Errol, John V. Valdez
The Life of Soren Aabye
Kierkegaard
(MAY 5, 1831 –
NOVEMBER 11, 1855)
Soren Aabye Kierkegaard is a 19th century
Danish philosopher, born on May 5, 1831 in Copenhagen, Kingdom of Denmark, who
imposed restrictions on his own love and emotions and declared the idea of
subjectivity as truth. From the young age, he was disabled and suffered from
complications after his fall from a tree when he was a boy. He was also
strongly influenced by his father's depression and stubborn belief in a curse
that all his children were doomed to die by the age of 33. He is recognized as
the founder of Existentialism, an influential author in psychology, and an
important figure in Postmodernism (Shelokhonov, n.d).
He finished his Doctor of Philosophy at the University of
Copenhagen in 1841. His writings
revolved around organized religion, Christendom, morality, ethics, psychology
and the philosophy of religion. The writings contain metaphor, irony and
parables (Wikimedia Foundation, 2017).
His works concentrated on issues on how to live as a
single individual, giving concrete human reality over abstract thinking and
highlighting the importance of personal choice and commitment. His theological
work focuses on Christian ethics, the institution of the Church, the
differences between purely objective proofs of Christianity, the infinite
qualitative distinction between man and God, and the individual’s subjective
relationship to Jesus Christ, who can through faith. He was extremely critical of the practice of
Christianity as a state religion in Denmark. His works in psychology explored
on the emotions and feelings of individuals when faced with life choices (Wikimedia
Foundation, 2017).
He offered no solutions to the problems in his writings
but rather a variety of views on individual, social and political challenges
and unresolvable complexities ranging from an “Attack on” approach to an
observationist position. His greatest
work entitled “Either/Or” was written in 1842 in Berlin, Germany, was revised
and completed in Copenhagen, Denmark in the fall of the same year, and
published in 1843. In this writing, he
played his three incarnations, philosopher named “A”, Judge Williams, author of
rebuttals to “A”, and editor, Victor Ermita.
This work of Kierkegaard found little understanding among the
contemporaries (Shelokhonov, n.d).
His
early works were written under various pseudonyms. This is due to create an imitation of
discussion between several pseudo-authors were in fact he is the only one. The
use of various pseudonyms in his writings is because of his complex personality
and intricate thought and reasoning, he made it difficult to distinguish
between what he truly believed and what he was making up for a mere arguments. Among his works are “The Concept of Irony”
(1841), “Fear and Trembling” (1843), and “Works of Love” (1847) (Shelokhonov, n.d).
He also wrote many Upbuilding Discourses under his own
name and dedicated them to the “single individual” who wants to discover the
meaning of his works (Wikimedia Foundation, 2017). In his later works,
he analyzed the detrimental effect of organized religion on individuals in
Denmark caused by rigidity of established state church. Because of his analysis
of fear, sin, guilt and other tools of control over minds, as well as his
thoughts on the decay of the Danish State Church and failures of applied
religion that led to his statement, “the human race has outgrown Christianity”,
ignited attacks on him by many angered critics (Shelokhonov, n.d).
He died in a hospital on November 11, 1855, due to complications
from his fall from a tree in his childhood, and was laid to rest in the
Assistens Cemetery in Copenhagen, Denmark (Shelokhonov, n.d).
Kierkegaard
on Happiness
The presented views on happiness by
Soren A. Kierkegaard were from the different chapters his work entitled
“Provocations: Spiritual Writings of Kierkegard,” compiled and edited by
Charles E. Moore, published by The Bruderhof Foundation, Inc. in 2002. The following
are the views of Kierkegaard on happiness:
1)
The key to happiness is found
in the externals - to live an authentic and religious life.
“A man who as a physical being is always
turned toward the outside, thinking that his happiness lies outside him,
finally turns inward and discovers that the source is within him.”
(Kierkegaard S. , Kierkegaard Quotes, 2017)
In Kierkegaard’s “The Speheres of
Existence,” found in the preliminary pages of Provocations, he argued that people
who are solely concerned with their own happiness have only aesthetic life that
means life lived for the moment. These people are more concerned in satisfying
their natural desires and impulses physically, emotionally and intellectually. He described these people as living for
enjoyment - on the surface of life, observers, spectators, tasters, but not
serious participants. These people do
not have real inner life and self to be offered to others. Their well-being is determined by the choices
or moods of others and by forces that extend beyond their control. They do not
internalize in making decisions, thus when they face problems they never accept
responsibility or blame. These people
are considered apathetic, indifferent, unintegrated and not committed to any
one thing. Aesthetic freedom is
enslavement to the passions that leads a person to the brink of despair. Something
better might always come along and so they split their energies in different
directions (Kierkegaard S. , Provocations: Spiritual Writings of Kierkegaard, 2002).
Happiness is found in the externals and can be seen when
living an authentic life. To move toward
authentic personal existence is to become a Christian. This is moving beyond the aesthetic sphere
and into the ethical. The person’s
ethical life recognizes the significance of choice by accepting his duty as a
moral actor. The person regards his
conscience, take responsibility and fulfill his moral obligations, and set
aside his many desires or impulses and his careless freedom. Ethical freedom,
as opposite to aesthetic freedom, is the enjoyment and fulfillment of doing
one’s duty. A person living an authentic life tries to realize what is of
eternal and universal value. The person
realizes that within the soul there is something eternal that cannot be
satisfied by a sensory life. Hence the
realization of enduring values of justice, freedom, peace, love and respect for
the moral law within propel the ethical self forward into a life of
responsibility, caring beyond one’s immediate interests. All of these will sum up to true freedom, the
ability to fulfill one’s duty, to move from what is to what is ought to be (Kierkegaard
S. , Provocations: Spiritual Writings of Kierkegaard, 2002).
The realization of ethical values takes time and effort
because it involves choice, resolution and struggles. An authentic and fully realized individual is
unified from within, his actions are one, and accepts responsibility for his
commitments. The person is not swayed by his every emotion or by the opinions
of others. Effort is necessary to live
in an authentic life because one must passionately choose the path. Life is an “either/or”, not just between good and evil, but between choosing
and not choosing. The person lives
intentionally and intensively and possesses the character, conviction, and
willing to sacrifice for something greater than himself. (Kierkegaard S. , Provocations: Spiritual Writings of Kierkegaard, 2002).
A higher level of living can be obtained by an individual
by living a religious life. This is nothing to do with institutional religion
per se but rather the individual lives religiously and the ethical or authentic
life is not sufficient to provide solutions for life’s riddles and
choices. Ethical or authentic life fails
to adequately deal with exceptional situations because doing one’s duty is not
always simple, especially when different duties conflict or obligations are not
totally fulfilled. To Kierkegaard, the
“Absolute” is something higher than the universal duty. A fully actualized
person has to see himself before God to see himself as he really is. If this happens, the wide gap between oneself
and God becomes clearer because of the sins that has been committed and the
failure to fulfill completely the moral duty. If an ethical or authentic
individual is truly honest with himself, he lives in constant fear and dread
precisely because of his inability to fulfill the moral law and hesitate to
give himself absolutely. The most ethical person is precisely the one who feels
most inadequate. Because people existed
from the image of God, each person instinctively knows that God is higher than
the moral law and greater than any set of values. People’s highest commitment to make is to
God, the very ground of every moral value.
God’s will is finally what matters.
People must ultimately surrender to God in a leap of faith because no
one can measure the demands of God (Kierkegaard S. , Provocations: Spiritual Writings of Kierkegaard, 2002).
When an individual stands before God and no longer sees himself
as self-sufficient, he recognizes his own inability to transform himself. The religious person strives to allow himself
to be transformed by God. The
transformation includes three things:
a) Infinite
resignation – dying to the world, the willingness to sacrifice any finite good
for the sake of God;
b) Suffering
– undergoing a transformation of the self, though not by self. It is the process of undergoing
“self-annihilation” so that God can do this transforming work; and
c) Guilt
– the feeling of one’s inability to give oneself completely and unreservedly to
God.
The religious person, although committed to many ethical
ideals as the ethical or authentic person, believes that the ideals are
ultimately incapable of fulfillment because of his own inner conditions, not
external barriers. The person recognizes
his sinful state. The person in faith
relates himself in repentance and he knows that his chosen ideals are
insufficient and incomplete. The
religious person believes that the key to finding God is to recognize and
realize his own guilt and need, and that recognized that there is an abyss
between him and God, an infinite qualitative difference between man and
God. The true awareness of sin comes
from the revelation of God to the individual.
Sin’s corruption is total and one’s ability to choose is itself a
gift. The highest passion of inwardness
comes in revelation by God and is received by faith. As Kierkegaard said, “An
ethic which ignores sin is an absolutely idle science.” Thus, allowing oneself
transformed by God is more important tan fulfilling one’s duty (Kierkegaard
S. , Provocations: Spiritual Writings of Kierkegaard, 2002).
2)
Happiness is immeasurable
that is promised to the one who rightly chooses – to be unconditionally
obedient.
“I see it all perfectly; there are two possible situations
- one can either do this or that. My honest opinion and my friendly advice is
this: do it or do not do it - you will regret both.”
(Kierkegaard S. , Kierkegaard Quotes, 2017)
(Kierkegaard S. , Kierkegaard Quotes, 2017)
In
Kierkegaard’s “Either/Or,” Chapter 2 of the Provocations, to choose rightly is
an ultimate blessing and certainly true but the faculty of choice is still a
pre-requisite. The heart is involved in
choosing. To him, a choice that is not
used is worse than nothing that will place people trapped as a slave that is
not free – by choosing. People can never
get rid of choosing because it remains with them and if not used then it will
become a curse. Choosing is the choice
between God and the world. God’s
overwhelming and humbling expression for his condescension and extravagance
towards human beings is placing himself on the same level of choice with the
world, thus giving people an opportunity to be able to choose, not only can choose but rather must choose. Each person must choose
between God and the world. A person must choose because for this way God
retains his honor and his fatherly concern for humankind. Though God has lowered himself to being that
can be chosen, yet each person partly chosen Him. If a person avoids choosing, the presumption
is that the person is choosing the world (Kierkegaard S. , Provocations: Spiritual Writings of Kierkegaard, 2002).
People are contended in the colossal
point of contention, whether to love or to hate. The love of God is hatred of the world and
the love of the world is hatred of God. A terrible fight in the innermost being. This struggle is a matter of loving and
preferring God – the struggle for the highest.
People who do not understand are unwilling to accept the presence of God
in the moment of choice, not in order to watch but in order to be chosen. Each person must choose and the risk lies in
the possession of choice (Kierkegaard S. , Provocations: Spiritual Writings of Kierkegaard, 2002).
The either/or that God demands from
people is the value of unconditional obedience. It is assumed that if the
person is not obedient in everything unconditionally, without qualification, he
does not love God, thus he hates God. By
not being obedient, the person is not bound to God, thus he despise Him. If a
person is absolutely obedient then there is no ambiguity or uncertainty in him
and he will become undivided and being single before God. The presence of ambiguity means the presence
of temptation that is enticing that leads to disobedience that will prey the
human soul. A person who surrenders to
God, with no reservations, is absolutely safe from being a prey (Kierkegaard
S. , Provocations: Spiritual Writings of Kierkegaard, 2002).
People are in danger, placed between
two tremendous powers that left them to choose. They must either love or hate,
and not to love means to hate. These two
tremendous powers that left people to choose are so hostile that the slightest
inclination towards one side means absolute opposition of the other side.
People must not forget these two tremendous powers where they exists because to
forget is a choice (Kierkegaard S. , Provocations: Spiritual Writings of Kierkegaard, 2002).
3)
Greatest happiness can be changed into
greatest torment.
(Kierkegaard S. , Kierkegaard Quotes, 2017)
In
Kierkegaard’s “When Love is Secure,” Chapter 33 of the Provocations, he viewed
greatest happiness can change into greatest torment when it is a duty to love.
If love is a duty of a person then love becomes eternally secured, secured from
ravages of change, eternally and happily secured against despair. Love that is
joyous, happy, indescribably confident, instinctive and inclinational,
spontaneous and emotional needs to be established securely by the strength of
duty. Despite of its security, anxiety
still resides, a force that drives the possibility of change. Spontaneous and
emotional love can be changed to its opposite, to hate or it can become
jealousy. The heat of spontaneous love is dangerous, no matter how great its
passion, it can very quickly become a poisonous fever (Kierkegaard S. , Provocations: Spiritual Writings of
Kierkegaard, 2002).
Human love that produce happiness
can lose its zeal, joy, desire, originative power and its living freshness due
to indifference of habit. Habit cannot be seen that forced people to strive and
defend themselves but it resides within them that force them to struggle. The person is not aware of the occurrence of
his habit until it will become noticeable that changed human-inspired
love. When people become aware of the
habit that changed their love, they make up for it but do not exactly know
how. This makes people become liable to
despair and to become weary. Genuine
love that is transformed and sustained by the eternal will never become
characterized by habit (Kierkegaard S. , Provocations: Spiritual Writings of Kierkegaard, 2002).
4) Happiness
comes with the fulfillment of wishes and changes in external circumstances.
“People settle for a
level of despair they can tolerate and call it happiness.”
“Happiness is the
greatest hiding place for despair.”
(Kierkegaard S. , Happiness, 2017)
In Kierkegaard’s “The Dynamics of
Despair,” Chapter 37 of the Provocation, he argued that people has the tendency
to feel that they are in despair even if they are not. Because of this attitude of people, their
negativity will actually push them not to achieve what they really want and
this will lead them to feel that they are in despair. While they are in the state of despair, they
will again do actions, whether by himself or from a help outside him, to go out
from that circumstance and fulfill their wishes, desires and wants. To Kierkegaard, in this situation happiness
is restored to the people. (Kierkegaard S. , Provocations: Spiritual Writings of Kierkegaard, 2002).
5) Happiness
is eternal and related with passion.
In the “Existence and the Existential,” Chapter 69 of the
Provocation, Kierkegaard regarded happiness as eternal, that could mean
God. He argued that an existing person
should relate himself with passion to God to transform his existence that could
lead to happiness. To Kierkegaard, if a
person will not absolutely transform by the eternal then the person does not
relate himself to God (Kierkegaard S. , Provocations: Spiritual Writings of Kierkegaard, 2002).
6) Happiness
is obtained through obedience.
In “Obedience,” Chapter 81 of the Provocation,
Kierkegaard argued that happiness is only obtained through obedience. Despite that man is the master of his destiny
and has the ability to understand himself and seek to satisfied himself, if
without obedience to follow the eternal, who is God, eternal happiness cannot
be attained by people (Kierkegaard S. , Provocations: Spiritual Writings of Kierkegaard, 2002).
Soren
AABYE Kierkegaard on MONEY
The presented views on money by Soren A. Kierkegaard were
from the different chapters his work entitled “Provocations: Spiritual Writings
of Kierkegard,” compiled and edited by Charles E. Moore, published by The
Bruderhof Foundation, Inc. in 2002. The following are the views of Kierkegaard
on money:
1) Money
is sought first by man before virtue
In Kierkegaard’s “First the Kingdom of God,” Chapter 54
of the Provocation, he argued that people tend to seek first money to fulfill
and satisfy their desires then virtue.
To Kierkegaard, people seek first earthly things and seeking the kingdom
of God is the last thing that people will do.
People do not feel the need to go further than fulfilling their earthly
desires (Kierkegaard S. , Provocations: Spiritual Writings of Kierkegaard, 2002).
2) Man
is running after money, status and pleasure.
In Chapter 77 of the Provocations entitled “The Human
Condition,” it was argued by Kierkegaard that man runs after money, status, and
pleasure. This view of Kierkegaard is
obvious that people gives more importance to the money that they will receive
and get, status that they will achieve and pleasures that they will feel by
fulfilling their desires. To him this
race is outside the real racetrack to attain eternal happiness since people tends
to give last priority on the virtue or seeking the kingdom of God. Fulfilling
their desires by seeking money provides them only status and pleasure but not
eternal happiness (Kierkegaard S. , Provocations: Spiritual Writings of Kierkegaard, 2002).
3) Making
money could provide strength to people.
In “Preaching and Proclamation,” Chapter 85 of the
Provocations, Kierkegaard argued that people can acquire new strength by making
money. People who are seeking money will
be able to gain strength to put out themselves from poverty that possess the
highest degree of uncomfortableness and fear.
People are strengthened by comfortable life through seeking money which
Kierkegaard described as “fat living.” When people achieve their desires, they will seek
for a more comfortable life which again Kierkegaard described as “fatter one.” This tendencies of people
show that no contentment is being achieved that place them to race outside the
real racetrack for the eternal (Kierkegaard S. , Provocations: Spiritual Writings of Kierkegaard, 2002).
4) Money
will make people into somebody.
In Kierkegaard’s “Worship,” Chapter 98 of the
Provocations, he argued that when people will be able to fulfil their desires
through accumulation of money. People will
tend to become somebody by acquiring earthly things that satisfy their
desires. People seek things that will
lead them to success. By achieving all
these earthly desires, people tend to equate them as proof of God’s grace. The proof that God’s grace is lacking to
people is that they suffer and have torments, they feel grief and in troubles (Kierkegaard S. , Provocations: Spiritual Writings of
Kierkegaard, 2002).
CONCLUSION:
Happiness
and money are two great forces that are parts of our everyday life as human
beings. We have our own behaviors, hopes, desires, needs, passions, and
thoughts that lead us to feel happiness, freedom and love. Combining all of these aspects of our life we
will undergo three different stages in our lives. The lives that Kierkegaard
described as: aesthetic, authentic and religious.
In our aesthetic stage, all of us
seek pleasures by fulfilling our needs and desires to push us out in the state
of pain or despair. In this life we enjoy earthly things that are provided to
us through natural processes or man-made things. We just say is by simply enjoying the
pleasure that the world is providing us in our everyday life. Reality is many of us equate that pleasure to
merely happiness but to Kierkegaard pleasure is earthly while happiness is
eternal. We tend to shorten our horizons in looking into the deeper meaning of
pleasure and happiness. Once we will be able to learn to stretch and widen and
go deeper into the meaning of happiness then this will lead us to the next
stage of our lives: the authentic life that sometimes called as ethical life.
The authentic life is the stage when
we do not just feel pleasure but the life where we already have the willingness
to make hard decisions on how we want to live in this world. Not like in the aesthetic stage where in we
do not have commitments and our options have no differences, the authentic life
leads us to become aware of the two forces that confronts us: what is
acceptable (the good) and what is not acceptable (the evil). This means that our options will make us
realize and think of a meaningful choice that we need to select. By the option
we choose will now make us different from each other, will now separate our
lives to authentic stage. The option
that we pick will shape us into someone and something else. We should keep in
our minds that in this stage of our lives we are motivated by the options we
make, options that are dictated by love, mutual respect, and concern for other
people and to nature.
As Kierkegaard (2015) stated in is Knight of Faith, happiness
is not mere pleasure. Happiness that is dependent upon wealth or luck, upon
beauty, or money, or youthfulness is not real happiness because if one of these
changes, our happiness dissolves. Happiness should be eternal, never-ending.
When
we will be able to understand that happiness is eternal then we should know how
to live a religious life. We can achieve this stage if we become a true
believer of Christ and willing to leave everything and accept the consequences
of the calling of our Christ. This is
the hardest stage that only a few people can grasp and live with it. In this
stage of life, people must leave anger and vengeance, security and well-being,
the approval of society and the vanity of achievement. This means that we must
follow Christ, and Christ’s love, no matter where they lead (Kierkegaard S. A., 2015).
The achievement of the last stage
will lead us to eternal happiness. Happiness that our Lord promised us. A life
full of happiness wherein sufferings, torments and despair have no traces and
have to chance to appear.
Money is an earthly material things
that many of us run after into. If we ask each other if money is a need, there
if a great tendency that we will answer in the affirmative. This is because we are bound greatly with our
aesthetic lives. As much as possible we
do not want to suffer from despair and pain and we look into it that money can
help us get out of that life circumstance.
We do not want to hunger to weaken us, thus we need money not to feel
hungry. We do not want illnesses strike
us, thus we need money to prevent its occurrence in our body. There are times that money determines our
relationships to other people. The more money a person has the more friends he
has. But once a person live in a life
with scarcity of money, it is too hard to gain friends.
Money gave us opportunities to
forget the eternal, our Lord God, who is the ultimate provider that all of us
need. Even without asking it He will provide us because He knows what are
really needed by us. The Lord can
provide us the real happiness that we are looking for that money cannot buy and
give. The feelings that we have when our
desires and needs are fulfilled by the money that we have is not really
happiness but merely pleasure. Once this pleasure will pass out we placed in
despair and again look for something that will satisfy out desires that will
gain provide us pleasure. This is a never-ending cycle of life if we do not
know how to determine the real racetrack to eternal happiness.
We should always remember that as we
continue our journey in life, money cannot provide happiness but only earthly pleasures
by fulfilling our earthly desires. By continued walking through the path of our
lives we should learn to live a religious life by observing obedience to what
our God wants us to do. And we able to
attain this last and very hard stage of our lives, we will have an assurance
that when our time will come we will live in the bosom of our Lord with eternal
happiness.
REFERENCES
Kierkegaard, S. (2002). Provocations: Spiritual
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from Holybooks.com:
http://holybooks.lichtenbergpress.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/Provocations.pdf
Kierkegaard, S. (2017). Happiness. Retrieved March
8, 2017, from Goodreads, Inc: http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=happiness+kierkegaard&commit=Search
Kierkegaard, S. (2017). Kierkegaard Quotes.
Retrieved March 5, 2017, from SearchQuotes.com:
http://www.searchquotes.com/search/Kierkegaard/
Kierkegaard, S. A. (2015, August 30). Knight of Faith.
(R. G. Haller, Editor) Retrieved March 6, 2017, from fumcbirmingham:
http://fumcbirmingham.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Surrounded-Knight-of-Faith-Soren-Kierkegaard.pdf
Shelokhonov, S. (n.d). Soren Kierkegaard: Biography.
Retrieved March 4, 2017, from IMDb: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0452567/bio
Wikimedia Foundation. (2017, February 23). Soren
Kierkegaard. Retrieved March 4, 2017, from Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soren_Kierkegaard
