Overview
Soren Kierkegaard was born on May 5th, 1813, and he lived only 42 years. He was, like Abraham Lincoln, a long time sufferer of what was called melancholy, and today is simply referred to as depression. Needless to say, this experience had much influence on his philosophy, especially his understanding of despair as the prelude to a breakthrough in understanding.
His formative years in Copenhagen were marked by personal dependence on an oppressively religious father, and by the deaths, before he reached the age of 21, of his mother and five of his siblings, of which he was the youngest. His father also suffered from severe depression and guilt, and he seems to have passed this off to his son” (Honderich 1995, 442).
Kierkegaard often complained that he did not know the innocence of childhood, but he had been “born old.” He received an excellent formal education, especially in Latin and the classics, at one of Copenhagen’s best schools. He would eventually spend 10 years studying at universities. His relationship with women was problematic, and he broke off his engagement to a woman named Regina Olsen. His father left him enough money that he did not have to work for a living, and he was able to devote his short life to writing. He was very prolific; writing 30 books in 12 years, many of them quite long.
Kierkegaard’s Philosophy
Over the years, I have come to appreciate that Kierkegaard attempted to confront the struggle to know oneself that is at the heart of the true philosophical life. Being brought up as a Christian, he attempted to make Christianity difficult again. He was concerned that a socialization of Christianity had made it safe and tame. It was no longer a risk, and above all, Kierkegaard wanted Christianity to be a huge risk — a leap of faith.
Kierkegaard felt the task of people was not so much to be Christian, as to become Christian. This was the struggle he was most interested in. It is helpful to realize that Kierkegaard’s voluminous writing was primarily to help himself in his own struggle to become the Christian that so many people in Denmark seemed to assume they already were, by virtue of their church membership.
I found that in his writing, primarily for himself, Kierkegaard teaches one how to engage in this struggle. Kierkegaard wrote in his diary “Only when I write do I feel well” (Kierkegaard 1990, 52). How many of you keep a diary or journal? It is a great exercise in self-reflection.
Blogging has become a new form of journaling, but one wonders how such writing, geared for public consumption, influences the quality and honesty of what is written. One goal of journaling is to help oneself avoid the denials and evasions of truth that make up so much of our lives if we are not careful.
Kierkegaard is considered the founder of existentialism because he was concerned with the truth for himself and his concrete situation. Kierkegaard did not believe in objective truth in the sense of something he could receive from outside himself, from someone else. He believed that the truth came to one through self-knowledge, self-study, and in attention to one’s own life.
“The thing is to understand myself, to see what God really wishes me to do; the thing is to find a truth which is true for me, to find the idea for which I can live and die.” (Poole and Stangerup 1989, 140-141). It is a good exercise to ask yourself: What is an idea you would be willing to die for? When brought up against that kind of measurement, we see that most ideas are not quite as important as we might ordinarily think.
Kierkegaard believed that the first step to self-knowledge was self-doubt. Self-examination was a necessary prerequisite for personal integrity. Kierkegaard seemed well aware of what modern depth psychology has made so clear: we are multi-faceted beings. So many of our motivations and desires spring from unconscious material, that it is really very easy to deceive ourselves.
In order to expose deeper and deeper layers of self-deception and hypocrisy, one has to make every attempt to face the truth of oneself. Interestingly enough, the first truth to be faced is very often that we simply do not know ourselves. Faith is not a thought, an idea, or even a belief. For Kierkegaard, faith is that force, or energy, which allows us to bear to stand in front of that unknowing.
A Search for Truth
In this sense, much of Kierkegaard’s writing was to help himself and others become aware of their basic ignorance to inspire a search for truth. He wrote in his diary: “I wish to make people aware, so that they do not squander and dissipate their lives.” (Kierkegaard 1995, 356. To be aware of not knowing was an essential methodology for Kierkegaard’s spiritual practice. He learned this from Socrates, whom he greatly admired. Kierkegaard wrote that his reflections were to serve as a “gadfly” (Kierkegaard 1995, 12).
Kierkegaard did not write to present neatly bundled opinions, to demonstrate with such forceful logic that one could not but agree. He wrote that his reflections were not written “…so much to move, mollify, reassure, persuade as awaken and provoke and sharpen thought” (Kierkegaard 1995, 12) To do this as effectively as he does, it is now important to examine his idea, central for Kierkegaard, of indirect communication.
Rather than give us the truth, as he understands it, Kierkegaard hopes to awaken that in us which can perceive truth in the first place. He realizes that we need to come to the truth on our own. This seems to be a trait of a good spiritual master, as well as good psychotherapy. We have to discover the truth for ourselves. We need to be objective toward ourselves. An example of how this idea finally came together for me is how Kierkegaard describes the Gospels.
Kierkegaard writes that we are never to read the Gospels as applying to anyone other than ourselves. He writes: “For the divine authority of the Gospel speaks not to one man about another man, not to you, the reader, about me, or to me about you - no, when the Gospel speaks it speaks to the single individual” (Kierkegaard 1995, 12) This one line would have saved Christianity from hundreds of years of grief! Why? Because all too often sacred teachings are used to judge others, rather than ourselves. Kierkegaard sees this as a distortion of their purpose.
Kierkegaard was aware that the more we felt we knew and understood, the more we were caught up in speculation and imagination, mental actions which can take us away from our own inwardness, the only place truth can be found. He writes: “…because of much knowledge people have entirely forgotten what it means to exist and what inwardness is” (Soren Kierkegaard 1992, 242).
As an existing person with a concrete question in front of one, such as “who am I?” we see that we do not know. If we do not know this answer, then we need to avoid being trapped in ignoring it, and moving on to solve “world historical” questions.
The nineteenth century had much confidence in science and the possibilities of solving serious problems, socially, medically, and even philosophically. Growing at that time was the desire to explain Christianity. Kierkegaard thought this was ridiculous. From the human perspective, and the natural ability of the mind, spirituality was absurd.
The leap of faith could never be explained. The function of reason was to take us to the limits of reason, to prepare us for the leap, and to protect us against stupidity. It was never going to be able to explain the great mysteries. Kierkegaard was a firm adherent to the idea that the mind can ask questions to which the mind can never give answers.
While human rationality was a great gift and a tool that provided protection from stupidity, Kierkegaard thought it was mistake to fall into the trap of “dogmatic reason.” Paradoxes are paradoxes, for Kierkegaard, not because humans are stupid, but because paradox represents a level of truth that cannot be explained using discursive reasoning, only experienced.
Questioning opens us to the experience of truth, while imagining we already know the truth prevents us from the experience, which can only be encountered as we let go of our own ideas and preconceptions.
This is one reason why, according to Kierkegaard, God does not directly reveal himself. If God did, we would not be able to discover the truth of the divine for ourselves. This is the same point Kierkegaard is making regarding our relationship with God. We must develop understanding within ourselves; otherwise we cannot utilize our knowledge. Just as other people cannot suffer for us, so others cannot learn for us. We have to do this for ourselves. The effort must be our own.
The Role of Despair
Another important area of Kierkegaard’s thought on coming to the awareness of truth is the role of despair. Abraham Joshua Heschel writes: “Modern man’s greatest fault, Kierkegaard maintains, is his total self-reliance. It is his nineteenth-century delusion that he has progressed far beyond his ancestors. This conceit derives from egoism. There is but one remedy for him: despair. It is only when he finds himself in the deepest extremity that he understands his true condition; then, and only then, does he realize that his self-reliance is a delusion” (Heschel 1973, 900). By coming to face our own “existential crisis,” our own lack of sure knowledge and security, we can begin the journey of seeking truth.
Kierkegaard hits hard on the Christianity of his day: a Christianity that has been reduced to a “fire insurance” policy. Any Christianity, which seeks to make a person self-righteous and comfortable, misses the point. For Kierkegaard, Christianity was to help a person die to the “ego,” the false self, the self that sees itself as separate from God.
Kierkegaard loved paradox. It was central to what faith meant to him. In his diary he wrote: “It is precisely the task of human apprehension to understand that there is something it cannot understand, and also what that something is. Human apprehension generally is very busy trying to understand, to understand more and more, but if, at the same time, it would take pains to understand itself, it simply has to establish the Paradox. The Paradox is not a concession, but a category, an ontological definition that expresses the relation between an existing, apprehending mind and eternal truth” (Kierkegaard 190, 158). How can the finite begin to understand the infinite?
Helpful to us in the present time of mass media and political sound bites is Kierkegaard’s discussion of the need to leave the crowd and becoming an individual. It will be seen that he has much in common with Emerson and Lincoln. Kierkegaard wished for himself and others the actualization of becoming ourselves. He always put the stress on becoming. In order to facilitate this becoming, it was first necessary that one separate from the crowd.
“Alas, things are so topsy-turvy that, instead of having to do with each individual going alone into his secret closet to commune quietly with himself, people believe that religion is a matter for very loud talk” (Kierkegaard 190, 101). Loud talk is a sign of the crowd mentality.
The primary criticism of the crowd is that it can take away from a person the desire to seek and find his or her own way. Instead, our energy can be taken by trying to conform, worrying about what others think, and fearing to be alone. Kierkegaard felt that the mass majority of people were content with compromises, unaware of their contradictions, and despite what “they” may proclaim, worshipers of a multitude of gods.
People would like to think that idolatry was a sin of the past now that "society is Christian." Kierkegaard was quick to point out that we are all guilty of idolatry, every time we place the values of the crowd above our own conscience. As Heschel writes: “At his existential moment, man is alone. Afraid to examine his ego, he escapes into society. Kierkegaard totally rejects this ‘solution,’ a ‘social religion,’ and stresses individual search and commitment instead” (Heschel 1973, 90).
In this sense, there is no such thing as mass religion. True religion is for the individual. Kierkegaard wrote in his diary: “For Christianity is certainly accessible to all but — be it carefully noted only provided everyone becomes an individual, becomes ‘the individual’ …The majority is quite terrified of becoming each one of them, an individual” (Kierkegaard, p. 358). In many ways, the fear of becoming an individual has to do with the fear of taking responsibility for oneself.
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)
Nietzsche was born in 1844 and he passed away in 1900, after being incapacitated for the last ten years of his life with illness. He “was a solitary thinker who liked Alpine trails more than the halls of academia (which he abandoned in his mid thirties). He spent most of his life using his authorship in an attempt to triumph over the powerful influences of his childhood: Lutheranism, German nationalism, and the domination of his forceful mother, granny, aunts, and sister.
The material result of his efforts was an unprecedented stream of the most eccentric books ever to have been introduced into the history of philosophy, including such titles as The Birth of Tragedy, Beyond Good and Evil, The Genealogy of Morals, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, and his outrageous intellectual biography, pretentiously titled Ecce Homo (“behold the man” - the phrase with which Pilate introduced Jesus to the masses). (Palmer 2006, 256-257).
Nietzsche was definitely a character in the Western philosophical canon, and as a result, it might be a little too easy to dismiss his thought. However, if you go past the surface, you see that there is some profound insight going on that is worth our while. His writings seem to have had more influence on writers and artists rather than other philosophers.
Philosophy
Nietzsche agreed with Kant that we could not really know the world as it is in itself. “[Nietzsche] prophesied the advent of a period of nihilism, with the death of God and the demise of metaphysics, and the discovery of the inability of science to yield anything like absolute knowledge; but this prospect deeply worried him” (Oxford, p. 621). Here it is important to remember that Nietzsche did not cause this to happen. Sometimes it seems he gets blamed for the modern loss of faith, rather than seeing that he just gave words to a movement that was already well along its way. He predicted it, and the twentieth century seems to have proved him right. Let’s hope the twenty-first century is kinder.
Where Kierkegaard went back to Socrates for his philosophical model, Nietzsche went back to the Sophists, who believed that there was no certain knowledge. He called it “perspectivism.” “It derived from Nietzsche’s early training as a philologist. Philologists, those students of ancient languages, knew that what was called The Bible, The Vedas, The Upanishads, or The Iliad were not direct translations of single existing documents; rather, they were compilations of fragments of conflicting evidence derived from a dizzying number of sources. The dream of the philologists was to find the original texts of each of the great scriptures in history. Nietzsche’s conclusion as a philologist was that there is no original text. Each of these books is simply the result of a decision to let a particular interpretation represent an end product, even though in fact that “end product” is merely an emblem of a relationship that exists among a number of fragmentary documents, reports, historical studies, and items of gossip” (Palmer 2006, 257-258).
Nietzsche had no formal philosophical training. He took his philological understanding and applied it to philosophy. Just as there are no original texts, so there is no original being, essence, Platonic forms, or anything else we can grasp with our minds. “There exists only a constant flux and chaos upon which we must impose our will. Therefore, said Nietzsche, there can be no such thing as knowing in the Platonic sense. All “knowing” is inventing, and all inventing is lying. But then there are lies, and there are lies. Inauthentic lying is self-deception. According to Nietzsche, self-deceivers are those who “lie traditionally,” that is, who lie in terms of established traditions” (Palmer 2006, 258).
So we see here, whether we agree or not with Nietzsche’s rather bleak epistemology, (meaning that we can’t really know anything), calling for a rigid honesty that he does not see around him. Using history as an example: What do we really know about the past except the agreed upon history? Don’t different countries have different perspectives on the same events, the same wars? That is exactly Nietzsche’s point.
Just as Kierkegaard wanted to make Christianity difficult again, Nietzsche wanted people to see how much they deceive themselves into believing all falsehoods, simply because it makes them feel better. We are not comfortable with our cosmic ignorance, our existential ignorance, so we invent easy answers. By inventing, we are making a decision about what is true.
The decision does not mean what we have decided is in fact true, it only means that is what we decided. Nietzsche places the emphasis on this act of decision and he wants us to see that only a few people make real decisions, while the rest of us follow along thinking that we are making our own decisions, when in fact we are just falling into line with what is acceptable to our culture at any specific time.
The Will to Power
What then are we to do? How do we proceed with our lives if we have nothing to go on except lies? “Nietzsche’s recommendation in the face of what appears to be a condemnation to a life of lying is to ‘lie creatively,’ which is to say to invent, or ‘know,’ creatively. To do this is to express what Nietzsche calls ‘will to power.’ To express will to power is to force ‘reality’ to submit to one’s own creative might. Nietzsche also calls will to power ‘the urge to freedom’” (Palmer, pp. 258-259).
Nietzsche seems to be saying that reality is like a chaotic raw material that needs to be molded into a meaning that it does not have in itself, but that we give to it. He also seems to be saying that the human impulse to freedom is the impulse to say what matters for ourselves, rather than believing the “lies” of someone else. In other words, if we have to deal with inventions and lies, then let them be our own.
This inventing even incorporates our language, the very way we speak and discuss issues. It seems to me that Nietzsche is on to something important here. Think about how many of us have been tyrannized by words, the words of those in authority, the words in the scriptures we might hold as sacred. Another example comes from the word “shoreline.” It is obvious where the water is at a beach, and it is obvious where the land is, but where exactly is the shoreline? We can’t really tell because the waves are in movement, and the exact line is always changing, thus our term is a “lie,” at least if we take it too seriously and too literally.
There is a tendency in human nature to mistake words for reality. The word “Monterey” is not Monterey. It is just a word that was picked for an area along the California coast. The Indians who lived here before the Spanish came called it by other names. This means that what is here is primary, not what we call it. Nietzsche was tyrannized by the words of the Bible and German nationalism.
When we understand this, we see that much of his philosophy is coming from the need to overcome such subjection to what in his mind is only a subjective truth. He believes that what we seek when we look for the truth is never found because we cannot see the world objectively. If we cannot know the truth then we make it up. And if we make it up, then at least let us be honest that that is what we are doing. Let us make up our own truth, rather than believe someone else’s story as the truth.
This ability to take charge of and think our own thoughts, which extends to living our own life, Nietzsche called the “will to power.” “As Nietzsche understood full well, his own term ‘will to power’ was the product of such a [poetical] chain of reasoning, as were his other key terms, such as ‘the overman,’ ‘eternal recurrence,’ and ‘the death of God.’ It follows, then, that a claim of Nietzsche’s - such as this: ‘All being is Will to Power’ - constitutes not a philosophical insight into the ultimate nature of being but simply another poetic interpretation of being. (When confronted with this charge, Nietzsche responded, ‘Well, all the better!’)” (Palmer, p. 262).
We come against the basic fact that, for Nietzsche, there is no ultimate truth that we can know, only interpretations, because reality is dynamic and always changing, so we need to be flexible and willing to adjust and modify our interpretations.
The Overman
If that is true, then we need to ask: Are all interpretations equally valid? Nietzsche did not think so, despite his rather radical relativism. “Only those ‘lies’ that affirm life are truly noble lies for him. All other lies are nihilistic and on the side of death. This is why will to power must be full of laughter, dancing, and affirmation and why we must condemn Platonism (‘that fear of time’) and Christianity (‘Platonism for the masses’) which, in longing for another world, denies reality as it is (i.e., they refuse to recognize reality as chaos and flux that must be molded in the image of each will), and thereby long not for being but for nothingness and death” (Palmer 2006, 262).
The goal of Nietzsche’s doctrine is what he called the “overman,” often translated as the “superman.” The overman was the person who had achieved the will to power and overcome the lies of others. “Man is a being who must overcome himself.” This was the person who creatively imposed his or her own will over the chaos of life. In overcoming the traditional stories, such a person was self-made and free from the tyranny of others, especially in the guise of religion and dogma. Nietzsche “sought to direct our attention and efforts to the emergence of a ‘higher humanity’ capable of endowing existence with a human redemption and justification” (Honderich 1995, 621).
In many ways, this can be seen as simply a call to self-actualization, a call to reach for our potential. Unfortunately, it also led to the idea of a superior race in Nazi Germany. Hitler could do whatever he wanted because he could make up his own truth as he went along. This is, of course, a distortion and misuse of Nietzsche’s ideas, but that should not surprise us by now.
The Death of God
With all of this background, it is now possible to study what Nietzsche meant by the phrase “the death of God,” which is often all people remember of what he said and is often used against him by religious folks to show how "stupid" Nietzsche was. I almost never think it is appropriate to call philosophers we disagree with “stupid.” They may be wrong, they may be blinded, they may be deceived, but they are rarely stupid. Usually, what we really need is another way of approaching their work so that we can understand what it was they were trying to articulate.
Here it is important to remember that Nietzsche saw the primary purpose of language as creative and poetic, rather than literal (which is of course what most people think he was doing when he declared the death of God). He must have meant it literally. He was declaring the atheist manifesto. This is to oversimplify.
“Of course there can be no single correct answer to the question, ‘what did Nietzsche mean by ‘the death of God’? But surely Nietzsche at least meant to announce the end of traditional forms of authority: historical, political, religious, moral, and textual” (Palmer 2006, 262-263).
While it is fine to be offended at Nietzsche’s audacity to declare the death of God, it is important to see it in the proper context of the Christianity he saw in the Europe of his day. Nietzsche thought the Christianity being preached and lived in Europe was as damaging to other people as it had been to himself.
It is interesting that Nietzsche declares the death of God on the cusp of a century in Europe where it did seem many thinking people that God had disappeared and left humanity to itself. It was almost as if Nietzsche fulfilled the role of a prophet who looked into the twentieth century, saw the oncoming wars and misery and went insane.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-eiL3_CKDY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQOfbObFOCw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aEzMwNBjkAU
Example
Your Name]
HUM 31
Dr. ___
[The Date]
1 Philosophy is not to attain information, but to use it in a transformative way
2 If we do not question everything, then what is the point of any of it?
3 Philosophy is less about searching for answers and more about being aware that answers may lie out there
4 Know yourself before you try to know anything else. Common phrase I have heard: “you must love yourself before you may start to feel love for others”
5 Humans are quick to jump to conclusions about why something has happened, placing blame when there is no fault at all
6 Philosophy can be important in forming one’s own beliefs, rather than adhering to the stories told by those before them
7 We also try to assess meaning where there may be none. A common mistake by all humans, especially in dreams.
8 If religion/science/ANYTHING has something to say then I am interested!
9 When it comes to the impossible question, we either assign no value to its answer or we accept an answer already provided.
10 Philosophers are similar to scientists in that they are also trying to figure out the vast complexities of the world and universe as we know it.
Addressing Bullet Point 7:
This specific bullet point stuck out to me because I often find myself falling victim to it without knowing that I’m doing so. Many times I will wake up from a dream, riding horseback underwater with a long-lost friend from middle school and think “Does this mean we will reunite soon?” Even though, clearly there is no rhyme or reason behind the dream. This is a fault that many humans fall victim to. The main outlet is for humans to look for answers in foundational stories already conceived, such as with religion. If something has happened out of the blue, one might think “Well that was God’s doing!” When in reality, it could have been that the tree fell over because its roots had been rotting for years prior. Now, I’m not saying that these events could not be influenced by said deities; however, there is more often than not a chance that something happened without a reason behind it, and we are the ones who are assigning reason to it. I am eager to keep reading on this topic and to explore just why humans have such a tendency to act this way, and to see whether or not having the “awareness” mentioned earlier in the module would help with such notions.
Addressing Bullet Point 8:
I really enjoy the concept of this bullet point and topic within the module, which essentially says that you can find knowledge and experience in essentially anything. This is called Integral Philosophy. Even if you are not necessarily a religious person, there is wisdom in studying and applying practices of that religion. If you deny scientific claims of global warming or vaccines (which come on, it's 2024), then you would still be able to find knowledge about the topic and various ways of applying it. Whenever I hear about philosophical claims, I always hear it followed up by counterarguments or reasons why it doesn’t apply to certain scenarios. However, integral philosophy is one that I think everyone should learn and accept. Which, in it of itself, is the core foundation of philosophy as it stands. There is so much wisdom at our fingertips, and we as a human race are quick to shut down information that we think doesn’t apply to ourselves or our interests. Although these pieces of wisdom, which do not concur with our prior beliefs, are arguably the most important in transforming our minds to a greater purpose. To seek truth wherever it may be, is a path in which we all should lead ourselves because at the end of the day, none of us truly know where that may lead us.