Four Upbuilding Discourses, 1843
Encyclopedia
Kierkegaard writes these discourses because he's not sure that the other two have done their job. He revisits the story of Job once more but here he puts the emphasis not on what he said but what he did. He "traced everything back to God; he did not detain his soul and quench his spirit with deliberation or explanations that only feed and foster doubt."
He then has two discourses, each with the same title as one of his first discourses
, in which he wrote about God's perfect gifts from above. In that discourse he had said, "if a person is to be able to find peace in these words in his lifetime, he must be able to decide either what it is that comes from God or what may legitimately and truly be termed a good and perfect gift. But how is this possible? Is every human life, then, a continuous chain of miracles? Or is it possible for a human being’s understanding to make it through the incalculable series of secondary causes and effects
, to penetrate everything in between, and in that way to find God? Or is it possible for a human being’s understanding to decide with certainty what is a good and perfect gift from him? Does it not run aground on this again and again?" He explores the kind of knowledge that is necessary for an individual to determine, with certainty, that he has this good and perfect gift.
His last discourse is about the battle between God and the world for the soul
of every single individual. According to Kierkegaard the only weapon needed to fight this battle is patience. This battle is not an external battle against external enemies but entirely internal. Heiberg
reviewed these discourses and remarked that the first discourse in this series was the only one of his eighteen discourses that seemed like a sermon, the rest seemed too philosophical in nature and Kierkegaard agreed with him.
, "Then Job arose, and tore his robe, and shaved his head, and fell upon the ground, and worshiped, saying: Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return; the Lord gave, and the Lord took away; blessed be the name of the Lord.", and delivers a message to his "reader" about gratitude
.
The Young Man from Repetition found in Job a reason to argue not only with the whole world but also with God, he said, "Job’s tormented soul breaks forth in powerful cries. Then I understand; these words I make my own. At the same time, I sense the contradiction and smile at myself as one smiles at a little child who has donned his father’s clothes. Indeed, is it not something to smile at if anyone else but Job would say: Alas, if only a man could take God to court
as a child of man does his fellow. And yet anxiety comes over me, as if I still did not understand what someday I would come to understand, as if the horror I was reading about was waiting for me, as if by reading about it I brought it upon myself, just as one becomes ill with the sickness one reads about."
The Young Man had a woman who loved him and was unable to withstand the peer pressure
of his age. Job had everything he had taken away from him and the only thing he said was, "The Lord gave", he didn't get angry with God. The Young Man was concerned about the external world but Kierkegaard is interested in the internal world of the spirit where hope endures.
In the external world the flesh wants to have what it had before. An individual gets power over others and uses it wisely or continually craves more power. If this repetition is kept up that individual becomes a tyrant
. Kierkiegaard says, "What his soul delighted in, it now thirsted for, and ingratitude punished him by picturing it to him as more delightful than it had ever been." If Johannes the Seducer wants to seduce another woman, Kierkegaard says, "What he once had been able to do, he now wanted to be able to do again, and ingratitude punished him with fantasies that had never had any truth. Then he condemned his soul, living, to be starved out in the insatiable craving of the lack (of money, power, adoration, alcohol, drugs, etc..) How can this craving be stopped? Only by choosing the ethical life-view, according to Kierkegaard. He says the unhappiest person is the one who has the "content of his life, the fullness of his consciousness
, the essence of his being, in some manner outside of himself" because this becomes a "rigid limitation".
Kierkegaard presents Job as the prototype that follows one generation after another. He knew the Lord had taken everything away and didn't even go out to attack the Sabeans who had cut down his herds and their keepers. He traced everything back to God. Kierkegaard asks, "does he alone see God’s hand who sees that he gives, or does not one also see God's hand who sees that he takes away?" Job says, "How powerless the assailant’s arm, how worthless the schemer’s cleverness; how almost pitiable is all human power when it wants to plunge the weak person into despairing submission by wrenching everything from him and in his faith he says: it is not you, you can do nothing, it is the Lord who takes away. Blessed be the name of the Lord!"
The moral of the story is directed not to his "reader" but to his "listener".
, "Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above and comes down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no change or shadow of variation. According to his own counsel, he brought us forth by the word of truth, that we should be a first fruit of creation. Therefore, my beloved brethren, let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger, because a man’s anger does not work what is righteous before God. Therefore put away all filthiness and all remnants of wickedness and receive with meekness the word that is implanted in you and that is powerful in making your souls blessed." James 1:17-22
He begins with a recounting of the Biblical story of the fall of man. He says, "Only the tree of the knowledge
of good and evil was man not allowed to eat-lest the knowledge should enter the world and bring grief along with it: the pain of want
and the dubious happiness of possession
, the terror of separation and the difficulty of separation, the disquietude of deliberation
and the worry of deliberation, the distress of choice
and the decision
of choice, the judgment of perdition
and the anxiety
of perdition, the suffering
of death
and the expectation of death." Man broke the peace by plucking the forbidden fruit of the knowledge of good and evil and the Garden of Eden
was closed. How will the single individual find out where the good is and where the perfect is? Kiekegaard says doubt
will explain it to him.
Kierkegaard compares the human love of fathers to God the Father's love. Here he speaks of the "terrible upheaval" where God pronounces judgment on the father, possibly Kierkegaard's father, Michael. Kierkegaard reasons this way, "“If God’s love does not know how to give good gifts any better than a father’s love, then there certainly is small comfort in these words. In this way the words became for him what fatherly love was for him-a beautiful, hallowed, wistful recollection
, an uplifting mood that quickened in his soul the conception of the best in the human being but also of the human being’s weakness, quickened the soul’s most blessed longing but also retracted it again in order to subordinate it to the sadness of concern.” Once doubt is planted, Kierkegaard says, "then doubt became stronger. What he himself had discerned
, what he himself had experience
d, what he with sympathetic
concern and to his own grief had become convinced
of-that earthly life is vanity
, that even people’s good gifts are weak-willed and only fill him with disgust-this he now found to be confirmed in Scripture also. Thus it was now plain and clear to him that this is what the words meant, and that far from supporting the most beautiful in life and letting it continue, they on the contrary tacitly condemned it and allowed it to disappear." Was Kierkegaard's father a good and perfect gift or not?
Kierkegaard says there is a "condition" that makes a gift good and perfect. He explored various conditions necessary for an individual to enjoy life in Either/Or Part II. He says, "Every human being, no matter how slightly gifted he is, however subordinate his position in life may be, has a natural need to formulate a life-view, a conception of the meaning of life and of its purpose." But the condition necessary for the enjoyment of life (health and beauty, power such as Nero
had, the esthetic enjoyments of life, "every life-view that has the condition outside itself is despair." Either/Or was an "attempt to actualize an ethical life-view." This "condition" doesn't come from externalities according to Kierkegaard. He says,
Kierkegaard believed the religious discourse
should be used to convince the single individual to not only find the good but also try to become good oneself.
What is the "one thing needful" that knowledge can't bring? Kierkegaard answers thus:
And repeats the same answer in 1846;
This point of view would break down the barriers between people. But Kierkegaard suggests that this breaking down of the barriers requires battles and victories. He says, "In the hallowed places, in every upbuilding view of life, the thought arises in a person’s soul that help him to fight the good fight with flesh and blood, with principalities and powers, and in the fight to free himself for equality before God, whether this battle is more a war of aggression against the differences that want to encumber him with worldly favoritism or a defensive war against the differences that want to make him anxious in worldly perdition. This fight is a fight to unite the "two great classes" who are being obligated "to give or being obliged to receive." Kierkegaard says, "Every human being, whether he gives or receives, essentially has to thank God." These gifts can be a simple word of encouragement, a truth, money etc., but Kierkegaard warns those who "sit and brood like dragons on their earthly treasures, they hoard, like a miser, the good things of the spirit, jealous
of them-of what benefit is it to him that the words wanted to teach him to bestow them in the right way?
. He's keeps using the Socratic method
. This time he asks, "Is it saying too little to say that a person comes naked into the world and possesses nothing in the world if he does not even possess his soul? (…) What is there to live for if a person has to spend his whole life gaining the presupposition that on the deepest level is life’s presupposition-yes, what does that mean?
Kierkegaard proposes that the world possesses the individual soul, but the world is imperfect. God is perfect. Therefore there is a battle going on and duties to carry out. He describes the battle this way, "In patience, the soul comes to terms with all its possessors, with the life of the world in that it sufferingly gains itself from it, with God in that it sufferingly accepts itself from him, with itself in that it itself retains what it simultaneously gives to both without anyone being able to deprive the soul of it-patience
. The soul can obtain nothing through power; it is in the hands of an alien power. If the soul were free in some other way, it would not be the self-contradiction in the contradiction between the external and the internal, the temporal and the eternal.(…) This self-contradiction is again expressed in the soul’s being stronger than the world through its weakness, in its being weaker than God through its strength, in its inability to gain anything but itself unless it wants to be deceived, and in its being able to gain itself only by losing itself. To know what a human soul is still a long way from beginning to gain one’s soul in patience, and it is a knowledge that exhibits its difference from that gaining inasmuch as it does indeed grow in impatience. And even though this knowledge may have its significance, it often deceived a person the very same way the world does, in that he thought that he possessed it, whereas it was his knowledge that possessed him."
The knowledge that is the highest knowledge as far as Kierkegaard is concerned is the knowledge that he had a soul that could relate to God. This was "the one thing needful" He says, "His soul belongs to the world as its illegitimate possession; it belongs to God as his legitimate possession; it belongs to the person himself as his possession, as a possession that is to be gained. Consequently he gains-if he actually does gain-his soul from God, away from the world, through himself." The fight for the soul takes place in the inner being, not in externalities where everything changes from one moment to the next, its a "work of patience". Here was Kierkegaard's Either/Or
; either the single individual gains his soul from the world and presents it to God at the end of life or he loses his soul to the world and has nothing to present to God at the end of life. Kierkegaard puts it this way in August of 1944:
How can a person come to know that a soul resides in them and that another has claim to it? Classical knowledge realized that experience alone doesn't lead one to the truth, but Hegel was interested in making Reason
the only path to truth. Kierkegaard disagreed. He said, "A person knows his soul, then, if he truly knows it as something that he may be able t o describe accurately but that is in the possession of another and that he probably desires to possess, but knowledge as such does not help him in this. Even though patience is required for this knowing, as for any other, this nevertheless is not what the words speak about, as is shown in this-that in knowledge patience is not simultaneously the condition and the conditioned. (…) The person who wants to gain his soul in patience knows that his soul does not belong to him, that there is a power from which he must gain it, a power by whom he must gain it, and that he must gain it himself." The soul is in the hands of an alien power, the world, and the single individual must gain the soul from the world in order to present it to God unblemished.
, Bishop
of Zeeland
. He considered the discourse about Job a sermon
. The sales of the discourses were meager. It's generally accepted among scholars that Kierkegaard became a religious writer in 1847, with the publication of Edifying Discourses in Diverse Spirits
An article written in 1855 didn't acknowledge any of these discourses of 1843 or 1844.
Kierkegaard's idea of the battle for the soul reminds one of John Bunyan
's book, The Holy War
Made by King Shaddai Upon Diabolus, to Regain the Metropolis of the World, Or, The Losing and Taking Again of the Town of Mansoul and the longing for the knowledge that knowledge can not bring reminds one of The Pilgrim's Regress
by C.S. Lewis His book is very similar to Bunyan's earlier book The Pilgrim's Progress
John is looking for the Landlord (God) and reason is his guide. "Reason – ‘The Spirit of the Age (Zeitgeist
) wishes to allow argument and not to allow argument. … If anyone argues with them they say that he is rationalizing his own desires, and therefore need not be answered. But if anyone listens to them they will then argue themselves to show that their own doctrines are true. … You must ask them whether any reasoning is valid or not. If they say no, then their own doctrines, being reached by reasoning, fall to the ground. If they say yes, then they will have to examine your argument
s and refute
them on their merits: for if some reasoning is valid, for all they know, your bit of reasoning may be one of the valid bits." Kierkegaard had just gone through an argument with the spirit of the age in Repetition
. In 1848 Kierkegaard wrote in his diary:
Kierkegaard described his longing for God, for that "one thing he needed" for his happiness, in Fear and Trembling. He said,
And he wrote the following in the discoure he published on the same date as Fear and Trembling. People lose themselves in externalities.
This kind of longing was repeated by Leo Tolstoy
in his Confessions. He said,
George Brandes introduced both Soren Kierkegaard and Friedrich Nietzsche
to the English speaking world. He recognized Kierkegaard's intention and contrasted it to Neitzsche in the quote provided.
Brandes also compared Kierkegaard to Henrik Ibsen
. He said "As friendship under certain circumstances may be a hindrance to the independence of the individual, so too may marriage. Therefore it is that Nora refuses to consider her duties toward her husband and children as her most sacred duties; for a far more sacred duty she believes she owes herself. Therefore it is that to Helmer's "You are before all else a wife and mother"; she replies : — " I am before all else a human being, — or, at all events, I shall endeavor to become one.” Ibsen shares with Kierkegaard the conviction that in every single human being there slumbers the soul of a warrior, an invincible power; but he cherishes it in another form than Kierkegaard, for whom the worth of the individual is something supernatural, while with Ibsen, we rest on human grounds. He believes that the individuality of the human being is to be preserved for its own sake, not for the sake of higher powers
; and since beyond all else the individual should remain free and whole, all concessions made to the world represent to Ibsen the foul fiend, the evil principle. Eminent authors of the nineteenth century. Literary portraits, Henrik Ibsen, By George Brandes 1886 p. 433
David F. Swenson translated all eighteen discourses in the early 1940's. He wrote the following in his introduction to this discourse.
Theodor Haecker
wrote in 1938, "Kierkegaard fought the fight victoriously. His was a good spirit and in him was love. Because of this victory one can forget his great error and defect; nor were they of an absolute order, but the result of his whole character and origin. He had the merits of his defects, and his errors were those of his truths, for he had not the teaching authority of the Church, but only his conscience
, to which he was always faithful. On his death-bed he spoke of his fight in his own particular way, with humour and pathos; he said that all his work and all his toil had had as aim and end to sit astride a cloud and sing Alleluja, Alleluja, Alleluja to the glory of God. According to Hoffding
, Kierkegaard taught us never to lose courage, whatever the difficulties. That only turns Kierkegaard's thought into a wretched banality; it is an appalling platitude and completely misses the point. It is tantamount to Carlyle's
'work and don't despair!' a saying that would have made Kierkegaard despair at once. His motto was the Benedictine motto Ora et labora (pray and work), so that he could say 'my genius is my prayer'. Nor was it merely a matter of holding out until one day all would be over, but of enduring and bearing it because it never ceases: because there is eternity: eternal blessedness or eternal despair. And as a result of his great struggles he received that precious acquisition, the belief that God is love. Even if he had never said so, although in fact he does, it is clear which was his favorite text, for it was the subject of nearly all his discourses and he was for ever paraphrasing it. Little wonder then, that it was this verse from the Epistle of S. James: 'Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning."
Robert L. Perkins and George Pattison have each written books about these discourses. Pattison says, "Every Good and Perfect Gift, it is the transformation that occurs when we realize that God is the giver of every good and perfect gift in such a way that whether our life flows smoothly and uninterruptedly forward, or whether we are wronged, tried and tested in adversities and temptations, all that we have and all that we are is a gift from God and therefore to be received with thankfulness and repentance; such an understanding if further exemplified in Job, presented in the discourses as a ‘correction’ to the defiant portrait of Job founded in Repetition, who, in the face of utter loss does not lose his mind in troubling himself over the various secondary causes that brought about this loss." Both books are below in Secondary Sources.
Kierkegaard presented religion, especially Christianity, very primitively in this discourse. He dedicated all of his discourses to his father and began each one with a dedication to the "single individual". Here is his dedication from this discourse
He then has two discourses, each with the same title as one of his first discourses
Two Upbuilding Discourses, 1843
Soren Kierkegaard published Two Upbuilding Discourses three months after the publication of his big book, Either/Or, which ended without a conclusion to the argument between A, the aesthete and B, the ethicist, as to which is the best way to live one's life. Kierkegaard hoped the book would...
, in which he wrote about God's perfect gifts from above. In that discourse he had said, "if a person is to be able to find peace in these words in his lifetime, he must be able to decide either what it is that comes from God or what may legitimately and truly be termed a good and perfect gift. But how is this possible? Is every human life, then, a continuous chain of miracles? Or is it possible for a human being’s understanding to make it through the incalculable series of secondary causes and effects
Causality
Causality is the relationship between an event and a second event , where the second event is understood as a consequence of the first....
, to penetrate everything in between, and in that way to find God? Or is it possible for a human being’s understanding to decide with certainty what is a good and perfect gift from him? Does it not run aground on this again and again?" He explores the kind of knowledge that is necessary for an individual to determine, with certainty, that he has this good and perfect gift.
His last discourse is about the battle between God and the world for the soul
Soul
A soul in certain spiritual, philosophical, and psychological traditions is the incorporeal essence of a person or living thing or object. Many philosophical and spiritual systems teach that humans have souls, and others teach that all living things and even inanimate objects have souls. The...
of every single individual. According to Kierkegaard the only weapon needed to fight this battle is patience. This battle is not an external battle against external enemies but entirely internal. Heiberg
Johan Ludvig Heiberg (poet)
Johan Ludvig Heiberg , Danish poet and critic, son of the political writer Peter Andreas Heiberg , and of the novelist, afterwards the Baroness Gyllembourg-Ehrensvärd, was born in Copenhagen....
reviewed these discourses and remarked that the first discourse in this series was the only one of his eighteen discourses that seemed like a sermon, the rest seemed too philosophical in nature and Kierkegaard agreed with him.
Structure
- The Lord Gave, And The Lord Took Away; Blessed Be The Name Of The Lord. (Job 1:20-21)
- Every Good Gift And Every Perfect Gift Is From Above (James 1:17-22)
- Every Good Gift And Every Perfect Gift Is From Above
- To Gain One’s Soul In Patience
The Lord Gave, And The Lord Took Away; Blessed Be The Name Of The Lord
Kierkegaard explores two simple verses from the Old TestamentOld Testament
The Old Testament, of which Christians hold different views, is a Christian term for the religious writings of ancient Israel held sacred and inspired by Christians which overlaps with the 24-book canon of the Masoretic Text of Judaism...
, "Then Job arose, and tore his robe, and shaved his head, and fell upon the ground, and worshiped, saying: Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return; the Lord gave, and the Lord took away; blessed be the name of the Lord.", and delivers a message to his "reader" about gratitude
Gratitude
Gratitude, thankfulness, gratefulness, or appreciation is a feeling, emotion or attitude in acknowledgment of a benefit that one has received or will receive. The experience of gratitude has historically been a focus of several world religions, and has been considered extensively by moral...
.
The Young Man from Repetition found in Job a reason to argue not only with the whole world but also with God, he said, "Job’s tormented soul breaks forth in powerful cries. Then I understand; these words I make my own. At the same time, I sense the contradiction and smile at myself as one smiles at a little child who has donned his father’s clothes. Indeed, is it not something to smile at if anyone else but Job would say: Alas, if only a man could take God to court
Court
A court is a form of tribunal, often a governmental institution, with the authority to adjudicate legal disputes between parties and carry out the administration of justice in civil, criminal, and administrative matters in accordance with the rule of law...
as a child of man does his fellow. And yet anxiety comes over me, as if I still did not understand what someday I would come to understand, as if the horror I was reading about was waiting for me, as if by reading about it I brought it upon myself, just as one becomes ill with the sickness one reads about."
The Young Man had a woman who loved him and was unable to withstand the peer pressure
Peer pressure
Peer pressure refers to the influence exerted by a peer group in encouraging a person to change his or her attitudes, values, or behavior in order to conform to group norms. Social groups affected include membership groups, when the individual is "formally" a member , or a social clique...
of his age. Job had everything he had taken away from him and the only thing he said was, "The Lord gave", he didn't get angry with God. The Young Man was concerned about the external world but Kierkegaard is interested in the internal world of the spirit where hope endures.
In the external world the flesh wants to have what it had before. An individual gets power over others and uses it wisely or continually craves more power. If this repetition is kept up that individual becomes a tyrant
Tyrant
A tyrant was originally one who illegally seized and controlled a governmental power in a polis. Tyrants were a group of individuals who took over many Greek poleis during the uprising of the middle classes in the sixth and seventh centuries BC, ousting the aristocratic governments.Plato and...
. Kierkiegaard says, "What his soul delighted in, it now thirsted for, and ingratitude punished him by picturing it to him as more delightful than it had ever been." If Johannes the Seducer wants to seduce another woman, Kierkegaard says, "What he once had been able to do, he now wanted to be able to do again, and ingratitude punished him with fantasies that had never had any truth. Then he condemned his soul, living, to be starved out in the insatiable craving of the lack (of money, power, adoration, alcohol, drugs, etc..) How can this craving be stopped? Only by choosing the ethical life-view, according to Kierkegaard. He says the unhappiest person is the one who has the "content of his life, the fullness of his consciousness
Consciousness
Consciousness is a term that refers to the relationship between the mind and the world with which it interacts. It has been defined as: subjectivity, awareness, the ability to experience or to feel, wakefulness, having a sense of selfhood, and the executive control system of the mind...
, the essence of his being, in some manner outside of himself" because this becomes a "rigid limitation".
“What is the power that binds me? How was the chain made with which the Fenris wolf was bound? It was wrought from the sound of a cat’s paws walking over the ground, from women’s beards, from the roots of rocks, from the nerves of bears, from the breath of fishes, and the spittle of birds. And thus I, too, am bound in a chain formed of dark imaginings, of unquiet dreams, of restless thoughts, of dread presentiments, of inexplicable anxieties. This chain is “very supple, soft as silk, elastic under the highest tension, and cannot be broken in two.” Either/Or Vol I p. 33
Kierkegaard presents Job as the prototype that follows one generation after another. He knew the Lord had taken everything away and didn't even go out to attack the Sabeans who had cut down his herds and their keepers. He traced everything back to God. Kierkegaard asks, "does he alone see God’s hand who sees that he gives, or does not one also see God's hand who sees that he takes away?" Job says, "How powerless the assailant’s arm, how worthless the schemer’s cleverness; how almost pitiable is all human power when it wants to plunge the weak person into despairing submission by wrenching everything from him and in his faith he says: it is not you, you can do nothing, it is the Lord who takes away. Blessed be the name of the Lord!"
The moral of the story is directed not to his "reader" but to his "listener".
Every Good Gift And Every Perfect Gift Is From Above
This discourse is based on the following 6 verses from the Epistle of JamesEpistle of James
The Epistle of James, usually referred to simply as James, is a book in the New Testament. The author identifies himself as "James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ", with "the earliest extant manuscripts of James usually dated to mid-to-late third century."There are four views...
, "Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above and comes down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no change or shadow of variation. According to his own counsel, he brought us forth by the word of truth, that we should be a first fruit of creation. Therefore, my beloved brethren, let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger, because a man’s anger does not work what is righteous before God. Therefore put away all filthiness and all remnants of wickedness and receive with meekness the word that is implanted in you and that is powerful in making your souls blessed." James 1:17-22
He begins with a recounting of the Biblical story of the fall of man. He says, "Only the tree of the knowledge
Knowledge
Knowledge is a familiarity with someone or something unknown, which can include information, facts, descriptions, or skills acquired through experience or education. It can refer to the theoretical or practical understanding of a subject...
of good and evil was man not allowed to eat-lest the knowledge should enter the world and bring grief along with it: the pain of want
Desire (emotion)
Desire is a sense of longing for a person or object or hoping for an outcome. Desire is the fire that sets action aflame. The same sense is expressed by emotions such as "craving" or "hankering". When a person desires something or someone, their sense of longing is excited by the enjoyment or the...
and the dubious happiness of possession
Property
Property is any physical or intangible entity that is owned by a person or jointly by a group of people or a legal entity like a corporation...
, the terror of separation and the difficulty of separation, the disquietude of deliberation
Deliberation
Deliberation is a process of thoughtfully weighing options, usually prior to voting. In legal settings a jury famously uses deliberation because it is given specific options, like guilty or not guilty, along with information and arguments to evaluate. Deliberation emphasizes the use of logic and...
and the worry of deliberation, the distress of choice
Choice
Choice consists of the mental process of judging the merits of multiple options and selecting one of them. While a choice can be made between imagined options , often a choice is made between real options, and followed by the corresponding action...
and the decision
Decision making
Decision making can be regarded as the mental processes resulting in the selection of a course of action among several alternative scenarios. Every decision making process produces a final choice. The output can be an action or an opinion of choice.- Overview :Human performance in decision terms...
of choice, the judgment of perdition
Hell in Christian beliefs
Christian views on Hell vary, but in general traditionally agree that hell is a place or a state in which the souls of the unsaved suffer the consequences of sin....
and the anxiety
Anxiety
Anxiety is a psychological and physiological state characterized by somatic, emotional, cognitive, and behavioral components. The root meaning of the word anxiety is 'to vex or trouble'; in either presence or absence of psychological stress, anxiety can create feelings of fear, worry, uneasiness,...
of perdition, the suffering
Suffering
Suffering, or pain in a broad sense, is an individual's basic affective experience of unpleasantness and aversion associated with harm or threat of harm. Suffering may be qualified as physical or mental. It may come in all degrees of intensity, from mild to intolerable. Factors of duration and...
of death
Death
Death is the permanent termination of the biological functions that sustain a living organism. Phenomena which commonly bring about death include old age, predation, malnutrition, disease, and accidents or trauma resulting in terminal injury....
and the expectation of death." Man broke the peace by plucking the forbidden fruit of the knowledge of good and evil and the Garden of Eden
Garden of Eden
The Garden of Eden is in the Bible's Book of Genesis as being the place where the first man, Adam, and his wife, Eve, lived after they were created by God. Literally, the Bible speaks about a garden in Eden...
was closed. How will the single individual find out where the good is and where the perfect is? Kiekegaard says doubt
Doubt
Doubt, a status between belief and disbelief, involves uncertainty or distrust or lack of sureness of an alleged fact, an action, a motive, or a decision. Doubt brings into question some notion of a perceived "reality", and may involve delaying or rejecting relevant action out of concerns for...
will explain it to him.
Kierkegaard compares the human love of fathers to God the Father's love. Here he speaks of the "terrible upheaval" where God pronounces judgment on the father, possibly Kierkegaard's father, Michael. Kierkegaard reasons this way, "“If God’s love does not know how to give good gifts any better than a father’s love, then there certainly is small comfort in these words. In this way the words became for him what fatherly love was for him-a beautiful, hallowed, wistful recollection
Recollection
Recall in memory refers to the retrieval of events or information from the past. Along with encoding and storage, it is one of the three core processes of memory. There are three main types of recall: free recall, cued recall and serial recall...
, an uplifting mood that quickened in his soul the conception of the best in the human being but also of the human being’s weakness, quickened the soul’s most blessed longing but also retracted it again in order to subordinate it to the sadness of concern.” Once doubt is planted, Kierkegaard says, "then doubt became stronger. What he himself had discerned
Perception
Perception is the process of attaining awareness or understanding of the environment by organizing and interpreting sensory information. All perception involves signals in the nervous system, which in turn result from physical stimulation of the sense organs...
, what he himself had experience
Experience
Experience as a general concept comprises knowledge of or skill in or observation of some thing or some event gained through involvement in or exposure to that thing or event....
d, what he with sympathetic
Sympathy
Sympathy is a social affinity in which one person stands with another person, closely understanding his or her feelings. Also known as empathic concern, it is the feeling of compassion or concern for another, the wish to see them better off or happier. Although empathy and sympathy are often used...
concern and to his own grief had become convinced
Belief
Belief is the psychological state in which an individual holds a proposition or premise to be true.-Belief, knowledge and epistemology:The terms belief and knowledge are used differently in philosophy....
of-that earthly life is vanity
Vanity
In conventional parlance, vanity is the excessive belief in one's own abilities or attractiveness to others. Prior to the 14th century it did not have such narcissistic undertones, and merely meant futility. The related term vainglory is now often seen as an archaic synonym for vanity, but...
, that even people’s good gifts are weak-willed and only fill him with disgust-this he now found to be confirmed in Scripture also. Thus it was now plain and clear to him that this is what the words meant, and that far from supporting the most beautiful in life and letting it continue, they on the contrary tacitly condemned it and allowed it to disappear." Was Kierkegaard's father a good and perfect gift or not?
Nero
Nero , was Roman Emperor from 54 to 68, and the last in the Julio-Claudian dynasty. Nero was adopted by his great-uncle Claudius to become his heir and successor, and succeeded to the throne in 54 following Claudius' death....
had, the esthetic enjoyments of life, "every life-view that has the condition outside itself is despair." Either/Or was an "attempt to actualize an ethical life-view." This "condition" doesn't come from externalities according to Kierkegaard. He says,
What earthly life does not have, what no man has, God alone has, and it is not a perfection on God’s part that he alone has it, but a perfection on the part of the good that a human being, insofar as he participates in the good, does so through God. What, then, is the good? It is that which is from above? What is the perfect? It is that which is from above. What is the good? It is God. … God is the only one who gives in such a way that he gives the condition along with the gift, the only one who in giving already has given. God gives both to will and to bring to completion; he begins and completes a good work in a person. Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses, Hong p. 134
Kierkegaard believed the religious discourse
Sermon
A sermon is an oration by a prophet or member of the clergy. Sermons address a Biblical, theological, religious, or moral topic, usually expounding on a type of belief, law or behavior within both past and present contexts...
should be used to convince the single individual to not only find the good but also try to become good oneself.
What is the "one thing needful" that knowledge can't bring? Kierkegaard answers thus:
And repeats the same answer in 1846;
Every Good Gift And Every Perfect Gift Is From Above
This discourse continues using another text from The Epistle of James and he adds a verse from the Book of Jude to explain what he wants to talk about here."The same apostle from whose epistle the above text is taken warns in the very next passage against the worldly endeavors that sought to penetrate also the congregation in order to establish the difference and distinction in the service of vanity, to emancipate it from the bond of perfection that knits its members together in equalityEgalitarianismEgalitarianism is a trend of thought that favors equality of some sort among moral agents, whether persons or animals. Emphasis is placed upon the fact that equality contains the idea of equity of quality...
before God, and to make it a slave in subjection to the law that rules the world and has presumably always ruled it: “to flatter people for the sake of advantage” (Jude 16) The idea so frequently stressed in Holy Scripture for the purpose of elevating the lowly and humbling the mighty, the idea that God does not respect the status of persons, this idea the apostle want to bring to life in the single individual for application in his lifePraxis (Eastern Orthodoxy)Praxis, a transliteration of the Greek word πρᾶξις, which is derived from the stem of the verb πράσσειν "to do, to act.", means "practice, action, doing"...
. If a person always keeps his soul sober and alert in this idea, he will never go astray in his outlook on life and people or “combine respect for status of persons with his faith.” “Show no partiality as you hold the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ.” (James 2.1) Then he will direct his thoughts toward God, and his eye will not make the mistake of looking for differences in the world instead of likeness with God." Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses, Hong p. 141
This point of view would break down the barriers between people. But Kierkegaard suggests that this breaking down of the barriers requires battles and victories. He says, "In the hallowed places, in every upbuilding view of life, the thought arises in a person’s soul that help him to fight the good fight with flesh and blood, with principalities and powers, and in the fight to free himself for equality before God, whether this battle is more a war of aggression against the differences that want to encumber him with worldly favoritism or a defensive war against the differences that want to make him anxious in worldly perdition. This fight is a fight to unite the "two great classes" who are being obligated "to give or being obliged to receive." Kierkegaard says, "Every human being, whether he gives or receives, essentially has to thank God." These gifts can be a simple word of encouragement, a truth, money etc., but Kierkegaard warns those who "sit and brood like dragons on their earthly treasures, they hoard, like a miser, the good things of the spirit, jealous
JEALOUS
"Jealous" is the first single by Dir En Grey and was released on May 10, 1998. The music videos of the title track and the B-side "Unknown･･･Despair･･･a Lost" are featured on the VHS Mousou Toukakugeki. A piano-vocal duet version of "Jealous" was later included on the "[KR] Cube" single...
of them-of what benefit is it to him that the words wanted to teach him to bestow them in the right way?
To Gain One’s Soul In Patience
Kierkegaard's final discourse is about the philosophical questions concerning the soulSoul
A soul in certain spiritual, philosophical, and psychological traditions is the incorporeal essence of a person or living thing or object. Many philosophical and spiritual systems teach that humans have souls, and others teach that all living things and even inanimate objects have souls. The...
. He's keeps using the Socratic method
Socratic method
The Socratic method , named after the classical Greek philosopher Socrates, is a form of inquiry and debate between individuals with opposing viewpoints based on asking and answering questions to stimulate critical thinking and to illuminate ideas...
. This time he asks, "Is it saying too little to say that a person comes naked into the world and possesses nothing in the world if he does not even possess his soul? (…) What is there to live for if a person has to spend his whole life gaining the presupposition that on the deepest level is life’s presupposition-yes, what does that mean?
Kierkegaard proposes that the world possesses the individual soul, but the world is imperfect. God is perfect. Therefore there is a battle going on and duties to carry out. He describes the battle this way, "In patience, the soul comes to terms with all its possessors, with the life of the world in that it sufferingly gains itself from it, with God in that it sufferingly accepts itself from him, with itself in that it itself retains what it simultaneously gives to both without anyone being able to deprive the soul of it-patience
Seven virtues
In the Catholic catechism, the seven catholic virtues refer to the combination of two lists of virtues, the 4 cardinal virtues of prudence, justice, restraint or temperance, and courage or fortitude, and the 3 theological virtues of faith, hope, and love or charity ; these were adopted by the...
. The soul can obtain nothing through power; it is in the hands of an alien power. If the soul were free in some other way, it would not be the self-contradiction in the contradiction between the external and the internal, the temporal and the eternal.(…) This self-contradiction is again expressed in the soul’s being stronger than the world through its weakness, in its being weaker than God through its strength, in its inability to gain anything but itself unless it wants to be deceived, and in its being able to gain itself only by losing itself. To know what a human soul is still a long way from beginning to gain one’s soul in patience, and it is a knowledge that exhibits its difference from that gaining inasmuch as it does indeed grow in impatience. And even though this knowledge may have its significance, it often deceived a person the very same way the world does, in that he thought that he possessed it, whereas it was his knowledge that possessed him."
The knowledge that is the highest knowledge as far as Kierkegaard is concerned is the knowledge that he had a soul that could relate to God. This was "the one thing needful" He says, "His soul belongs to the world as its illegitimate possession; it belongs to God as his legitimate possession; it belongs to the person himself as his possession, as a possession that is to be gained. Consequently he gains-if he actually does gain-his soul from God, away from the world, through himself." The fight for the soul takes place in the inner being, not in externalities where everything changes from one moment to the next, its a "work of patience". Here was Kierkegaard's Either/Or
Either/Or
Published in two volumes in 1843, Either/Or is an influential book written by the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard, exploring the aesthetic and ethical "phases" or "stages" of existence....
; either the single individual gains his soul from the world and presents it to God at the end of life or he loses his soul to the world and has nothing to present to God at the end of life. Kierkegaard puts it this way in August of 1944:
How can a person come to know that a soul resides in them and that another has claim to it? Classical knowledge realized that experience alone doesn't lead one to the truth, but Hegel was interested in making Reason
German idealism
German idealism was a philosophical movement that emerged in Germany in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. It developed out of the work of Immanuel Kant in the 1780s and 1790s, and was closely linked both with romanticism and the revolutionary politics of the Enlightenment...
the only path to truth. Kierkegaard disagreed. He said, "A person knows his soul, then, if he truly knows it as something that he may be able t o describe accurately but that is in the possession of another and that he probably desires to possess, but knowledge as such does not help him in this. Even though patience is required for this knowing, as for any other, this nevertheless is not what the words speak about, as is shown in this-that in knowledge patience is not simultaneously the condition and the conditioned. (…) The person who wants to gain his soul in patience knows that his soul does not belong to him, that there is a power from which he must gain it, a power by whom he must gain it, and that he must gain it himself." The soul is in the hands of an alien power, the world, and the single individual must gain the soul from the world in order to present it to God unblemished.
Criticism
Both Two Upbuilding Discourses and Four Upbuilding Discourses, 1843 were reviewed by Jacob Peter MynsterJacob Peter Mynster
Jacob Peter Mynster was a Danish theologian and Bishop of Zealand, Denmark from 1834 until his death....
, Bishop
Bishop
A bishop is an ordained or consecrated member of the Christian clergy who is generally entrusted with a position of authority and oversight. Within the Catholic Church, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox Churches, in the Assyrian Church of the East, in the Independent Catholic Churches, and in the...
of Zeeland
Zeeland
Zeeland , also called Zealand in English, is the westernmost province of the Netherlands. The province, located in the south-west of the country, consists of a number of islands and a strip bordering Belgium. Its capital is Middelburg. With a population of about 380,000, its area is about...
. He considered the discourse about Job a sermon
Sermon
A sermon is an oration by a prophet or member of the clergy. Sermons address a Biblical, theological, religious, or moral topic, usually expounding on a type of belief, law or behavior within both past and present contexts...
. The sales of the discourses were meager. It's generally accepted among scholars that Kierkegaard became a religious writer in 1847, with the publication of Edifying Discourses in Diverse Spirits
Edifying Discourses in Diverse Spirits
Edifiying Discourses in Diverse Spirits, also Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits, was published on March 13, 1847, and is one of the first books in Søren Kierkegaard's second authorship...
An article written in 1855 didn't acknowledge any of these discourses of 1843 or 1844.
The works of Dr. Kierkegaard had many readers among literary men; but acquired greater influence, some years afterwards, by the publication, in his own name, of several sermons and edifying discourses, written with perfect purity of language and great eloquence. He expressly enforced in them the subjective appropriation of religion; faith in the inexhaustible and unsearchable love of God; and in this sense he explains the axiomAxiomIn traditional logic, an axiom or postulate is a proposition that is not proven or demonstrated but considered either to be self-evident or to define and delimit the realm of analysis. In other words, an axiom is a logical statement that is assumed to be true...
, Credo quia absurdumCredo quia absurdumCredo quia absurdum is a Latin phrase of uncertain origin. It means "I believe because it is absurd"It is derived from a poorly remembered or misquoted passage in Tertullian's De Carne Christi defending the tenets of orthodox Christianity against docetism, which reads in the original Latin:It has...
. These sermons stirred up many minds; but towards the latter years of his life he entered on a new course, a glimpse of which he especially gives in one of his publications, which appeared under this title: Life in ChristianityPractice in ChristianityPractice in Christianity is a work by 19th century philosopher Søren Kierkegaard. It was published on September 27, 1850 under the pseudonym Anti-Climacus, the author of The Sickness Unto Death. Kierkegaard considered it to be his "most perfect and truest book"...
, by Anti-Climacus Evangelical Christendom: Christian Work and the News of the Churches Published 1855 by J.S. Phillips etc. p. 127-128
Kierkegaard's idea of the battle for the soul reminds one of John Bunyan
John Bunyan
John Bunyan was an English Christian writer and preacher, famous for writing The Pilgrim's Progress. Though he was a Reformed Baptist, in the Church of England he is remembered with a Lesser Festival on 30 August, and on the liturgical calendar of the Episcopal Church on 29 August.-Life:In 1628,...
's book, The Holy War
The Holy War
The Holy War Made by King Shaddai Upon Diabolus, to Regain the Metropolis of the World, Or, The Losing and Taking Again of the Town of Mansoul is a 1682 novel by John Bunyan...
Made by King Shaddai Upon Diabolus, to Regain the Metropolis of the World, Or, The Losing and Taking Again of the Town of Mansoul and the longing for the knowledge that knowledge can not bring reminds one of The Pilgrim's Regress
The Pilgrim's Regress
The Pilgrim's Regress is a book of allegorical fiction by C. S. Lewis.This 1933 novel — Lewis's first-published work of prose fiction — and his third piece of work to be published; charts the progress of a fictional character through the philosophical landscape before eventually...
by C.S. Lewis His book is very similar to Bunyan's earlier book The Pilgrim's Progress
The Pilgrim's Progress
The Pilgrim's Progress from This World to That Which Is to Come is a Christian allegory written by John Bunyan and published in February, 1678. It is regarded as one of the most significant works of religious English literature, has been translated into more than 200 languages, and has never been...
John is looking for the Landlord (God) and reason is his guide. "Reason – ‘The Spirit of the Age (Zeitgeist
Zeitgeist
Zeitgeist is "the spirit of the times" or "the spirit of the age."Zeitgeist is the general cultural, intellectual, ethical, spiritual or political climate within a nation or even specific groups, along with the general ambiance, morals, sociocultural direction, and mood associated with an era.The...
) wishes to allow argument and not to allow argument. … If anyone argues with them they say that he is rationalizing his own desires, and therefore need not be answered. But if anyone listens to them they will then argue themselves to show that their own doctrines are true. … You must ask them whether any reasoning is valid or not. If they say no, then their own doctrines, being reached by reasoning, fall to the ground. If they say yes, then they will have to examine your argument
Argument
In philosophy and logic, an argument is an attempt to persuade someone of something, or give evidence or reasons for accepting a particular conclusion.Argument may also refer to:-Mathematics and computer science:...
s and refute
Infinite qualitative distinction
The infinite qualitative distinction , sometimes translated as infinite qualitative difference, is an important concept coined by the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard. The distinction emphasizes the very different attributes of finite and temporal men and the infinite and eternal qualities of a...
them on their merits: for if some reasoning is valid, for all they know, your bit of reasoning may be one of the valid bits." Kierkegaard had just gone through an argument with the spirit of the age in Repetition
Repetition (Kierkegaard)
Kierkegaard said "Seneca has said that when a person has reached his thirtieth year he ought to know his constitution so well that he can be his own physician; I likewise believe that when a person has reached a certain age he ought to be able to be his own pastor...
. In 1848 Kierkegaard wrote in his diary:
When one realizes that one's life is a regress instead of a progress, and that this is the very property, just the thing one is working for, for God with all his wisdom, then one can talk to no one. Journals of Kierkegaard 48 IX A 23
Kierkegaard described his longing for God, for that "one thing he needed" for his happiness, in Fear and Trembling. He said,
I am convinced that God is love, for me this thought has a primal lyrical validity. When it is present to me, I am unspeakable happy; when it is absent, I long for it more vehemently than the lover for the object of its love. But I do not have faith; this courage I lack. To me God’s love, in both the direct and the inverse sense, is incommensurable with the whole of actuality. Knowing that I am so cowardly that I whimper and complain, but neither am I so perfidious as to deny that faith is something far higher. Fear and Trembling p. 34
And he wrote the following in the discoure he published on the same date as Fear and Trembling. People lose themselves in externalities.
Externally everything was beautiful and friendly. Yet his soul was in distress, and since this was not due to the external world, he could not see people’s comfort either. Outwardly everything was going well, and yet his soul was in anxiety, devoid of trust and bold confidence. He did not seek peace and tranquility in externals, and yet his heart continued to be troubled. Then the inner being within him drooped; it seemed to him as if his outward success were only for the purpose of preserving his inner sufferings so that he would not find relief even in the tribulations of the world; it seemed to him as if it were God himself who laid his powerful hand on him, as if her were a child of wrath, and yet he could not come any closer to understanding or explaining how this could be. Then his inner being rebelled within him, then he did what is related in an old devotional book: “he boasted that he was lost,” and that it was God himself who had plunged him down into damnation. Then the inner being with him froze. Three Upbuilding Discourses, 1843 p. 98
This kind of longing was repeated by Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy was a Russian writer who primarily wrote novels and short stories. Later in life, he also wrote plays and essays. His two most famous works, the novels War and Peace and Anna Karenina, are acknowledged as two of the greatest novels of all time and a pinnacle of realist...
in his Confessions. He said,
"The conceptionIdeaIn the most narrow sense, an idea is just whatever is before the mind when one thinks. Very often, ideas are construed as representational images; i.e. images of some object. In other contexts, ideas are taken to be concepts, although abstract concepts do not necessarily appear as images...
of God is not God," said I to myself. "The conception is what takes place within me. The conception of God is something I can evoke or can refrain from evoking in myself. That is not what I seek. I seek that without which there can be no life. And again all around me and within me began to die, and again I wished to kill myself. But then I turned my gaze upon myself, on what went on within me, and I remembered all those cessations of life and reanimations that recurred within me hundreds of times. I remembered that I only lived at those times when I believed in God. As it was before, so it was now; I need only be aware of God to live; I need only forget Him, or disbelieve Him, and I died."
George Brandes introduced both Soren Kierkegaard and Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was a 19th-century German philosopher, poet, composer and classical philologist...
to the English speaking world. He recognized Kierkegaard's intention and contrasted it to Neitzsche in the quote provided.
…on entering life young people meet with various collective opinions, more or less narrowly minded. The more the individual his it in him to become a real personality, the more he will resist following the herd. But even if an inner voice says to him: “Become thyself! Be thyself!” he hears its appeal with despondency. Has he a self? He does not know; he is not yet aware of it. He therefore looks about for a teacher, an educator, one who will teach him, not something foreign, but to become his own individual self.
We had in DenmarkDenmarkDenmark is a Scandinavian country in Northern Europe. The countries of Denmark and Greenland, as well as the Faroe Islands, constitute the Kingdom of Denmark . It is the southernmost of the Nordic countries, southwest of Sweden and south of Norway, and bordered to the south by Germany. Denmark...
a great man who with impressive force exhorted his contemporaries to become individuals. But Soren Kierkegaard’s appeal was not intended to be taken so unconditionally as it sounded. For the goal was fixed. They were to become individuals, not in order to develop into free personalities, no in order to become true Christians. Their freedom was only apparent; above them was suspended a “Thou shalt believe!” and a “Thou shalt obeyTen CommandmentsThe Ten Commandments, also known as the Decalogue , are a set of biblical principles relating to ethics and worship, which play a fundamental role in Judaism and most forms of Christianity. They include instructions to worship only God and to keep the Sabbath, and prohibitions against idolatry,...
!” even as individuals they had a halter round their necks, and on the farther side of the narrow passage of individualism, through which the herd was driven, the herd awaited them again-one flock, one shepherdChristChrist is the English term for the Greek meaning "the anointed one". It is a translation of the Hebrew , usually transliterated into English as Messiah or Mashiach...
.
It is not with this idea of immediately resigning his personalityPersonality DevelopmentAn individual's personality is an aggregate conglomeration of decisions we've made throughout our lives . There are inherent natural, genetic, and environmental factors that contribute to the development of our personality. According to process of socialization, "personality also colors our values,...
again that the young man in our day desires to become himself and seeks an educator. He will not have a dogmaDogmaDogma is the established belief or doctrine held by a religion, or a particular group or organization. It is authoritative and not to be disputed, doubted, or diverged from, by the practitioners or believers...
set up before him, at which he is expected to arrive. But he has an uneasy feeling that he is packed with dogmas. How is he to find himself in himself, how is he to dig himself out of himself? This is where the educator should help him. An educator can only be a liberator. It was a liberating educator of this kind that Nietzsche as a young man looked for and found in SchopenhauerArthur SchopenhauerArthur Schopenhauer was a German philosopher known for his pessimism and philosophical clarity. At age 25, he published his doctoral dissertation, On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason, which examined the four separate manifestations of reason in the phenomenal...
. Such a one will be found by every seeker in personality that has the most liberating effect on him during his period of development. Nietzsche says that as soon as he had read a single page of Schopenhauer, he knew he would read every page of him and pay heed to every word, even to the errors he might find. Every intellectual aspirant will be able to name men whom he has read in this way. Friedrich Nietzsche, by George Brandes; translated from the Danish by A.G. Chater, Published 1914 by W. Heinemann in London p. 9-10
Brandes also compared Kierkegaard to Henrik Ibsen
Henrik Ibsen
Henrik Ibsen was a major 19th-century Norwegian playwright, theatre director, and poet. He is often referred to as "the father of prose drama" and is one of the founders of Modernism in the theatre...
. He said "As friendship under certain circumstances may be a hindrance to the independence of the individual, so too may marriage. Therefore it is that Nora refuses to consider her duties toward her husband and children as her most sacred duties; for a far more sacred duty she believes she owes herself. Therefore it is that to Helmer's "You are before all else a wife and mother"; she replies : — " I am before all else a human being, — or, at all events, I shall endeavor to become one.” Ibsen shares with Kierkegaard the conviction that in every single human being there slumbers the soul of a warrior, an invincible power; but he cherishes it in another form than Kierkegaard, for whom the worth of the individual is something supernatural, while with Ibsen, we rest on human grounds. He believes that the individuality of the human being is to be preserved for its own sake, not for the sake of higher powers
God
God is the English name given to a singular being in theistic and deistic religions who is either the sole deity in monotheism, or a single deity in polytheism....
; and since beyond all else the individual should remain free and whole, all concessions made to the world represent to Ibsen the foul fiend, the evil principle. Eminent authors of the nineteenth century. Literary portraits, Henrik Ibsen, By George Brandes 1886 p. 433
David F. Swenson translated all eighteen discourses in the early 1940's. He wrote the following in his introduction to this discourse.
Theodor Haecker
Theodor Haecker
Theodor Haecker was a German writer, translator and cultural critic.He was a translator into German of Kierkegaard and Cardinal Newman. He wrote an essay, Kierkegaard and the Philosophy of Inwardness in 1913 at a time when few had heard of Haecker and even fewer had heard of Kierkegaard...
wrote in 1938, "Kierkegaard fought the fight victoriously. His was a good spirit and in him was love. Because of this victory one can forget his great error and defect; nor were they of an absolute order, but the result of his whole character and origin. He had the merits of his defects, and his errors were those of his truths, for he had not the teaching authority of the Church, but only his conscience
Conscience
Conscience is an aptitude, faculty, intuition or judgment of the intellect that distinguishes right from wrong. Moral judgement may derive from values or norms...
, to which he was always faithful. On his death-bed he spoke of his fight in his own particular way, with humour and pathos; he said that all his work and all his toil had had as aim and end to sit astride a cloud and sing Alleluja, Alleluja, Alleluja to the glory of God. According to Hoffding
Harald Høffding
Harald Høffding was a Danish philosopher.-Life:Born and educated in Copenhagen, he became a schoolmaster, and ultimately in 1883 a professor at the University of Copenhagen...
, Kierkegaard taught us never to lose courage, whatever the difficulties. That only turns Kierkegaard's thought into a wretched banality; it is an appalling platitude and completely misses the point. It is tantamount to Carlyle's
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle was a Scottish satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher during the Victorian era.He called economics "the dismal science", wrote articles for the Edinburgh Encyclopedia, and became a controversial social commentator.Coming from a strict Calvinist family, Carlyle was...
'work and don't despair!' a saying that would have made Kierkegaard despair at once. His motto was the Benedictine motto Ora et labora (pray and work), so that he could say 'my genius is my prayer'. Nor was it merely a matter of holding out until one day all would be over, but of enduring and bearing it because it never ceases: because there is eternity: eternal blessedness or eternal despair. And as a result of his great struggles he received that precious acquisition, the belief that God is love. Even if he had never said so, although in fact he does, it is clear which was his favorite text, for it was the subject of nearly all his discourses and he was for ever paraphrasing it. Little wonder then, that it was this verse from the Epistle of S. James: 'Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning."
Robert L. Perkins and George Pattison have each written books about these discourses. Pattison says, "Every Good and Perfect Gift, it is the transformation that occurs when we realize that God is the giver of every good and perfect gift in such a way that whether our life flows smoothly and uninterruptedly forward, or whether we are wronged, tried and tested in adversities and temptations, all that we have and all that we are is a gift from God and therefore to be received with thankfulness and repentance; such an understanding if further exemplified in Job, presented in the discourses as a ‘correction’ to the defiant portrait of Job founded in Repetition, who, in the face of utter loss does not lose his mind in troubling himself over the various secondary causes that brought about this loss." Both books are below in Secondary Sources.
Kierkegaard presented religion, especially Christianity, very primitively in this discourse. He dedicated all of his discourses to his father and began each one with a dedication to the "single individual". Here is his dedication from this discourse
Primary Sources
- Either/Or Volume I Edited by Victor Eremita, February 20, 1843, translated by David F. Swenson and Lillian Marvin Swenson Princeton University Press 1971
- Either/Or. Part II Translated by Howard and Edna Hong. Princeton, 1988, ISBN 978-0-691-02041-9
- Edifying Discourses, by Soren Kierkegaard, Vol. II, Translated from the Danish by David F. Swenson and Lillian Marvin Swenson, Augsburg Publishing House, Minneapolis, Minnesota, 1944
- Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses, by Soren Kierkegaard, Princeton University Press. Hong, 1990
- Fear and Trembling; Copyright 1843 Soren Kierkegaard – Kierkegaard’s Writings; 6 – copyright 1983 – Howard V. Hong
- Repetition, A Venture in Experimental Psychology, by Constantin Constantius, October 16, 1843, by Soren Kierkegaard, Edited and Translated by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, 1983, Princeton University Press
- Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments Volume I, by Johannes Climacus, edited by Soren Kierkegaard, Copyright 1846 – Edited and Translated by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong 1992 Princeton University Press
- The Point of View of My Work as An Author: A Report to History, by Soren Kierkegaard, written in 1848, published in 1859 by his brother Peter Kierkegaard Translated with introduction and notes by Walter Lowrie, 1962 Harper Torchbooks
- Evangelical Christendom: Christian Work and the News of the Churches, Published by J.S. Phillips etc. 1855 p. 127-128
Secondary Sources
- Eminent authors of the nineteenth century. Literary portraits, By George Brandes, Published 1886 by T. Y. Crowell & Co. in New York - He has numerous references to Kierkegaard throughout this book
- Friedrich Nietzsche, by George Brandes; translated from the Danish by A.G. Chater, Published 1914 by W. Heinemann in London, This early work of Brandes is also full of references to Kierkegaard
- Kierkegaard's Upbuilding Discourses: philosophy, theology, literature, By George Pattison. Psychology Press, 2002
- Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses, Søren Kierkegaard, by, Robert L. Perkins, Mercer University Press, 2003