Søren Aabye Kierkegaard (b. 1813, d. 1855) was a profound and prolific writer in the Danish “golden age” of intellectual and artistic activity. He is popularly known as the “Father of Existentialism”. One of Kierkegaard’s recurrent themes is the importance of subjectivity, which has to do with the way people relate themselves to (objective) truths. Kierkegaard, largely influenced by his father, inherited his father’s melancholy, his sense of guilt and anxiety including his talent for philosophical argument and creative imagination, which caused him to develop his own unique way to communicate the set of ‘TRUTHS’.
Søren Kierkegaard: Path to Finding One’s True Self
“Because I exist, because I think, therefore, I think that I exist.” According to the statement ‘I think’ it is clear that ‘I’ exists and it has existence. ‘I’ that exists is always subjective and not objective. Now the person because of knowing the object does not desire to know the object, but he emerges himself in knowing the self.
~ Søren Kierkegaard
The philosophy of Søren Kierkegaard has been a major influence in the development of 20th-century philosophy, especially existentialism and postmodernism. Kierkegaard was a 19th-century Danish philosopher, Critique and Theologian who has been labelled by many as the “Father of Existentialism”, although there are some in the field who express doubt in labelling him an existentialist to begin with. His philosophy also influenced the development of existential psychology. To be more precise and clear, Existentialism is a philosophy that emphasizes individual existence, freedom and choice. It is the view that humans define their own meaning in life, and try to make rational decisions despite existing in an irrational universe. It focuses on the question of human existence, and the feeling that there is no purpose or explanation at the core of existence. It holds that, as there is no God or any other transcendent force, the only way to counter this nothingness (and hence to find constructive meaning in life) is by embracing existence.
Thus, in simple words, existentialism believes that individuals are entirely free and must take personal responsibility for themselves (although with this responsibility comes angst, a profound anguish or dread). It therefore emphasizes action, freedom and decision as fundamental, and holds that the only way to rise above the essentially absurd condition of humanity (which is characterized by suffering and inevitable death) is by exercising our personal freedom and choice (a complete rejection of Determinism). To supplement further in the context of the philosophy of Kierkegaard for e.g., The choice to obey God unconditionally is a true existential ‘either/or’ decision faced by the individual. Either one chooses to live in faith or to live ethically. In Either/Or, Kierkegaard insists that the single individual has ethical responsibility over his/her life.
A highly skilled rhetorician, Kierkegaard preferred the indirect approach, deploying irony, ridicule, parody and satire in a paradoxical search for individual authenticity within a European culture he saw as beset by self-important puffery and unthinking mass movements. While millions of readers have embraced Kierkegaard’s probing method, as many have also rejected his faith-based conclusions (Hegelian critics accuse Kierkegaard of using the dialectic to disprove the dialectic, which seems somewhat contradictory and hypocritical). Nevertheless, his strikingly eccentric skewering of the tepidly faithful and overly optimistic breathed light and heat into the nineteenth century debates among modern Christians as they confronted the findings of science and the challenges posed by world religions and materialist philosophers like Karl Marx.
Kierkegaard proposed that the individual passed through three stages on the way to becoming a true self: the aesthetic, the ethical, and the religious. The aesthetic is the realm of sensory experience and pleasures. The aesthetic life is defined by pleasures, and to live the aesthetic life to the fullest one must seek to maximize those pleasures. Ethics are the social rules that govern how a person ought to act. Ethics are not always in opposition to aesthetics, but they must take precedence when the two conflict. The aesthetic life must be subordinated to the ethical life, as the ethical life is based on a consistent, coherent set of rules established for the good of society. Kierkegaard considers the religious life to be the highest plane of existence. He also believes that almost no one lives a truly religious life. He is concerned with how to be “a Christian in Christendom” -in other words, how to lead an authentically religious life while surrounded by people who are falsely religious. For Kierkegaard, the relationship with God is exclusively personal, and he believed the large-scale religion of the church (i.e., Christendom) distracts people from that personal relationship. Kierkegaard passionately criticized the Christian Church for what he saw as its interference in the personal spiritual quest each true Christian must undertake. Each of these “stages on life’s way” represents competing views on life and as such potentially conflicting with one another. Kierkegaard takes the unusual step of having each stage of life described and represented by a different pseudonymous character. Thus, it becomes too difficult to ascertain which propositions Kierkegaard himself upholds. This fits with Kierkegaard’s characteristic tendency to avoid dictating answers. He preferred that readers reach their own conclusions which help us to understand his own faithfulness to the ideals of Existentialism that I believe, he holds true.
Kierkegaard was a romantic iconoclast, who lived fast and died young, but on a rollercoaster of words and adventures of ideas rather than Sex, Booze and Materialistic Madness. During the 1840s, books poured from his pen. In 1843 alone, he published three masterpieces, Either/Or, Fear and Trembling, and Repetition. Kierkegaard’s real value as a social and political thinker was not realized until after his death. His works took him to achieve the necessary condition of any great romantic intellectual figure, which is rejection by his own time and society.
There is no neutral ‘objective’ point of view from which alternative ways of living and understanding the world can be judged. Rather, you need to get inside a philosophy to really see its attractions and limitations. In a pluralist world where dynamic ‘Binaries’ exist there is no hope of understanding people who live according to different beliefs, virtues, values and ethics if we only judge them from the outside. Kierkegaard was ‘MISUNDERSTOOD’ by the world, so do I.
Degree of Thought is a weekly community column initiated by Tetso College in partnership with The Morung Express. Degree of Thought will delve into the social, cultural, political and educational issues around us. The views expressed here do not reflect the opinion of the institution. Tetso College is a NAAC Accredited UGC recognised Commerce and Arts College. The editors are Dr Hewasa Lorin, Dr. Aniruddha Babar, Dr. Pfokrelo Kapesa, Webei Tsühah, Meren and Kvulo Lorin.
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