53). 9 The nuance between doubt and despair may also be a reference to Fear and Trembling, as it is critical for distinguishing between the situation of the merman and Faust in Problema III. There, it is the merman s despair that has the potential to lead him on the path to make the infinite movement of repentance and so return to the universal (FT 94-99), while Faust is a doubter and stands outside the universal (108-10). 10 If there is no hiddenness rooted in the fact that the single individual as the single individual is higher than the universal, then Abraham s conduct cannot be defended (FT 82). 11 Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments, trans. Howard & Edna Hong (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992). Henceforth, CUP. 12 For the person who with infinite passion has had the inwardness to grasp the ethical no terror in heaven, on earth, and in the abyss can compare with that of facing a collision in which the ethical becomes the temptation. Yet everyone faces this collision, if in no other way, then by one s being religiously assigned to relating oneself to the religious paradigm because the religious paradigm does not express the universal but the singular (CUP 259). 13 Kierkegaard, Either/Or V.1, ed. and trans. Howard & Edna Hong (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987), The outer and the inner had become entirely commensurable, so totally that the inner had dropped out (PC 89). 15 Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, ed. and trans. Howard V. & Edna H. Hong (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985), 14ff, 24, 30, On using the Socratic method in this respect I calmly stick to Socrates. True, he was no Christian, that I know, although I also definitely remain convinced that he has become one. formally I can very well call Socrates my teacher (PV 54-55). Elsewhere, he writes, You, antiquity s noble simple soul, you, the only human being I admiringly acknowledge as a thinker. Kierkegaard, The Moment and Late Writings, ed. and trans. Howard V & Edna H. Hong (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998) Hegel, The Philosophy of History, trans. J. Sibree (New York: Dover Publications, 1956), 269. It would seem Kierkegaard had already picked up on this quotation and critiqued it early on, as Westphal writes: That distance [between Kierkegaard and Hegel] already begins to appear in The Concept of Irony. Ironical negativity is seen as the birth of a subjectivity no longer completely submerged in society or the state. Merold Westphal, Kierkegaard and Hegel, The Cambridge Companion to Kierkegaard (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), The Socratic secret is that the movement is inward, that the truth is the subject s transformation within himself (CUP 38). Climacus suggests Socrates passionate inwardness serves as an analogue to faith, or the absurd (205, 503, 566), that are later separated out into Religiousness A and Religiousness B. Interestingly, this distinction is already laid out by de Silentio: If faith is nothing more than philosophy makes it out to be, then even Socrates went further, much further, instead of the reverse that he did not attain it. His ignorance is the infinite resignation. only when this has been done only then has the point been reached where faith can break through (FT 69). 19 Hegel, The Philosophy of History, Ibid., Socrates in assigning to insight, to conviction, the determination of men s actions posited the Individual as capable of a final moral decision, in contraposition to Country and to customary Morality. Ibid., This was a trait Kierkegaard himself felt he had in common with Socrates: If in nothing else, on this point I truly believe that I have something in common with Socrates. Just as the daimon of Socrates, when Socrates was accused and about to be sentenced by the crowd, he who felt himself to be a divine gift, forbade him to defend himself (PV 24). 23 If I say that it is impossible for me to keep quiet because that means disobeying the god, you will not believe me and will think I am being ironical (Ap 38a). 24 Here, we find eerie parallels with the statement by Peter and the apostles of the early Church before the Jewish Sanhedrin: We must obey God rather than human beings (Acts 5:29 NIV). 25 Aristophanes, The Clouds, in Four Plays of Aristophanes, trans. James H. Mantinband (Washington: University Press of America, 1983), lines Augustine, Against the Academicians, trans. Peter King (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1995), G. W. F. Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. A. V. Miller (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), Interestingly, these don t appear to have been available to Kierkegaard since they remained unpublished until See the introduction by Richard Kroner in G. W. F. Hegel, Early Theological Writings, tran. T. M. Knox

15 15 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1971); Hannay also makes note of this in his translation of Fear and Trembling, 153n Hegel, Early Theological Writings, Reference to this and the previous sentence, ibid., Ibid., According to Hegel s concept of what he calls the ethical life (Sittlichkeit), behavior us moral when it contributes to the maintenance of the ethical unit formed by any society. Actions undertaken by the individual on his own behalf lack a moral aspect unless they can be linked, in intention and/or fact, to the well-being of society as a whole. Cf. Hannay s translator s introduction to Fear and Trembling, Ibid., Hegel, Early Theological Writings, Hannay translation, Fear and Trembling, 70. The Hong translation uses aliens rather than strangers (FT 41). 36 He had the paradoxical and humble courage to grasp the whole temporal realm now by virtue of the absurd. By faith Abraham did not renounce Isaac, but by faith Abraham received Isaac (FT 49). 37 Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, Ibid., 784. In contrast to this universal and communal interpretation of the divine, Hegel views the God of Judaism as a projection of the individual, the posing of an ideal to set against hostile nature a reified and personified ideality God as the original transcendental ego. J. M. Bernstein, Love and Law: Hegel s Critique of Morality, Social Research 70.2 (2003), De Silentio goes on, stating that if the ethical that is, social morality is the highest then no categories are needed other than what Greek philosophy had (FT 55). Hannay summarizes likewise: If Abraham s act is not to be murder, then there must be some higher court of appeal than that of the ethical life; there must be some authority that can be called absolute in relation to the ethical life. Hannay introduction to Fear and Trembling, We may add still further, the crowd and the public, two titles Kierkegaard gives for his own personal collision with Danish society. Kierkegaard states that his goal as an author is to shake off the crowd in order to get hold of the single individual religiously understood (PV 9; cf. 10, 37). More personally, Kierkegaard writes almost as if it were an actual, physical collision: I was the very one who hurled myself against and exposed myself to the mobrevolt s profane satire.... I have thereby managed to have a falling out with the opposition and the public (17-18). 41 It may even be observed in his dissertation: Socratic subjectivity as presented in The Concept of Irony is just the sort of ethico-religious subjectivity that Climacus will explore in Postscript as an alternative to both the theoretical complacency of Hegelianism and the practical complacency of Christendom. However deeply Hegelian Kierkegaard may be in his dissertation, he is already on a collision course with the system. Westphal, Kierkegaard and Hegel, Indeed, Kierkegaard s entire corpus is meant to distinguish becoming a Christian (PV 41; cf. 6, 23) from Christendom. 43 Hegel, The Philosophy of History, It is this Socrates who, according to Westphal, emerges to become the hero of the spirit that Climacus takes him to be in Postscript. He stands over against the established order, which he does not acknowledge as absolute. But his teleological suspension of the ethical, his recognition that he has a higher duty than his duty to Athens, is not a romanticism of personal preference (the aesthetic stage), as can be seen in his quarrel with the sophists. Nor is it that of Hegelian speculation as can be seen in his difference from Plato. Westphal, Kierkegaard and Hegel, Plato, Crito in Five Dialogues, trans. G. M. A. Grube (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2002), 50a. Henceforth, Cr. 46 Is your wisdom such as not to realize that your country is to be honored more than your mother, your father, and all your ancestors, that it is more to be revered and more sacred, and that it counts for more among the gods and sensible men, that you must worship it, yield to it, and placate its anger more than your father s (Cr 51b). 47 It would appear both Hegel and Kierkegaard have left this side of Socrates largely ignored. Kierkegaard, at least for his part, would most likely mark this account up as a corruption of Plato, as an example of Platonic thought, and claim that the real Socrates is left behind in the Apology.