Two Upbuilding Discourses, 1844
Encyclopedia
Soren Kierkegaard wrote Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses in the years 1843-1844. These discourses were translated from Danish to English in the 1940's, and from Danish to German in the 1950's, and then to English again in 1990. These Discourses were published along with Kierkegaard's pseudonymous works.
Scholars generally say that "Kierkegaard's books were of two kinds. There was a series of books ascribed to pseudonym
s, which Kierkegaard described as "aesthetic" in character. In Either/Or
, Fear and Trembling
, and Repetition (Kierkegaard)
, Kierkegaard explores the nature of human passion
s in a variety of forms, often presenting his own experiences in a poetically
disguised narrative
". The pseudonymous books as well as his discourses are understood to be directed to the love of his life, Regine Olsen. "He hoped to reveal himself at last to Regine
in this "indirect" manner. At the same time that these aesthetic writings were being published, Kierkegaard wrote a series of edifying, sermon
like essays, although he was careful to insist that they were not sermons, in part because he had not been ordained and therefore lacked "authority." Through these he communicated his underlying religious commitments in a more "direct" fashion. Kierkegaard continued to write these "edifying discourses" throughout his life, but as he grew older they focused on more distinctively Christian
themes and took on a decidedly sharper tone."
Kierkegaard says individuals are "squeezed into the forms of actuality" but that they have a choice as to what form they will put on. He says "the transition made in Either/Or is substantially that from a poet
-existence to an ethical existence.
He "held out Either/Or to the world in his left hand, and in his right he held the Two Edifying Discourses
; but all, or as good as all, grasped with their right what he held in his left hand. Kierkegaard wrote in 1848, “I had made up my mind before God what I should do: I staked my case on the Two Edifying Discourses; but I understood perfectly that only very few understood them. And here for the first time comes in the category ‘that individual' who with joy and gratitude I call my reader.’ A stereo typed formula which was repeated in the Preface to every collection of Edifying Discourses. Now he holds out these two discourses of 1844 with his right hand and hopes for better results. He says in his dedication to "that single individual',
How can we learn from what we suffer? Kierkegaard said, "it is Governance that has educated me." This would mean Divine Governance since he capitalized the word. His works lead a person from being governed by everything that happens to him to one who can choose how he is going to govern himself. Kierkegaard wrote in Works of Love
"You have to do only with what you do unto others, or how you take what others do unto you. The direction is inward; essentially you have to do only with yourself before God. This world of inwardness, this rendition of what other people call actuality, this is actuality. The Christian like for like belongs to this world of inwardness." We can learn through the application of patience.
Every individual is equal because every individual has a choice, an eternal soul, expectations of faith and love and patience. All of these inner goods are "good and perfect gifts from God". And the knowledge that you need God is the all important gift from God according to Kierkegaard. These two discourses deal with patience. Kierkegaard says each person must be involved in forming his own personality
. The individual must be patient in her expectations.
Luke 2:33-40 "And his father and his mother marveled at what was said about him; and Simeon blessed them and said to Mary his mother, "Behold, this child is set for the fall and rising of many in Israel, and for a sign that is spoken against (and a sword will pierce through your own soul also), that thoughts out of many hearts may be revealed." And there was a prophetess, Anna, the daughter of Phan'u-el, of the tribe of Asher; she was of a great age, having lived with her husband seven years from her virginity, and as a widow till she was eighty-four. She did not depart from the temple, worshiping with fasting and prayer night and day. And coming up at that very hour she gave thanks to God, and spoke of him to all who were looking for the redemption of Jerusalem. And when they had performed everything according to the law of the Lord, they returned into Galilee, to their own city, Nazareth. And the child grew and became strong, filled with wisdom; and the favor of God was upon him." The Bible (RSV)
His Two Upbuilding Discourses of 1844:
in expectancy when facing life situations in these two short essays.
He says to the single individual, "You may have heard how someone who had thoughtlessly frittered away his life and never understood anything but wasted the power of his soul
in vanities
, how he lay on his sick bed and the frightfulness of disease encompassed him and the singularly fearful battle began, how he then for the first time in his life understood something, understood that it was death he struggled with, and how he then pulled himself together in a purpose that was powerful enough to move the world, how he attained marvelous collectedness for wrenching himself out of the sufferings in order to use the last moment to catch up on some of what he had neglected, to bring order to some of the chaos he had caused during a long life, to contrive something for those he would leave behind. You may have heard it from those who were there with him, who with sadness, but also deeply moved, had to confess that in those few hours he had lived more than in all the rest of his life, more than is lived in years and days as people ordinarily live."
He provides examples of how different people react to danger and anxiety
. He regards the single individual very highly and says, "Let us praise what is truly praiseworthy, the glory of human nature; let us give thanks that it was granted also to us to be human
beings."
Kierkegaard provides three examples of people reacting to anxiety and despair, all of them as praiseworthy as the physical endurance to defeat an external enemy. Both have been important factors since the publication of Either/Or
. he writes,
One person "surveyed everything and the horrifying situation, how quickly presence of mind assuredly chose the right thing as if it were the fruit of the most mature reflection, how the will, even the eyes, defied the threatening terrors, how the body did not even feel the exertion, the agonizing suffering, how the arms lightly carried the burden that far exceeded human strength, how the feet stood firm where others did not dare to look down because they saw the abyss!"
While another "person discovered a danger while all speak of peace and security, if he discerned the horror and after having used the healthiest power of his soul to make himself fully aware of it, again with the horror before his eyes, now developed and preserved the same strength of soul as the one who fought in peril of his life, the same inwardness as the one who fought with death-yes, then we shall praise him."
Another "with troubled imagination
conjured up anxieties he was unable to surmount, while he still could not leave off staring at them, evoking them ever more alarmingly, pondering them ever more fearfully, then we shall not praise him, even though we praise the wonderful glory of human nature. But if he brought out the horror and detected the mortal danger
, without any thought of providing people, by pointless talk, with subject matter for pointless pondering, but grasped that the danger had to do with himself-if, then, with this in mind, he won the strength of soul that horror gives, this would in truth be praiseworthy, would in truth be wondrously wonderful."
This act of self-discovery is the essence of what Kierkegaard wrote about. He says, "People are prone to pay attention to earthly dangers but these are external dangers. Kierkegaard says, we need to preserve something internal; our souls." He explains himself,
There are two paths people take in life. The path of patience or the path of impatience. Kierkegaard puts it so well,
Now he brings out a real person, just as he did in Either/Or (A and B), in Fear and Trembling (Abraham), and in Repetition (the Young Man and Constantin Constanius). He brings out Anna
and focuses primarily on her and her expectancy. What he drives home is that God is the constant that remains the same, whereas everything else changes. What he exhorts us to is to love God in such a way that our nature might be like his, that we might gain God in constancy and rescue our soul in patience.
What is it about expectancy that it either blesses or curses the single individual? Kierkegaard says, "How often it is said that no one is to be considered happy until he is dead, but how seldom is a troubled person heard to say that one should not give up as long as one is living, that there is hope as long as there is life-and consequently there is always hope for the immortal who expect an eternity." His advice to the person who believes that their past life has destroyed all expectancy is to: “Forget the past once again, quit all this calculating in which you trap yourself, do not stop the prompting of your heart, do not extinguish the spirit in useless quarreling about who waited the longest and suffered the most-once again cast all your sorrow upon the Lord and throw yourself upon his love. Up out of this sea, expectancy rises reborn again and sees heaven open-reborn, no newborn, for this heavenly expectancy begins precisely when the earthly expectancy sinks down powerless and in despair.”
But the expectant person should always remember that "every time he catches his soul not expecting victory, he knows he does not have faith." Anna had a choice, the same as everyone has, and used it. Kierkegaard says,
to this discourse. "The discourses appearing in the present volume constitute the fourth and fifth groups in the series of eighteen devotional addresses, and both groups were published in 1844. It may be of some interest to consider more particularly than has hitherto been done, the plan and purpose of these productions, paralleling as they do in time of publication the publication of the esthetic works. Unlike the latter, these addresses were published under Kierkegaard's own name, because as religious works he assumed personal responsibility for the views expressed, since their purpose was to indicate that from the beginning his writing had a religious motivation and plan, of which the esthetic works were also a part."
Swenson is echoing Kierkegaard's own thoughts here. He wrote the following in Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments
,
And again in The Point of View of My Work as an Author
,
David Jay Gouwen, Professor of Theology at Brite Divinity School
, reminds the reader that Kierkegaard was always more interested in the "how" than in the "why". He says, Because the “how” is central to Kierkegaard, we must attend closely not only to the pseudonymous literature that has received the bulk of scholarly attention, but also to the series of upbuilding and edifying discourses published currently with the pseudonymous literature, and to what Robert L. Perkins has helpfully termed Kierkegaard’s “second authorship,” the straightforward religious literature published (with some exceptions) under Kierkegaard’s own name after Concluding Unscientific Postscript (1846). It was the edifying discourses in his right hand and his pseudonymous writing in his left, and the public accepted with its right hand the pseudonymous literature in his left, and in its left hand the edifying discourses literature in his right. Although there have been a number of fine studies in recent years that attend to the second literature, there is room for further reflection on the inner logic and character of the upbuilding and “second literature.” This study is an attempt to contribute to that reflection. What lies behind this is a conviction that finally, the audience Kierkegaard’s literature addresses consist of not simply, or even first of all, philosophers or literati
(whether of nineteenth-century Denmark or today) but persons attempting to be human beings and, perhaps Christians. Kierkegaard as religious thinker, By David Jay Gouwen, p. 13
Mankind has many different conceptions of what the soul is but one thing they all agree on is that every single individual has a soul and Kierkegaard's view of the matter is that since everyone has a soul all are equal. Is the Russian soul
different from the Greek soul
or from Hegel's soul or W. E. B. Du Bois's
or is the soul equivalent to the mind
or to the world
?
Everyone wants to think about it but Keirkegaard wanted to act on a presupposition that there is a soul living inside himself and his job was to preserve it. He says,
Kierkegaard wrote the following in an earlier discourse,
He explained the problem people have in loving human beings in his Journals,
In Either/Or he says,
Howard V. Hong says in the introduction to his translation of the discourses, "According to the usual ways of reckoning the impact of a book-reviews and sales-the six small volumes of upbuilding discourses were scarcely a smashing success. ... The sales of the six volumes matched the paucity and brevity of the reviews of the discourses. ... when [Kierkegaard] ran out of the first two discourses, he bound the sixteen discourses in a volume under the common title Sexten opyggelige Taler (Sixteen Upbuilding Discourses). ... 78 copies of the two discourses (1843 and 61 copies of the three discourses (1843) were remaindered
, a copy of Sexten opyggelige Taler must be the rarest Kierkegaard book in existence. ... they and later discourses were obliged to wait a hundred years for the acclaim given to them by Martin Heidegger
.
Swenson wrote in 1941, "While Kierkegaard has long been recognized in continental Europe as one of the world's foremost thinkers, it is only recently that he is coming to be known by the English-reading public. His first work to be translated into English, the Philosophical Fragments
, appeared only five years ago. Since then some eight or ten of his more important books have been published in English, with a prospect for more in the future. As a result of this tardy recognition, English interpretations of Kierkegaard's thought and commentaries concerning it, have been practically non-existent, a condition which is bound to alter rapidly as he becomes better known, since his ideas are not only thought-provoking but frequently controversial in content.
Scholars generally say that "Kierkegaard's books were of two kinds. There was a series of books ascribed to pseudonym
Pseudonym
A pseudonym is a name that a person assumes for a particular purpose and that differs from his or her original orthonym...
s, which Kierkegaard described as "aesthetic" in character. In 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....
, Fear and Trembling
Fear and Trembling
Fear and Trembling is an influential philosophical work by Søren Kierkegaard, published in 1843 under the pseudonym Johannes de silentio...
, and Repetition (Kierkegaard)
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...
, Kierkegaard explores the nature of human passion
Passion (emotion)
Passion is a term applied to a very strong feeling about a person or thing. Passion is an intense emotion compelling feeling, enthusiasm, or desire for something....
s in a variety of forms, often presenting his own experiences in a poetically
Poetry
Poetry is a form of literary art in which language is used for its aesthetic and evocative qualities in addition to, or in lieu of, its apparent meaning...
disguised narrative
Narrative
A narrative is a constructive format that describes a sequence of non-fictional or fictional events. The word derives from the Latin verb narrare, "to recount", and is related to the adjective gnarus, "knowing" or "skilled"...
". The pseudonymous books as well as his discourses are understood to be directed to the love of his life, Regine Olsen. "He hoped to reveal himself at last to Regine
Regine Olsen
Regine Schlegel née Olsen was a Danish woman who was engaged to the philosopher and theologian Søren Kierkegaard from September 1840 to October 1841...
in this "indirect" manner. At the same time that these aesthetic writings were being published, Kierkegaard wrote a series of edifying, 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...
like essays, although he was careful to insist that they were not sermons, in part because he had not been ordained and therefore lacked "authority." Through these he communicated his underlying religious commitments in a more "direct" fashion. Kierkegaard continued to write these "edifying discourses" throughout his life, but as he grew older they focused on more distinctively Christian
Christian
A Christian is a person who adheres to Christianity, an Abrahamic, monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth as recorded in the Canonical gospels and the letters of the New Testament...
themes and took on a decidedly sharper tone."
Kierkegaard says individuals are "squeezed into the forms of actuality" but that they have a choice as to what form they will put on. He says "the transition made in Either/Or is substantially that from a poet
Poet
A poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...
-existence to an ethical existence.
He "held out Either/Or to the world in his left hand, and in his right he held the Two Edifying 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...
; but all, or as good as all, grasped with their right what he held in his left hand. Kierkegaard wrote in 1848, “I had made up my mind before God what I should do: I staked my case on the Two Edifying Discourses; but I understood perfectly that only very few understood them. And here for the first time comes in the category ‘that individual' who with joy and gratitude I call my reader.’ A stereo typed formula which was repeated in the Preface to every collection of Edifying Discourses. Now he holds out these two discourses of 1844 with his right hand and hopes for better results. He says in his dedication to "that single individual',
Although this little book (which is called “discourses’, not sermons, because its author does not have authority to preach; “upbuilding discourses,” not discourses for upbuilding, because the speaker by no means claims to be a teacher) has left out something, it nevertheless has forgotten nothing; although it is not without hope in the world, it nevertheless totally renounces all hope in the uncertain or of the uncertain. Tempted, perhaps, as the earlier ones were not, it takes no delight in “going to the house of feasting,” desires as little as they “that its visit might be in vain” (I Thessalonians 2:1); even though a person was not without education insofar as he learned from what he suffered, it still would never be very pleasant if he needed to suffer much in order to learn little. Its desire is to give thanks if on the word of authority it were to win the tacit permission of the multitude to dare to go its way unnoticed in order to find what it seeks: that single individual whom I with joy and gratitude call my reader, who with the right hand accepts what is offered with the right hand; that single individual who at the opportune time takes out what he received and hides what he took out until he takes it out again and thus by his good will, his wisdom, invests the humble gift to the benefit and joy of one who continually desires only to be as one absent on a journey. S.K. Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses, Hong Preface p. 179
How can we learn from what we suffer? Kierkegaard said, "it is Governance that has educated me." This would mean Divine Governance since he capitalized the word. His works lead a person from being governed by everything that happens to him to one who can choose how he is going to govern himself. Kierkegaard wrote in Works of Love
Works of Love
Works of Love is a work by Søren Kierkegaard written in 1847. It is one of the works which he published under his own name, as opposed to his more famous "pseudonymous" works. Works of Love deals primarily with the Christian conception of love in contrast with erotic love or preferential love ...
"You have to do only with what you do unto others, or how you take what others do unto you. The direction is inward; essentially you have to do only with yourself before God. This world of inwardness, this rendition of what other people call actuality, this is actuality. The Christian like for like belongs to this world of inwardness." We can learn through the application of patience.
Every individual is equal because every individual has a choice, an eternal soul, expectations of faith and love and patience. All of these inner goods are "good and perfect gifts from God". And the knowledge that you need God is the all important gift from God according to Kierkegaard. These two discourses deal with patience. Kierkegaard says each person must be involved in forming his own personality
Personality psychology
Personality psychology is a branch of psychology that studies personality and individual differences. Its areas of focus include:* Constructing a coherent picture of the individual and his or her major psychological processes...
. The individual must be patient in her expectations.
Structure
These two discourses are the only discourses of his eighteen discourses that lacks a dedication to his father. Perhaps it was dedicated to his mother Ane since it deals with keeping expectation alive even when suffering loss and Ane lost five of her seven children.Luke 2:33-40 "And his father and his mother marveled at what was said about him; and Simeon blessed them and said to Mary his mother, "Behold, this child is set for the fall and rising of many in Israel, and for a sign that is spoken against (and a sword will pierce through your own soul also), that thoughts out of many hearts may be revealed." And there was a prophetess, Anna, the daughter of Phan'u-el, of the tribe of Asher; she was of a great age, having lived with her husband seven years from her virginity, and as a widow till she was eighty-four. She did not depart from the temple, worshiping with fasting and prayer night and day. And coming up at that very hour she gave thanks to God, and spoke of him to all who were looking for the redemption of Jerusalem. And when they had performed everything according to the law of the Lord, they returned into Galilee, to their own city, Nazareth. And the child grew and became strong, filled with wisdom; and the favor of God was upon him." The Bible (RSV)
His Two Upbuilding Discourses of 1844:
- To Preserve One’s Soul In Patience, Luke 21.19, "By your endurance you will gain your lives." The Bible (RSV)
- Patience In Expectation, Luke 2:33-40
To Preserve One’s Soul In Patience
Kierkegaard stressed the value of patiencePatience
Patience is the state of endurance under difficult circumstances, which can mean persevering in the face of delay or provocation without acting on annoyance/anger in a negative way; or exhibiting forbearance when under strain, especially when faced with longer-term difficulties. Patience is the...
in expectancy when facing life situations in these two short essays.
He says to the single individual, "You may have heard how someone who had thoughtlessly frittered away his life and never understood anything but wasted the power of his 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...
in vanities
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...
, how he lay on his sick bed and the frightfulness of disease encompassed him and the singularly fearful battle began, how he then for the first time in his life understood something, understood that it was death he struggled with, and how he then pulled himself together in a purpose that was powerful enough to move the world, how he attained marvelous collectedness for wrenching himself out of the sufferings in order to use the last moment to catch up on some of what he had neglected, to bring order to some of the chaos he had caused during a long life, to contrive something for those he would leave behind. You may have heard it from those who were there with him, who with sadness, but also deeply moved, had to confess that in those few hours he had lived more than in all the rest of his life, more than is lived in years and days as people ordinarily live."
He provides examples of how different people react to danger and 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,...
. He regards the single individual very highly and says, "Let us praise what is truly praiseworthy, the glory of human nature; let us give thanks that it was granted also to us to be human
Human
Humans are the only living species in the Homo genus...
beings."
Kierkegaard provides three examples of people reacting to anxiety and despair, all of them as praiseworthy as the physical endurance to defeat an external enemy. Both have been important factors since the publication of 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....
. he writes,
One person "surveyed everything and the horrifying situation, how quickly presence of mind assuredly chose the right thing as if it were the fruit of the most mature reflection, how the will, even the eyes, defied the threatening terrors, how the body did not even feel the exertion, the agonizing suffering, how the arms lightly carried the burden that far exceeded human strength, how the feet stood firm where others did not dare to look down because they saw the abyss!"
While another "person discovered a danger while all speak of peace and security, if he discerned the horror and after having used the healthiest power of his soul to make himself fully aware of it, again with the horror before his eyes, now developed and preserved the same strength of soul as the one who fought in peril of his life, the same inwardness as the one who fought with death-yes, then we shall praise him."
Another "with troubled imagination
Imagination
Imagination, also called the faculty of imagining, is the ability of forming mental images, sensations and concepts, in a moment when they are not perceived through sight, hearing or other senses...
conjured up anxieties he was unable to surmount, while he still could not leave off staring at them, evoking them ever more alarmingly, pondering them ever more fearfully, then we shall not praise him, even though we praise the wonderful glory of human nature. But if he brought out the horror and detected the mortal danger
Psychotherapy
Psychotherapy is a general term referring to any form of therapeutic interaction or treatment contracted between a trained professional and a client or patient; family, couple or group...
, without any thought of providing people, by pointless talk, with subject matter for pointless pondering, but grasped that the danger had to do with himself-if, then, with this in mind, he won the strength of soul that horror gives, this would in truth be praiseworthy, would in truth be wondrously wonderful."
This act of self-discovery is the essence of what Kierkegaard wrote about. He says, "People are prone to pay attention to earthly dangers but these are external dangers. Kierkegaard says, we need to preserve something internal; our souls." He explains himself,
Just as there is only one means for preserving it, so is this means necessary even in order to understandUnderstandUnderstand is a commercial static code analysis software tool produced by SciTools. It is mostly used to reverse engineer, automatically document, and calculate code metrics for projects with large code-bases....
that it must be preserved, and if this were not the case, the means would not be the only means. This means is patience. A person does not first gain his soul and then have the need for patience to preserve it, but he gains it in no other way than by preserving it, and therefore patience is the first and patience is the last, precisely because patience is just as active as it is passive and just as passive as it is active. Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses, Hong p. 187
There are two paths people take in life. The path of patience or the path of impatience. Kierkegaard puts it so well,
Does not patience perceive that the greatest danger is that the elucidating understanding’s fearsAnxietyAnxiety 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,...
prove not to be the case, for then not even patience could comfort anymore? Now it can, if only the sick one so desires, since the danger is whether the sick one is to be allowed to emancipate himself from the eternal, to wither away in commonsensicalityCommon senseCommon sense is defined by Merriam-Webster as, "sound and prudent judgment based on a simple perception of the situation or facts." Thus, "common sense" equates to the knowledge and experience which most people already have, or which the person using the term believes that they do or should have...
, to expire in callousness, to be desouled in spiritlessness. And against this danger there is still a resource. He who, believing, continues to aspire to the eternal never becomes satiated in such a way that he does not continue blessedly to hunger; he who hopefully looks to the futureOptimismThe Oxford English Dictionary defines optimism as having "hopefulness and confidence about the future or successful outcome of something; a tendency to take a favourable or hopeful view." The word is originally derived from the Latin optimum, meaning "best." Being optimistic, in the typical sense...
can never be petrified at some moment by the past, because he always turns his back to it; he who loves God and human beings still continually has enough to do, even when need is the greatest and despair is most imminent. Before he lies down to die, he asks once again: Do I love God just as much as before, and do I love the common concerns of human beings? If he dares to answer in the affirmative, then he does not die or he dies saved; if he dare not, then he certainly has enough to do. Then in love and for the sake of his love he must deliberateThought"Thought" generally refers to any mental or intellectual activity involving an individual's subjective consciousness. It can refer either to the act of thinking or the resulting ideas or arrangements of ideas. Similar concepts include cognition, sentience, consciousness, and imagination...
whether it is not possible to see, to glimpse, to presage the joy and comfort that still must hide in the sadness, since this must still truly serve him for good. Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses p. 198-199
Patience In Expectation
Kierkegaard's intention in the preceding discourse was to speak as if patience were outside a person. He says, "we are well aware that this is not so. And nevertheless I ask you, you who know better how to praise it than I, know better how to accomplish the good, how to commend it to people, since you have known it better, more inwardly and for a longer time-was it nevertheless not so at times, when concern and your laboring thoughts piled up deliberations that were of no benefit except to give birth to new deliberations, that then the plain, simple, but nevertheless forgotten words of patience prodded you from another direction, was it not as if patience stool on the outside? We have made it appear as if patience were outside, and we have let it speak, as it were, for itself."Now he brings out a real person, just as he did in Either/Or (A and B), in Fear and Trembling (Abraham), and in Repetition (the Young Man and Constantin Constanius). He brings out Anna
Anna (Bible)
Anna or Anna the Prophetess was a biblical figure mentioned only in the Gospel of Luke. According to that Gospel, she was an aged Jewish prophetess who prophesied about Jesus at the Temple of Jerusalem. She appears in in the episode of the presentation of Jesus at the Temple.While Luke gave some...
and focuses primarily on her and her expectancy. What he drives home is that God is the constant that remains the same, whereas everything else changes. What he exhorts us to is to love God in such a way that our nature might be like his, that we might gain God in constancy and rescue our soul in patience.
What is it about expectancy that it either blesses or curses the single individual? Kierkegaard says, "How often it is said that no one is to be considered happy until he is dead, but how seldom is a troubled person heard to say that one should not give up as long as one is living, that there is hope as long as there is life-and consequently there is always hope for the immortal who expect an eternity." His advice to the person who believes that their past life has destroyed all expectancy is to: “Forget the past once again, quit all this calculating in which you trap yourself, do not stop the prompting of your heart, do not extinguish the spirit in useless quarreling about who waited the longest and suffered the most-once again cast all your sorrow upon the Lord and throw yourself upon his love. Up out of this sea, expectancy rises reborn again and sees heaven open-reborn, no newborn, for this heavenly expectancy begins precisely when the earthly expectancy sinks down powerless and in despair.”
But the expectant person should always remember that "every time he catches his soul not expecting victory, he knows he does not have faith." Anna had a choice, the same as everyone has, and used it. Kierkegaard says,
Criticism
These upbuilding discourses were translated edifying discourses by David F. Swenson when he translated them in the mid-1940's. He wrote the following in his prefacePreface
A preface is an introduction to a book or other literary work written by the work's author. An introductory essay written by a different person is a foreword and precedes an author's preface...
to this discourse. "The discourses appearing in the present volume constitute the fourth and fifth groups in the series of eighteen devotional addresses, and both groups were published in 1844. It may be of some interest to consider more particularly than has hitherto been done, the plan and purpose of these productions, paralleling as they do in time of publication the publication of the esthetic works. Unlike the latter, these addresses were published under Kierkegaard's own name, because as religious works he assumed personal responsibility for the views expressed, since their purpose was to indicate that from the beginning his writing had a religious motivation and plan, of which the esthetic works were also a part."
Swenson is echoing Kierkegaard's own thoughts here. He wrote the following in Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments
Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments
Concluding Unscientific Postscript to the Philosophical Fragments is a major work by Søren Kierkegaard. The work is a poignant attack against Hegelianism, the philosophy of G. W. F. Hegel. The work is also famous for its dictum, Subjectivity is Truth...
,
That Either/Or ends precisely with the upbuilding truth (yet without so much as italicizing the words, to say nothing of didacticizing) was remarkable to me. I could wish to see it emphasized more definitely in order that each particular point on the way to existing Christian-religiously could become clear. The Christian truth as inwardness is also upbuilding, but this by no means implies that every upbuilding truth is Christian; the upbuilding is a wider category. I now concentrated again on this point, but what happened? Just as I intended to begin, Two Upbuilding Discourses by MagisterMagister (degree)Magister is an academic degree used in various systems of higher education.-Argentina:...
Kierkegaard, 1843, was published. Then came three upbuilding discourses, and the preface repeated that they were not sermons, which I, if no one else, would indeed have unconditionally protested against, since they use only ethical categories of immanenceImmanenceImmanence refers to philosophical and metaphysical theories of divine presence, in which the divine is seen to be manifested in or encompassing of the material world. It is often contrasted with theories of transcendence, in which the divine is seen to be outside the material world...
, not the doubly reflected religious categories in the paradox. If a confusion of language is to be averted, the sermon must be reserved for religious-Christian existence. p. 256
And again in The Point of View of My Work as an Author
The Point of View of my Work as an Author
The Point of View For my Work as an Author is an autobiographical account of the 19th century Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard's use of his pseudonyms. It was written in 1848, published in part in 1851 , and published in full posthumously in 1859...
,
“The first group of writings represents aesthetic productivity, the last group is exclusively religious: between them, as the turning-point, lies, the Concluding Postscript. This work concerns itself with and sets ‘the Problem’, which is the problem of the whole authorship, how to become a Christian. So it takes cognizance of the pseudonymous work, and of the eighteen edifying discourses as well, showing that all of this serves to illuminate the Problem-without, however, affirming that this was the aim of the foregoing production, which indeed could not have been affirmed by a pseudonym, a third person, incapable of knowing anything about the aim of a work that was not his own. The Concluding Postscript is not an aesthetic work, but neither is it in the strictest sense religious. Hence it is by a pseudonym, though I add my name as editor-a thing I did not do in the case of any purely aesthetic work.” p. 13
David Jay Gouwen, Professor of Theology at Brite Divinity School
Brite Divinity School
Brite Divinity School is affiliated with and located at Texas Christian University. It is also affiliated with the Christian Church...
, reminds the reader that Kierkegaard was always more interested in the "how" than in the "why". He says, Because the “how” is central to Kierkegaard, we must attend closely not only to the pseudonymous literature that has received the bulk of scholarly attention, but also to the series of upbuilding and edifying discourses published currently with the pseudonymous literature, and to what Robert L. Perkins has helpfully termed Kierkegaard’s “second authorship,” the straightforward religious literature published (with some exceptions) under Kierkegaard’s own name after Concluding Unscientific Postscript (1846). It was the edifying discourses in his right hand and his pseudonymous writing in his left, and the public accepted with its right hand the pseudonymous literature in his left, and in its left hand the edifying discourses literature in his right. Although there have been a number of fine studies in recent years that attend to the second literature, there is room for further reflection on the inner logic and character of the upbuilding and “second literature.” This study is an attempt to contribute to that reflection. What lies behind this is a conviction that finally, the audience Kierkegaard’s literature addresses consist of not simply, or even first of all, philosophers or literati
Intellectual
An intellectual is a person who uses intelligence and critical or analytical reasoning in either a professional or a personal capacity.- Terminology and endeavours :"Intellectual" can denote four types of persons:...
(whether of nineteenth-century Denmark or today) but persons attempting to be human beings and, perhaps Christians. Kierkegaard as religious thinker, By David Jay Gouwen, p. 13
Mankind has many different conceptions of what the soul is but one thing they all agree on is that every single individual has a soul and Kierkegaard's view of the matter is that since everyone has a soul all are equal. Is the Russian soul
Russian soul
The term Russian soul has been used in literature to describe Russian spirituality. The writings of many Russian writers such as Nikolai Gogol, Leo Tolstoy and Fyodor Dostoyevsky offer descriptions of the Russian soul....
different from the Greek soul
On the Soul
On the Soul is a major treatise by Aristotle on the nature of living things. His discussion centres on the kinds of souls possessed by different kinds of living things, distinguished by their different operations...
or from Hegel's soul or W. E. B. Du Bois's
The Souls of Black Folk
The Souls of Black Folk is a classic work of American literature by W. E. B. Du Bois. It is a seminal work in the history of sociology, and a cornerstone of African-American literary history....
or is the soul equivalent to the mind
Noumenon
The noumenon is a posited object or event that is known without the use of the senses.The term is generally used in contrast with, or in relation to "phenomenon", which refers to anything that appears to, or is an object of, the senses...
or to the world
Anima Mundi
Anima mundī is Latin meaning "the soul of the world" which can refer to:*Anima mundi, the soul of the world*Anima Mundi , a 1991 documentary film directed by Godfrey Reggio*Anima Mundi , a Brazilian video and film festival...
?
Everyone wants to think about it but Keirkegaard wanted to act on a presupposition that there is a soul living inside himself and his job was to preserve it. He says,
Impatience is an evil spirit that can be expelled only by prayer and much fasting. … the hunger of impatience is not easy to satisfy-how, then, through fasting? The demands of impatience certainly use many words and long speeches, but in prayer it is very sparing with words. Temporal patience has provisions on hand for a long time, doggedly perseveres, seldom rests, never prays, but Anna continued night and day. Even though impatience says that it is no art to pray-oh, just to collect one’s mind in prayer at a specific time and to pray inwardly, even though for only a moment, is more difficult than to occupy a city, to say nothing of persevering night and day and persevering in prayer in inwardness of heart and the presence of mind and the quietness of thought and the sanction of the whole soul, without being scattered, without being disturbed, without repenting one’s devotion, without anguishing about its being a prinked-up deception, without becoming sick of all one’s praying-but Anna, serving the Lord with prayer and fasting night and day, did not leave the temple. Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses p. 223
Kierkegaard wrote the following in an earlier discourse,
He explained the problem people have in loving human beings in his Journals,
In Either/Or he says,
Howard V. Hong says in the introduction to his translation of the discourses, "According to the usual ways of reckoning the impact of a book-reviews and sales-the six small volumes of upbuilding discourses were scarcely a smashing success. ... The sales of the six volumes matched the paucity and brevity of the reviews of the discourses. ... when [Kierkegaard] ran out of the first two discourses, he bound the sixteen discourses in a volume under the common title Sexten opyggelige Taler (Sixteen Upbuilding Discourses). ... 78 copies of the two discourses (1843 and 61 copies of the three discourses (1843) were remaindered
Remaindered book
Remaindered books are books that are no longer selling well and whose remaining unsold copies are being liquidated by the publisher at greatly reduced prices...
, a copy of Sexten opyggelige Taler must be the rarest Kierkegaard book in existence. ... they and later discourses were obliged to wait a hundred years for the acclaim given to them by Martin Heidegger
Martin Heidegger
Martin Heidegger was a German philosopher known for his existential and phenomenological explorations of the "question of Being."...
.
Swenson wrote in 1941, "While Kierkegaard has long been recognized in continental Europe as one of the world's foremost thinkers, it is only recently that he is coming to be known by the English-reading public. His first work to be translated into English, the Philosophical Fragments
Philosophical Fragments
Philosophical Fragments was a Christian philosophic work written by Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard in 1844. It was the first of three works written under the pseudonym Johannes Climacus, the other two were Johannes Climacus, 1841 and Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical...
, appeared only five years ago. Since then some eight or ten of his more important books have been published in English, with a prospect for more in the future. As a result of this tardy recognition, English interpretations of Kierkegaard's thought and commentaries concerning it, have been practically non-existent, a condition which is bound to alter rapidly as he becomes better known, since his ideas are not only thought-provoking but frequently controversial in content.
Primary Sources
- Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses, by Soren Kierkegaard, Princeton University Press. Hong, 1990
- Edifying Discourses, by Soren Kierkegaard, Vol. III, Translated from the Danish by David F. Swenson and Lillian Marvin Swenson, Augsburg Publishing House, Minneapolis, Minnesota, 1945
- Soren Kierkegaard: Papers and Journals, translated with and introduction and notes by Alistair Hannay, 1996, Penguin Books
- 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
- 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
Secondary Sources
- Something about Kierkegaard, By David F. Swenson, Mercer University Press, 2000, originally published 1941 and 1945, Augsburg Publishing House
- Kierkegaard as religious thinker By David Jay Gouwen, Cambridge University Press, 1996