Kierkegaard's Analysis of Radical Evil (Continuum Studies in Philosophy)

KIERKEGAARD'S ANALYSIS OF RADICAL EVIL Related titles Kierkegaard: A Guidefor the Perplexed - Claire Carlisle Kierkeg...

Author: David Roberts

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KIERKEGAARD'S ANALYSIS OF RADICAL EVIL

Related titles Kierkegaard: A Guidefor the Perplexed - Claire Carlisle Kierkegaard ~ Julia Watkin

KIERKEGAARD'S ANALYSIS OF RADICAL EVIL

DAVID ROBERTS

continuum LONDON NEW YORK

Continuum The Tower Building, 11 York Road, London SE1 7NX 15 East 26th Street, New York, NY 10010 © David Roberts 2006 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN:0-8264-8682-7 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Roberts, David, 1962Kierkegaard's analysis of radical evil / David Roberts. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 0-8264-8682-7 (hardback) 1. Kierkegaard, Soren, 1813-1855. 2. God and evil. 3. Ethics. I. title. B4378.E8R63 2006 170'.92-dc22 2005023351

Typeset by Aarontype Limited, Easton, Bristol Printed and bound in Great Britain by MPG Books Ltd, Bodmin, Cornwall

To my wife Debbie

CONTENTS

Ab

vii

P

ix

An Historical Introduction: Kant and Schelling on Radical Evil Kant Schelling's Treatise on the Essence of Human Freedom

1 2 10

The Struggle of Self-Becoming: Spiritless Self-Evasion The Self as a Relation The Spiritless Evasion of the Self The Despair that Abides in Infinitude The Despair that Abides in Finitude

23 23 27 33 42

The Despair of the Aesthetic Stage of Existence The Aesthetic Stage of Existence The Ethical Stage of Existence: Self-Choice

58 60 68

Ethical Self-Choice The Positive Self-Choice The Self as a Task The Despair of the Ethical Stage of Existence

74 74 78 81

The Final Movement Toward Defiance: Infinite Resignation The Self s Primary Object of Relation The Initial Expression of an Existential Pathos: Infinite Resignation The Essential Expression of an Existential Pathos: Suffering The Decisive Expression of an Existential Pathos: Guilt The Despair of Religiousness A

102 102 106 114 120 121

Defiance: The Essence of Radical Evil Transparent Despair Conclusion: The Category of Offense

128 128 142

Bibliography

153

Index

157

ABBREVIATIONS

The following abbreviations have been used for S0ren Kierkegaard's works: CA:

The Concept of Anxiety. Trans. Reidar Thomte and Albert B. Anderson. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1980. CD: Christian Discourses/The Crisis and a Crisis in the Life of an Actress. Trans. Howard V. and Edna H. Hong. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1997. CUP: Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments Trans. Howard V. and Edna H. Hong. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1992. EUD: Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses. Trans. Howard V. and Edna H. Hong. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1990. E/O I: Either/Or, Part I. Trans. Howard V. and Edna H. Hong. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1987. E/O II: Either/Or, Part II. Trans. Howard V. and Edna H. Hong. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1987. FS: For Self-Examination. For Self-Examination/Judge for Yourself! Ed. and trans. Howard V. and Edna H. Hong, pp. 1-87. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1990. FT: Fear and Trembling. Trans. Alastair Hannay. London: Penguin Books, 1985. JFY: Judge for Yourself! For Self-Examination/'Judgefor Yourself! Ed. and trans. Howard V. and Edna H. Hong, pp. 89—215. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1990. JRNL II: Saren Kierkegaard's Journals and Papers: Volume II. Ed. and trans. Howard V. and Edna H. Hong. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1970. JRNL III: S0ren Kierkegaard's Journals and Papers: Volume III. Ed. and trans. Howard V. and Edna H. Hong. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1975. JRNL IV: S0r en Kierkegaard's Journals and Papers: Volume IV. Ed. and trans. Howard V. and Edna H. Hong. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1975. PA: The Present Age. Trans. Alexander Dru. New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1962.

viii PF: PH: SLW: SUD:

Abbreviations Philosophical Fragments. Trans. Howard V. and Edna H. Hong. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1985. Purity of the Heart is to Will One Thing. Trans. Douglas V. Steere. New York: Harper, 1948. Stages on Life's Way. Trans. Howard V. and Edna H. Hong. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1988. The Sickness Unto Death. Trans. Alastair Hannay. London: Penguin Books, 1989.

PREFACE

In a non-dualistic formulation of Being, the Good is that which is — the Real and that out of which everything that exists has its Being. A theistic conception of the universe views this ultimate Good as God, and everything that exists flows from the creative act of God. Further, as supremely good, everything created by God must also be good. The problem, however, is that everything is not transparently good. The news is full of horrendous images (the worst of which are neither printed nor shown), along with stories of intense human cruelty. We are daily confronted with what is abstractly put as 'the problem of evil'. The problem does not consist simply in the existence of evil, but in our desire to save the ground of existence (whether viewed as the Good or God) from culpability in regard to evil: if the ground is responsible for evil, then all hope for redemption seems futile. The problem of the ground's culpability can be understood as arising from the syllogism that states, 'All that exists comes from God. Evil exists. Therefore, evil comes from God.' The traditional approach to this problem has been to call the second premise into question, so that evil is conceived as being nothing — a privation of the Good, a nonessence. This traditional approach has received various formulations: evil is ignorance of the Good, it is a lack of.willpower (a divided will), or it is the inability to keep human or divine ordinances. While these formulations do, indeed, allow one to skirt around the problem that arises if evil has substantial existence, they do not help us understand our experience of evil (both historically and individually) as a powerful force, capable of considerable destruction and terror. Within the traditional view of evil, the more evil something is the further something is from the Good - the less existence or actuality it has, and so the more impotent it should be. Experience, however, teaches us just the opposite: the more evil something is, the more powerful its acts of destruction, the more we feel its actuality (energeia), and the more we realize the power before which we tremble is not nothing. Thus, we must strive to understand evil in such a way that the explanation is more in line with our experience, rather than seeking an abstract consistency. There is perhaps no one in Western thought who has explored the existence of evil in a more insightful and profound way than S0ren Kierkegaard. Kierkegaard understood radical evil, not as ignorance of the Good, but as a selfconscious and transparent understanding of one's place before the Good.

x

Preface

He also did not understand radical evil as a weakness of will (a 'divided will'), but as a self-determined (free) will, whose strength and integration is derived from its rebellion against the Good. Radical evil is neither a privation nor a negation, but a position an individual takes before God. The position consists of a gathering of the self around the passion of 'offense' — a passion born of pride and despair. In this, evil becomes a powerful force arising both in and through human existence, a force each individual must confront within himself or herself. Given that evil is something rather than nothing, we move back into the initial problem raised in the syllogism. As we saw, the traditional approach of overcoming the conclusion was to call the second premise into question: evil does not, in reality, exist. In this book it will be the first premise that is called into question: the existence of evil did not come from God, but arose through the structure of the self, and responsibility for its existencefalls upon each individual. While this undercuts the conclusion that evil was created by God, it brings with it its own set of problems, the main one being an understanding of how evil acquires existence through humanity - how the ground of existence points to human responsibility in regards to evil. With this, the problem of evil is no longer a God-problem, but a human problem. Evil, whatever it may be, plays itself out within the human heart. Further, we will discover that the meaning of human existence is crucial for an understanding of evil. Again, this is where Kierkegaard becomes our guide, for his understanding of the human self is not one in which the self comes into existence as a readymade substance; rather, human existence is in the process of self-becoming. This self-becoming consists in a rise in self-consciousness and freedom — what Kierkegaard calls 'spirit'. It is in our analysis of the structure of the self, and the rise in self-consciousness and freedom, that we will discover the source of evil and our rebellion against God. We will see that, in becoming more selfconsciously free, one may become more transparently offended by God's power (and concomitantly, despair in the face of one's own impotence), out of which arises a self-conscious defiance against God. It is in this most intense form of despair (what Kierkegaard calls 'defiance') that we will discover the nature of our radical rebellion against God. What makes this evil radical is that it is a self-determined choice - a position or stance around which an individual's existence is gathered. This is so far from being nothing that it is to be understood as among the highest actualization of human selfhood. To say evil is a position is to change our understanding of evil. Evil is not so much a concern about whether one does or does not do good. This is an understanding of evil as a privation and negation of the Good. Instead, evil is related to how one, as an individual, stands in relation to the Good — how one positions oneself in relation to God. In becoming a self, one chooses whether one will gather oneself around being offended by God, or will have faith in God.

Preface

xi

This choice is not a matter of keeping or breaking rules and regulations, but is concerned with whether one relates to God in humility (faith) or in pride (offense and defiance). As we will see, this change in our understanding of evil will have a profound effect on how each individual understands the evil residing within his or her own heart. Evil, as an essential possibility, will be less about specific actions, than about the indescribable depths in which one's existence is grounded. We will begin the analysis with a historical review of Kant's and Schelling's examination of the ground of radical evil. We will find that there arises out of these two idealist philosophers an understanding of freedom which is intimately connected to the problem of evil; indeed, we will see, especially in Schelling, that the issue of human freedom cannot be separated from the problem of evil. In Chapter 1 we will examine Kierkegaard's analysis of the structure of the self in terms of what he calls 'spiritlessness'. A spiritless individual is merely a potential self, a self that has not yet invested itself with self-consciousness and freedom. Existence, for such a self, is spent in the evasion of its task. We will also find that the potential for evil exists within this type of existence, and that its seeds are found within the spiritless evasions of itself. It is out of this spiritlessness that each individual must break free in order to become a self. Several conclusions will be drawn from this analysis, two of which will be especially important in guiding the remainder of the examination. The first of these establishes that the nature of the self is not such that it is something finished and accomplished; rather, each individual has the task of becoming a self through a rise in self-consciousness and freedom. The second conclusion points to the way we must approach the problem. We will not understand human freedom and evil by examining it objectively from a distance - but only by 'owning' our own evil, and exposing the evasions by which we cover the evil within our own hearts. The remaining chapters will consist of an analysis of the self in terms of this rise in self-consciousness and freedom. We will use as our guide the three Kierkegaardian stages of existence: the aesthetic, the ethical and the religious. Chapter 2 will be an analysis of the relative increase in consciousness and despair within the aesthetic stage, in which the self remains lost within the multiplicity of its desires. Enjoyment and pleasure are the passions of this stage, and so it remains bound to the immediate moment, and the pleasure that can be found therein. We will find that there is a movement within this stage that may bring the self to the brink of a consciousness of its despair. In Chapter 3 we will discover that this consciousness of despair allows for the possibility of a leap from the aesthetic stage to the ethical. In choosing to despair of the aesthetic existence, the individual, for the first time, makes an absolute choice, and thereby moves from the contingencies of aestheticism

xii

Preface

into the choice for self-becoming — a choice that defines ethical existence. In this chapter, we will examine the ethical stage, and see how the absolute choice for oneself brings a rise in self-consciousness and freedom. We will also discover that, as necessary as the ethical stage is for gaining oneself, it ultimately ends in despair, as it uncovers the evasions it uses in order to hide from the guilt and evil it continually carries within itself. This will bring us, in Chapter 4, to the religious stage of existence. In this chapter we will discover a further actualization of the self in its self-consciousness and freedom. We will see that, as the self becomes more and more itself, it does not leave evil behind, but may gather itself around its offense and defiance of the Good. A fully actualized self (spirit) is conscious of itself before the Good - it is transparent to the Good - and yet it may be offended by the Good, and so rebel against it in defiance. In the final chapter the category of offense will be examined in relation to all the stages of existence. Offense is at work in even the most spiritless forms of human existence, though it has no actuality or energy behind it. It evades and hides from its offense, and so its evil remains a mere potential — that is, it falls under the traditional view of evil as a negation or privation. As the self rises in self-consciousness and freedom, it becomes more aware that it is offended by the Good, and may choose to gather its existence around this passion of offense. In its most transparent and self-determined form, evil becomes a radical choice against the Good — it becomes defiance.

An Historical Introduction: Kant and Schelling on Radical Evil

The problem of evil is a human problem, and is of such central significance for understanding the human situation that, whenever there is a discussion on what it means to be human, evil cannot be ignored for very long - for we will inevitably feel its bite. The capital insight of this investigation is that the capacity for freedom is inseparable from the problem of evil; therefore, an initial step toward investigating evil is to problematize human freedom. In this introduction, we will undertake just such an investigation by looking at the views of Kant and Schelling. In a book on S0ren Kierkegaard, this may seem an arbitrary choice. In fact, however, it is highly relevant — called for by Kierkegaard's own approach to the problem of evil. There is a specific development of the themes of freedom and evil from Kant to Kierkegaard, by way of Schelling. As we will see in examining Kant and Schelling, an ontology of freedom will be developed in the space opened up by the moral division of good and evil. For Kant, freedom consists in a capacity to act through an internal catalyst which is free from externally influenced or directed incentives. Freedom, in other words, is to be self-determined rather than other-determined. Such an account of freedom has a decisive impact on Kant's moral theory, which he outlines in his Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals. Kant must develop a moral theory that divorces itself from all expected results, including any anticipated gain from acting morally (whether staying out of jail, the respect of others, or getting into heaven). Such expectations move the incentive for action outside of oneself, and are no longer free. For Kant, such an action is, in a way, notanaciat all, so much as a flowing together of heteronomous forces. As we examine Kant's moral theory, it will become apparent that, while Kant is able to provide a foundation for moral action, he is unable to account for immoral actions. Kant himself comes to recognize this, and seeks to rectify this problem in his book Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone. It is in the Religion that Kant provides a basis for the notion of'radical evil'. Schelling extends Kant's analysis of freedom in his Treatise on the Essence of Human Freedom, where freedom is shown to be based on the possibility of choosing between good and evil. In providing a basis for such a choice, he shows that the ontological structure of freedom is in this very choice itself. In other words, freedom is the freedom^cr good and evil. It is through our discussion of this

2

Kierkegaard's Analysis of Radical Evil

treatment that we will make our own transition to what is of central importance here - the work of Kierkegaard.

Kant Kant's Moral Theory in Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals Kant seeks to define free, moral actions as acts performed without any external influences or incentives. To do this Kant must distinguish between actions done for a hoped-for effect, and those done from an internally determined motive. Duty is just such an internal motive: 'to perform [an] action only from duty and without any inclination — then for the first time [one's] action has genuine moral worth'. An action done from an inclination is a means to another end; an action done from duty is an end in itself, and is an autonomous act of the will. It is autonomous because the law that determines and defines duty is not given externally, but is an internally derived law. Indeed, Kant conceives the moral law to be a part of the will: the conception of the law serves as the 'determining ground of the will'. The law is the objective determination of the will, while respect for this law is the subjective determination. Kant says that this subjective element is the maxim that 'I ought to follow such a law even if it thwarts my inclinations'. 3 This moral worth of an action comes from the fact that the laws and principles of reason determine the will, so that, in its purity, the will is unaffected by inclinations. In other words, reason infallibly determines the will, in that, if one acts according to reason, one's will is necessarily good. This is also the essence of human freedom: when one's actions are self-determined (determined by one's own nature), one is free; to the extent one is determined by anything external, one is not free. To be self-determined, then, is to act from the purity of the will's origin (practical reason), and this origin gives moral worth to an action. One can see how this could create problems for Kant's moral theory. As long as one acts freely (that is, from the principles of the law determined by practical reason), one acts morally; yet when one acts from inclinations (incentives other than respect for the moral law), then one is acting according to natural impulses, and so is no longer free. Thus, Kant leaves no room for free acts that are contrary to the law. By defining the will as practical reason, and showing freedom to be acting from this basis, all acts apart from this basis are unfree, and so amoral. The only free acts, then, are moral acts. Before getting deeper into this problem, we need to consider how this relates to Kant's famous 'categorical imperative'. This will allow us to understand how the will is self-legislating, which in turn will show us how unyielding is the difficulty described above.

An Historical Introduction

3

A hypothetical imperative presents a potential action as something that is required to be done in order to achieve something else — something one desires. In this the action is a means to a further object, and one acts on the basis of the hoped-for effect. Such an action is good only as a means, and not as an end in itself. The will can be absolutely good, however, only when determined by a ground that is free from all expected results. Only a categorical imperative commands a certain conduct apart from any effects it may bring. Thus, Kant says that the categorical imperative does not concern the material of the action or its intended result, but the form and its principle. The first formulation of the categorical imperative is: 'Act only according to that maxim by which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.' The second formulation is: 'Act as though the maxim of your action were by your will to become a universal law of nature.' It is the universalizability of the maxim that makes the imperative categorical. The only concern of this imperative is that the action be willed at all times without contradiction, apart from any effects that may or may not result. A hypothetical imperative allows one to act a certain way one day, and act the opposite the next, because one acts according to what will bring about the desired effect. The categorical imperative is what Kant calls a 'practical law',J and is determined by reason. This means that reason alone determines the will, and everything empirical falls away, since reason is an a priori determining ground. Since reason gives the law to the will as the a priori determining ground of the will, each person is, in an important sense, a law-giver. Further, because reason is the same in all rational beings, it serves as the universal principle of the law. This is how self-legislation can be understood: the 'will is thus not only subject to the law but subject in such a way that it must be regarded also as self-legislative and only for this reason as being subject to the law (of which it can regard itself as the author)'. As a human being, one is subject to the law that one has given to oneself. This self-legislation is not relativistic because universal reason is the ground of all rational wills. Self-legislation is nothing else than the expression of freedom. Kant says that to act according to the principle of one's own will is the principle of the autonomy of the will, which is contrasted to 'all other principles which I accordingly count under heteronomy'. As autonomous, we give ourselves maxims which are independent 'from all [natural] incentives'.' If we were not independent, then we would be subject to the natural laws of needs - rather than subject to our own self-legislated law-giving and be incapable of free acts. Autonomy is the property of the will to be a law to itself. This is why Kant says that 'a free will and a will under moral laws are identical'. Although the moral law is self-legislated, it does not come to us as something that we are 'at one' with, but as a constraint and obligation. This is because all our actions are mixed with natural inclinations, so that we do not follow the

4


law in a purity that would move us simply on the basis of the law within ourselves. Yet how can we speak of freedom, self-legislation and autonomy, while at the same time speaking of the need for constraint and obligation in regards to the law? How can we speak of the purity of the origin of the will (Kant is unwilling to allow for a divided will), and also of a will that is mixed with inclinations and external incentives? As we look into this problem, we will see the great difficulty Kant will have, not only in understanding the nature of evil, but in accounting for evil at all. Kant attempts to overcome this problem by claiming that it is dissolved when it is seen that we assume different standpoints when looking at ourselves as causes (which are not determined by anything outside of ourselves), than when we see ourselves in light of our actions — as effects we see ourselves doing. Here Kant is distinguishing between appearances and things in themselves. Kant distinguishes between the phenomenal or empirical self, and the noumenal, 'real' self. The former is the self we perceive ourselves as; the latter is the self behind which we can never get. We can never get behind this self, because it provides the categories through which we come to understand ourselves to begin with. The noumenal self is not determined by empirical laws, but is a member of the intelligible world the world ruled by reason. This world has its own law, just as there is a natural law as the ground of all appearances. It is the law of the intelligible world that is the 'ground of all actions of rational beings';12 this law consists of the universal principles of morality given by reason. This is the realm of which we speak when using the terms 'autonomy' and 'freedom'. We also belong to the sensible world, and as belonging to this world, we come to think of ourselves as obligated - that is, as subject to the moral law. Thus, when we think of ourselves under the aspect of freedom, we are transported to the intelligible world as its members, and so speak of the autonomy and purity of the will and of ourselves as self-legislative; when we think of ourselves as obligated, we think of ourselves as belonging to both the intelligible world and the sensible world. The fact that in obligation we think of ourselves as belonging to both worlds is important, because it points out that our will is not divided, but that we always concur with the self-legislation of our will (that is, we agree 'wholeheartedly' with the moral law within us). Kant says, As a mere member of the intelligible world, all my actions would completely accord with the principle of the autonomy of the pure will, and as part only of the world of sense would they have to be assumed to conform wholly to the natural law of desires and inclinations, and thus to heteronomy of nature. (The former actions would rest on the supreme principle of morality, and the latter on that of happiness). But since the intelligible world contains the


5

ground of the world of sense and hence of its laws, the intelligible worldis (and must be conceived as) directly legislativefor my will, which belongs wholly to the intelligible world. It is for this reason that the laws of the intelligible world provide the laws that are taken by me to be categorically binding for my actions. Since I am a member of the sensible world, the laws of the intelligible world hold for me as an 'ought' (I 'ought' to conform to the laws of this world). The will of the intelligible world contains the supreme condition of the sensuously affected will. These 'two' wills are the same will: 'besides my will affected by my sensuous desires there is added the idea of exactly the same will as pure, as practical itself, and belonging to the intelligible world. . . .'14 Given this relation namely, that even as I will in the sensible world, the basis for such willing is the pure, practical will it follows that even in acting contrary to this will, I will this will — that is, I always will what is in accordance with practical reason. As Kant puts it, there is no man, not even the most malicious villain (provided he is otherwise accustomed to using his reason), who does not wish that he also might have these qualities. But because of his inclinations and impulses he cannot bring this about, yet at the same time he wishes to be free from such inclinations which are burdensome even to himself. 15 Here we come to a pause. This 'malicious villain's' actions are depicted, not as immoral, but as amoral. No one may willfully choose against the moral law. Instead, the 'villian's' actions are determined by his inclinations and impulses (the laws of nature), which have no bearing on his will, since his will is a member of the intelligible world. Thus, it follows that no one is able to willfully choose against the moral law. At times Kant does speak of a good will and bad will. l b Yet this is inconsistent, because there is only one root of will, and this is purely rational. Thus, what he calls the 'bad will' is not a will at all, but a succumbing to the laws of nature, which might better be described as a lack of will. Since we are not responsible for our inclinations and impulses we do not attribute them to our proper self (that is, our will ) the notion of evil is left out of the equation. Kant further closes the door to evil by saying, 'that to which inclinations and impulses and hence the entire nature of the world of sense incite him cannot in the least impair the laws of his volition as an intelligence'. 18 The laws of the intelligible world cannot be corrupted (the will cannot be corrupted), and so another door by which to explain evil is closed. As we will see in the next section, Kant's analysis in the Religion shows that a corruption of the will can and does take place. It is in this corruption that radical evil finds its place within Kant's moral theory.

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Kant's Theory of Radical Evil in Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone In the Religion, Kant rather abruptly adapts his position. He now allows for a corruption of the will. Not that the law of reason is corrupted, but the will may choose incentives other than this law for its rule. How is this possible, given that in the Foundations Kant defines the will as practical reason? Kant accomplishes this by distinguishing between three 'parts' of the will. John R. Silber, in his analysis of Kant's change in the understanding the will, says, The will according to Kant is a unitary faculty. But, like reason and the understanding, it is subject to division into 'parts' for the purpose of analysis. These parts, to which Kant refers by the terms ' Willkiir,' 'Wille,' and 'Geisinnung,' are aspects or specific functions of this essentially unified faculty of volition. The distinction between the Willkiir and the Wille is a distinction between that aspect of the will that chooses according to the rule of its maxim (Willkilr), and that aspect of the will that is rational (Wille}. In the Foundations, Kant asserts that the will is identical with practical reason; in the Religion he draws a distinction between these two capacities - will and reason. The Wille does not make decisions or adopt maxims, but is a source of a strong incentive in Willkiir. According to Silber, Wille can determine the Willkiir, in which case it is practical reason itself. However, Wille is not free, ' Wille is rather the law of freedom, the normative aspect of the will, which as a norm is neither free nor unfree'. The Wille is able to arouse desires or aversions in the Willkiir, namely, the 'moral feeling', which is respect for the moral law. When the Willkiir is determined by the Wille, the will as a whole is as it was described in the Foundations when Kant proclaims that the will is practical reason. However, by distinguishing between the will as practical reason, and the will as that which adopts its maxim, Kant allows for a capacity of the will to freely choose contrary to practical reason. In looking at this capacity we will come to see Kant's view of radical evil. In the Foundations neither the sensuous nature nor the practical law could serve as a source of immoral acts. Sensuous nature could not be the ground of immoral acts because it determined actions according to natural inclinations and impulses; the practical law could not be the ground because it was incapable of being corrupted. Kant holds to this in the Religion. The important difference, however, is that, while in the Foundations Kant took reason's incorruptibility to prove the will's incorruptibility (that is, even when the malicious villain acts contrary to the moral law, he still wills the moral law), in the Religion he allows the will to be corrupted by choosing against the moral law. Thus, Kant says that evil 'can only lie in a rule made by the willw [Willkiir] for the use of its freedom, that is, in a maxim'. Whereas in the Foundations the will


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necessarily chose as its ground the laws of reason, in the Religion, the Willkur is viewed as a capacity of the will to adopt maxims contrary to reason - that is, contrary to the Wille. The Willkur is the ultimate ground for determining action, and so maintains itself in freedom, though it does so by adopting good maxims or evil maxims. As Kant says, freedom of the willvv is of a wholly unique nature in that an incentive can determine the will w to an action only so far as the individual has incorporated it into his maxim (has made it the general rule in accordance with which he will conduct himself); only thus can an incentive, whatever it may be, co-exist with the absolute spontaneity of the willw (i.e., freedom)." In other words, the Willkur adopts a maxim by which it determines the rules of its action. In the Foundations, the Willkur had one incentive: respect for the law of reason. Kant now allows for other incentives to be incorporated into the free will, which can serve as the maxim of the Willkur. If the moral law is one's incentive, and if one makes it one's maxim, then one is morally good. On the other hand, if one adopts as a maxim an incentive other than the moral law, one is morally evil. The third aspect of the will is disposition (Geisinnung], which is the ground or basis out of which we adopt our maxims. The disposition is adopted by the Willkur, and is never indifferent, but either J good or evil. The 'subjective ground or cause of this adoption [of the disposition] cannot further be known'," and so Kant regards it as a 'property' of the Willkur — something that belongs to the Willkur by nature. Every human being has three predispositions, which are able to become the source of the incentives of the Willkur. They are called predispositions because they are not chosen, and are a part of us naturally. These three predispositions loosely follow Plato's three parts of the soul. The first of these predispositions is 'animality'. This is mechanical love, and has within it the social impulses, as well as the drives for preservation and propagation. The second predisposition is 'humanity'. This is self-love, and seeks to acquire worth in the opinion of others. Finally, there is personality. Kant says that this is respect for the moral law within us, and is the source of moral feeling. None of these predispositions contradict the moral law, but are predispositions toward good, in that they can join in the observance of the law - just as, for Plato, reason may rule over the appetites and spirit. Of course, animality and humanity can be used contrary to their ends, which gives rise to evil within the self. According to Kant, evil is not a predisposition, although humans have a 'propensity' toward it that is, a possible inclination to which all humanity is liable. Kant gives three degrees of propensity to evil. The first is 'frailty' or 'weakness'. This is summed up by the Apostle Paul's discussion in Romans 7,

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where he asserts that he does not do what he wants to do. This is also the weakness of will described in Augustine's Confessions, and is important to the traditional view of evil as weakness. For Kant, in 'weakness' one adopts the good (the law) into the maxim of one's Willkur, though the maxim is weak in comparison to some inclination one faces. One wills the moral law, but allows an inclination to override one's will. The second degree is 'impurity of the human heart'. In this case the maxim is not purely moral. The maxim is good in that it intends to observe the law, but it has not adopted the law alone as its all-sufficient incentive. In other words, other incentives are needed for it to act according to the law. As Kant says, 'actions called for by duty are done not purely for duty's sake'. Thus, motives beyond simply duty are needed in order to observe the law. Silber says that 'Whereas the weak-willed individual is strengthened by the knowledge of his weakness and purified by the Wille that condemns his vice, the impure individual is dying the quiet death (euthanasia) of morality through his confusion of moral and non-moral incentives'. Here we see another 'rendition' of the view of evil as weakness; this time, rather than the will being weak or divided, it is confused — ignorant. Both weakness and ignorance can be the grounds for all sorts of evil actions, and so the traditional view of evil is not completely mistaken when it attributes evil to these grounds. The problem with the traditional view, however, is that it goes no further. In his Religion, Kant goes beyond these grounds, and takes the initial step toward a more actualized form of human evil. This is the third degree of the propensity to evil, which he calls 'wickedness'. Here the Willkur acts against the incentives that spring from the moral law, in favour of those that are not moral. It reverses the ethical order of incentives of the Willkur. It should be noted, however, just because the moral law is neglected, does not mean a wicked person acts against social norms, morals, or laws. Indeed, it may be that acting lawfully is the best way to fulfil the will's evil incentive. Thus, Kant distinguishes between the letter of the law and the spirit. Those who conform outwardly to the moral law, while inwardly being determined by incentives contrary to the moral law, simply obey the letter of the law. In this case the outward obedience to the law is accidental - that is, contingent on the situation. Those who obey the spirit of the law have, as their sufficient incentive, the law in itself. According to Kant, a man is evil when he 'is conscious of the moral law but has nevertheless adopted into his maxim the (occasional) deviation therefrom'. By the term 'radical evil', Kant points to an evil that corrupts the ground of all maxims. Having said this, it should also be noted that, for Kant, the Wille can never be corrupted. If the Wille were to be corrupted, then we would have a practical reason which is 'exempt from the moral law, a malignant reason as it were (a thoroughly evil will)'. Kant denies the possibility of such a


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corruption, for this would set up opposition to the law itself as an incentive. In other words, the incentive would not be merely self-love or sensuous nature, but opposition to the moral law itself. Every action would be motivated by a maxim whose rule is to act contrary to the spirit of the moral law. Kant cannot fathom such a human being (though, as we will see, Schelling can), because it is a contradiction to speak of a reason that acts against reason itself. As Silber writes, To assert . . . that there are devilish beings who defiantly and powerfully reject the moral law itself, presupposes a conception of freedom which, according to Kant, is hopelessly transcendent and without foundation in human experience. In human experience, he insists, our knowledge of freedom is revealed exclusively by the moral law and its realization depends upon the incorporation of that law in volition. Hence, speculation about devilish beings is either transcendent superstition, or, since the most evil mode of free expression is wickedness, devils must be responsibly portrayed in the weakness of wickedness. Humans are evil only insofar as they reverse the moral order of their incentives. There is no repudiation of the moral law in this, but the moral law [is adopted] along with the law of self-love; yet when he becomes aware that they cannot remain on a par with each other but that one must be subordinated to the other as its supreme condition, he makes the incentive of self-love and its inclinations the condition of obedience to the moral law. The moral law is not rejected, but is made a conditional incentive. Is it not possible, however, for a person to repudiate and reject the moral law? Is there not ample evidence in our own age of a 'thoroughly malignant will'? As Silber says, 'man's free power to reject the law in defiance is an ineradicable fact of human experience. . .. Kierkegaard consolidated the opposition to Kant's moral optimism in asserting the power of men to fulfill their personalities in the despair of defiance'. Silber goes on to say, Far from languishing in the impotency of personality demanded by Kant's conception of freedom, Ahab infuses the excess of his personal strength into the spirits of his men, into the rigging of his ship, and even into the artificial limb on which he stamps out his defiance of the law. History in turn records the deeds of Hitler and Napoleon. No weak personality loses an entire army in Egypt only to lose yet another in Russia; no weak personality leads a civilized nation to moral disaster and a continent to ruin.'

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The issue of fulfilling one's personality in opposition to the moral law becomes the problem Schelling faces in his Treatise. Schelling attempts to understand freedom, not simply in terms of its relation to the moral law, but in its structure. He comes to see that freedom is structured around the choice for good and evil. In this Schelling seeks to comprehend the ontological structures of humans in such a way that we are able to discover the origin of our universal propensity to evil — something Kant conceived as impossible to grasp. In tracing Schelling's movement toward this origin, we will discover the horizons with which this free choice for evil consists, horizons which are much more expansive than allowed by Kant.

Schelling's Treatise on the Essence of Human Freedom As the title of Schelling's book implies, the issue around which the origin of evil revolves is freedom. In Kant's Foundations, freedom was freedom for moral action; indeed, all actions contrary to the moral law were deemed unfree acts. In his Religion, freedom is still freedom for moral action, but he now allows that freedom can be used for evil; still, the primary focus of the power of freedom is the Wille, in which the moral law comes to us as an incentive. Thus, to commit evil is, for Kant, to subordinate the very power of the will to other incentives, which are adopted as the maxim of the Willkur. In Schelling, we will see that freedom is freedom for good and evil; freedom finds its essence in the choice for good and evil itself. Schelling's Treatise shows that the ontological structures of human beings do not simply allow for this choice, but demand it. It is this analysis to which we will now turn. Evil is a problem because of the difficulty of trying to understand a universe in which all is not good. This seems obvious enough, but when one tries to discover how a 'rebellion' could arise within Being how something which is a part of Being could turn against Being, and so itself - it would seem that one is left with only two choices, neither of which are very enticing. The first choice is that of dualism: there is not one Being (Substance), but two eternal Beings; these Beings are in a continual battle with each other, and part of this battle is fought within the soil of the human heart. The other is that of monism, in which there is one Being, of which evil is a part. In this latter view, there are two tendencies of rectifying this seeming contradiction: first, we could say that what we conceive as evil is not actually evil; everything in Being is good, and so it is our limited perspective that sees something as evil. Second, we may echo Baudelaire's belief that if there is a God, he most certainly is the devil — that is, there is no good. Both these answers give away too much, whether downplaying evil, or defiling the purity of the Good. In both cases one loses the sense of the difference and opposition that is good and evil, and so is not


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so much left with an answer to the problem, as with a denial that the problem actually exists. Schelling's Treatise seeks to allow for the difference between good and evil, without succumbing to dualism. He does this by creating a theodicy which draws a distinction between the basis or ground of God's existence, and God's existence itself.' The basis is not God, though it is a part of God as his basis. In other words, as the basis of God's existence, the ground is not God in his existence itself, yet as the basis of this existence, the ground is inseparable from God - no basis, no God. The basis precedes God's existence as an abyss or chaos, a mixture in which nothing is separated. This abyss is not God, but is nonetheless necessary for his existence (ek-sistence) or revelation. Schelling says this basis is 'the longing which the eternal one feels to give birth to itself. This longing seeks to give birth to God, i.e., the unfathomable unity, but to this extent it has not yet the unity in its own self. Thus, the basis is the longing of God to reveal himself. This longing is not the revelation itself, but the impetus of this revelation. Just as water is never revealed to a fish at the bottom of the ocean, because there is no basis by which the water can stand out for the fish, there is no revelation of God without the opposition or basis. It is in this sense that the basis (the longing for revelation) is not God, and yet is inseparable from God, for without this longing for revelation of existence, God would not ek-sist - stand out. As longing, the basis is also to be understood as will. This will, as the basis, is a kind of blind willing whose movement is toward understanding. The understanding is what eventually gives guidance or content to the will. Thus, one finds here the same distinction between understanding and will as was found between God and his basis. The will is the basis of understanding, just as longing is the basis of God. In both cases the ground is unconscious of its object, though we may say that it longs and wills for that which it serves as a basis. After the eternal act of self-revelation, the world within which we dwell possesses rule, order, and form. Schelling calls the ground the 'incomprehensible basis of reality in things, the irreducible remainder which cannot be resolved into reason by the greatest exertion but always remains in the depths'. 36 Science's attempt to wrap everything up under its covering-laws is a doomed enterprise, for unruliness pervades all that exists. Indeed, apart from unruliness there is no rule; apart from unreasonableness there is no reason, for true reason is born of unreasonableness. This notion that order, reason, and rule are not original is very important for Schelling's understanding of evil. As we saw, the problem of evil is in coming to understand how it can arise out of Being — out of the Good, out of the rule and order of all that is. For Schelling, however, order and rule are not primordial and so evil does not arise out of them. The issue changes, then, for it

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is not an issue of how evil arises out of the more original, already established Good, but how the possibility for good and evil arises out of the seed of unruliness. The question in which Schelling must find his way, then, is how order arises from disorder. As we have seen, the primal longing is a longing for God's revelation, though this longing is unconscious of its object. Since God is pure light, Schelling speaks of the primal longing as 'turning towards reason'. The formation or informing of Being can be understood in terms of the tensions within the longing itself. Examining these tensions will allow for a more detailed understanding of how order arises from disorder. Schelling says that the first effect of reason is the separation offerees. There is a hidden and unconscious unity within the depths of longing, and it is through reason's separation of these forces that this unity unfolds and develops. The forces were always in the depths, though the unity was not conscious of itself as this unity. In other words, it was a chaotic mix, a seething cauldron offerees, which, like a witch's brew, holds within itself a power to change the order of things — or in this case, the disorder of things. Creation itself is this separation of ever more varied and diverse forces. This separation brings to light, at the same time, the hidden unity within the chaotic. It is this primal nature that is the eternal basis of God's existence or revelation. Schelling says that the basis 'must contain within itself, though locked away, God's essence, as a light of life shining in the dark depths'. 3 In this we find that the basis holds within itself both light and darkness, though the darkness rules and the light remains hidden. But once aroused by reason,39 longing strives to preserve the light within itself. Reason 'rouses longing (which is a yearning to return into itself) to divide the forces (to surrender darkness) and in this very division brings out the unity enclosed in what was divided, the hidden light'. Heidegger, in his commentary on this text, describes this yearning of the longing to return to itself as the ground's craving to be more and more ground: The ground thus wants to be more and more ground, and at the same time it can only will this by willing what is clearer and thus striving against itself 'as what is dark. Thus it strives for the opposite of itself and produces a separation in itself/• 4 1 The ground can seek to satisfy its yearning to be more and more ground only by willing the light (that which is not ground as such). As the ground wills the light in order to differentiate it from itself, the longing becomes the basis (ground) of the light, thus becoming more and more ground. Longing surrenders the chaotic darkness to the light, and a separation offerees evolves into


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ever more differentiation, though in such a way that a higher unity conies about. In the end, all creation and arising of Being is this longing to bring order to what is chaotic, and to bring to light what is hidden in the chaos. Indeed, according to Schelling, nature itself is this combination of order and longing: there are two principles in nature, the longing of the dark depths and the light of reason. Schelling points out, however, that these principles are really one and the same, though 'regarded from the two possible aspects'.43 One can see how these principles are the same by thinking in terms of the will. Schelling says the principle of the darkness is the self-will of the creature, a will that is devoid of understanding and thus blind. This is mere craving and desiring in itself. On the other hand, there is the universal will of reason. These principles differ in that one is a self-will toward the particular, while the other is a universal will toward the light. Still, both are will., and in this sense the same. The will of the self-will, and the will of the universal will are the same will, though seen from two possible aspects. The self-will is opposed to reason as longing is opposed to the light of understanding. Self-will seeks to differentiate itself more and more from the universal will, and yet in this it becomes a tool for the universal will, serving as its ground. In most things of the world, the particular will remains a tool. For example, the animal does not ordinarily venture outside its species. When such a thing happens we often find the result to be grotesque, and are repelled by the ugliness of a self-will asserting itself against the order of the universal will. In humans, however, the 'inmost and deepest point of original darkness' is revealed. The power of this particular will is given over to humans, and yet it is revealed by the light that is, made conscious, given understanding. Thus, Schelling says that in humanity 'there are both centers — the deepest pit and the highest heaven'. Since humans are creatures (natural) who arise from the depths, they contain the dark principle that is independent from God. This principle is transfigured by the light, though it remains basically dark. In terms of will, the particular self-will is transfigured by the light into the universal will of understanding. In Kantian langauge, the Willkur (particular will) has as its motive the Wille (the universal will of reason). It is this unity, arising in nature only in humans, which Schelling designates as spirit. It is the deepest pit and the highest heaven in one. This transfiguration of the particularized self-will by light allows for spirit to arise in human beings. It is because the two principles are 'dissoluble' in humans that the possibility of good and evil arises, since the particular will may try to assert itself in place of the universal will. In other words, it is the combination of both principles in humans that makes them spirit, and it is the dissolubility of these principles that allows for the possibility of evil. In Kantian terms, it is the possession of the Willkur and the Wille that allow for personality (spirit); it is the dissolubility of the two wills that allows for radical evil.

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This unity is indissoluble in God, for he maintains the basis within himself, keeping it under his control through Love. His particular will is the universal will - the Wille cannot be separated from the Willkiir in the divine will which means there is no possibility of evil in God. With the dissolubility of these two principles in humans, the depths may rise up and assert themselves against the universal, against the light of reason. The principle of the depths (self-will) is that which allows humans to be independent from God, and is the principle of selfhood (self-will) in them. There is no possibility of a person becoming completely swallowed up by the universal will so that he or she no longer has the particular will. This is because the principle of the depths forces itself on humans - that is, forces humans to be themselves. To be completely swallowed up in the universal will is to deny oneself, for one is, in one's very ontological structure, distinct from God (necessarily so) by having one's own will. Humans have a will that is free from the order of the universe. Kant called this the Willkiir, or an aspect of the will that could choose against the universal will of reason (the Wille). Thus, spirit is able to hold itself in complete freedom, 'no longer the tool of the universal will operating in nature, but above and outside all nature'. 47 It is transcendent in the sense that it is able to break with immediacy. The separation of these two principles can take place in two possible ways: through good or through evil. The first possibility is that of good, in which 'man's self-will remains in the depths as the central will, so that the divine relation of the principles persists'.48 In Kant's terminology, the Willkiir chooses as its incentive respect for the law - the Wille. Here, 'the spirit of love rules [in the will] in place of the spirit of dissension which wishes to divorce its own principle from the general principle'. One relates correctly to the relation of the self by relating to the power that established (combined) the relation — that is, love. Thus, the choice is between love and dissension. The second possibility of freedom is that of evil. As Schelling puts it, Self-will may seek to be, as a particular will, that which it is only in its identity with the universal will. It may seek to be at the periphery that which it is only insofar as it remains at the center. . . . It may seek to be free as creature (for the will of creature is, to be sure, beyond the depths, but in that case it is also a mere particular will, not free but restricted). Thus there takes place in man's will a division of his spiritualized selfhood from the light (as the spirit stands above light) - that is, a dissolution of the principles which in God are indissoluble/50 Spirit is faced with the possibility of defying the unity of the self, by moving out from the centre and asserting itself at the periphery. It seeks self-revelation, or better, self-glorification. Kierkegaard will call this attempt at self-glorification despair, because this desperate attempt of the particular will to usurp


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the universal will is a truly hopeless enterprise. Schelling also saw evil as a doomed enterprise, because he did not believe the particular will has enough power within itself to establish itself as a universal will. Schelling writes, Will, which deserts its supernatural status in order to make itself as general will also particular and creature will, at one and the same time, strives to reverse the relation of the principles, to exalt the basis above the cause, and to use that spirit which it received only for the center, outside the center and against the creature, which leads to disorganization within itself and outside itself/ The particular will's defiance against the order of love leads to disorganization within and outside itself. It is in this sense we may say this relation of the self to itself is despair, for the end which it seeks ultimately leads to its own destruction. This defiance is ultimately self-destructive because the particular will does not have the power within itself to organize and unite the nexus of forces; rather, each force seeks to organize the individual around itself. At this point Schelling is careful to distinguish his view of evil as disorder, from a view of evil as a negation of all order. He is not of the belief that evil is a mere negation or privation of the Good, just as he does not believe that disease is a mere privation of health. He writes, Disease of the whole organism can never exist without the hidden forces of the depths being unloosed; it occurs when the irritable principle which ought to rule as the innermost tie offerees in the quiet deep, activates itself, or when Archaos is provoked to desert his quiet residence at the center of things and steps forth into the surroundings. 52 Disease is not a privation of health, nor is evil a privation of Good, in that these disorders are the grounds of a new order. A particular will which has asserted itself, does not lose the forces which make it up, but it sets these forces loose. Disease is the effect of an attempted self-revelation of the depths, which should 5 remain in the centre, an attempt of the depths to move toward the periphery. For example, cancer is the process of cells dividing in a 'disorderly' manner. This is not a mere privation, for it rivals order in intensity, even to the point that it ultimately destroys the body of which it was a part which is, of course, the despair of such rebellions. The reason this attempt at a new order ultimately leads to destruction is because the cancer cells do not have the power to establish their order as a general order upon the body. Schelling says of disease that it 'is indeed nothing essential and is actually only an illusion of life and the mere meteoric appearance of it - a swaying between being and nonbeing - but nonetheless announces itself in feeling as something very real. Just so is the case with evil.''

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Evil is not a mere privation, because it is attempting to create a form (its own form) with the forces of the dark ground. In other words, evil is not disorder in the sense of going back to pure chaos (the longing of the depths in which the light remains hidden), because the light has penetrated the darkness and so has separated out theforces — consciousness has arisen. Instead, evil is discord and disorder in the sense of having built a false unity out of these forces. In the physical realm one could think of a malformed animal in which the parts are all there, but they have been put in the wrong places or grotesquely deformed. It is a false unity, in that it does not abide by the form of the species, and seeks to 'assert' its particularization through this false unity — a desperate attempt at self-revelation, if you will. This often strikes us with horror, and so the self-assertion announces itself as very real; still, it is a mere illusion of the species, an oddity, something finite, for it is in a losing battle against its entelechy, its universal will. The positive aspect of evil is grasped by seeing that it is not derived simply from the dark principle, or the creaturely, but from the dark principle being brought into an intimacy with the light that forms a nexus offerees. As Schelling says, evil is not derived from the principle of finitude in itself, but only from the dark or selfish principle which has been brought into intimacy with the center. And just as there is an ardor for the good, there is also an enthusiasm for evil. It is this 'enthusiasm for evil' that Kant held to be unthinkable. Yet evil, too, has personality; evil is also born of spirit. We know this to be true, for there is a temptation to explain good and evil within a dualistic framework, where evil is personified, and carries a power near or equal to the good. It is monism that has had difficulty dealing with this issue, for it seems unfathomable that a power could arise that is contrary to the source of power, a strength that is strong without strength. According to Schelling, it is the division between the dark depths of longing and the light of reason that allows for an actualized form of evil. The division between the two principles takes place only within humans (animals are not moral creatures), and so it is in humanity where the possibility of good and evil finds its source. It is this very possibility that turns out to be the essence of human freedom for Schelling: Man has been placed on that summit where he contains within him the source of self-impulsion towards good and evil in equal measure; the nexus of the principles within him is not a bond of necessity but of freedom. He stands at the dividing line; whatever he chooses will be this act.


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What is paradoxical about this situation is that, as the dividing line, as the self-impulsion toward good and evil in equal measure, it would seem that he stands at the place of indecision. But this is not possible, for 'he cannot remain in indecision because God must necessarily reveal himself and because nothing at all in creation can remain ambiguous'. Thus, for Schelling there must be a 'solicitation to evil, even if it were only to the principles within him to life, that is, to make him conscious of them'/ Here we have a movement beyond where Kant was willing to go. Schelling will attempt to uncover this 'solicitation of evil'. What brings humanity out of its seemingly structural indecisiveness? Given the analysis thus far, it is clear that this solicitation does not come from outside of humanity; indeed, the solicitation is built into humanity's very ontological structure. Nothing is given to explain evil 'except the two principles of God'. As we have seen, evil is the continual self-willing of selfhood to get itself under its own control, and thus define the centre in itself. This self-willing comes from the depths. However, it would be a mistake to say that evil comes from the depths, or that the will of the depths is evil's primal cause, 'for evil can only arise in the innermost will of one's own heart, and is never achieved without one's own deed'. j9 Thus, the depths are not the solicitation to evil. Instead, Schelling writes about the 'terror of life' as that which drives a man out of the centre. This terror is the horror of being consumed and crushed by the centre, 6 of being swallowed up by the universal will by what seems to the particular will to be a foreign will. The depths, as self-will, is driven to the periphery, because it fears the annihilation of itself by the universal will. It is this reaction which 'awakens in the creature passions or the individual will, but it awakens this only so that an independent basis for the good may be there and so that it may be conquered and penetrated by the good'. This awakening, this terror that drives the self-will out toward the periphery is not evil, but is actually the possibility of good. Indeed, it provides the independent basis through which it is conquered by the good. It is only in creatures other than humans that the particular will is not terrorized by the universal will. Or to put it another way, it is the dissolubility of the two principles that allow for this arousal of the depths in humans, and it is this arousal itself which activates the freedom as the possibility between good and evil. This solicitation of evil will not allow humans to remain indecisive, but arouses and awakens us to our freedom - namely, to the anxiety-ridden decision for good or for evil. We cannot get out from under this contradiction, because the very working out of this contradiction is what it means to be a self, to be spirit. True, people may tranquilize themselves in various ways, and in this show themselves to be unwilling to be both particular and universal will, but this is nothing more than a rather innocuous method of choosing against the universal will. It is, as

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we will see in the next chapter, a spiritless form of despair. This spiritlessness seeks to hide freedom from itself by blinding itself to the choice of good and evil. True humanity consists in an intensity of personality, where selfhood is activated by being self-consciously and freely before the universal will as a particular will. This intensity is not, by necessity, driven to evil (is not a predisposition to evil), but is that which awakens slumbering goodness. The terror of the universal will remains in the awakening, and so there remains a continual struggle to annihilate the particular will's attempts at self-glorification. The self is this very struggle itself, whether it chooses for good or for evil. Evil arises, then, out of this struggle, for one is receptive to the non-being (the ground) which seeks revelation, and this reception is supported by one's inclination toward evil. In this, one gives into the illusion inherent in the false nexus or combination of forces. Schelling gives a compelling description of this process, a process built on the ever increasing power of selfishness: So the beginning of sin consists in man's going over from actual being to non-being, from truth to falsehood, from light into darkness, in order himself to become the creative basis and to rule over all things with the power of the center which he contains. For even he who has moved out of the center retains the feeling that he has been all things when in and with God. Therefore he strives to return to this condition, but he does so for himself and not in the way he could, that is, in God. Hence there springs a hunger of selfishness which, in the measure that it deserts totality and unity becomes ever needier and poorer, but just on that account more ravenous, hungrier, more poisonous. In evil there is that contradiction which devours and always negates itself, which just while striving to become creature destroys the nexus of creation and, in its ambition to be everything, falls into non-being. Humans are potentially spirit, which is to say they do not possess 'activated' selfhood as a matter of course. The self is activated or actualized in the selfconscious choice between good and evil. This choice arises as the 'terror of life' is consciously faced in the individual. The choice comes down to this: do I allow the terror of the universal to drive me toward self-revelation and selfglorification, or do I allow the terror to show me my need for the universal will's revelation and glorification? It is a distinction between defiance and humility, despair and faith, offense and worship, envy and adoration, dissension and love. A problem arises around this view of freedom. If the ability to truly choose is something only a free person can do, and yet freedom is something which itself must be chosen, how can one choose freedom before possessing it?63 According to Schelling, the 'usual conception' of freedom is that it is a capacity of the will, which, when faced with a choice between contradictory


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opposites, is completely undetermined with respect to either one. He regards this as a very deficient view of freedom: 'To be able to decide for A or -A without any motivating reasons would, to tell the truth, only be a privilege to act entirely unreasonably.'' With the advent of Kantian idealism, freedom comes to be understood in terms of a higher necessity or determination for making choices, though not a necessity of compulsion — that is, not an external determination. Freedom is freedom only in terms of an 'inner necessity which springs from the essence of the active agent itself. Thus, in both Kant and Schelling, freedom is conceived as the capacity to act according to the laws of one's own inner being. The question, then, concerns the inner necessity of human Being. According to Schelling, this inner necessity is freedom itself. This is where the problem of freedom arises for Schelling: how can freedom be the capacity to act according to the inner necessity of one's own nature, and at the same time be this inner necessity? Schelling puts this problem in a single statement: 'man's being is essentially his own deed'.' The paradox consists in this: man posits himself, and yet he is nothing other than this self-positing. To posit himself, he must first be, for what is not cannot posit. Yet, how can he 'first be' if he must first posit himself? Schelling says, 'this Being which is assumed as prior to knowledge is no being, even if it is not knowledge either; it is real self-positing, it is primal and basic willing which makes itself into something and is the basis and foundation of all essence'. In this sense, the self-positing arises out of the dark basis, which is the ground of all existence and revelation — as well as the possibility of good and evil. When, however, does this self-positing take place? When, and how, does a human being determine his or her essence? Schelling says it is a determination that cannot occur in time, and yet determines our life in time. It is an act that belongs to eternity, though it does not 'precede life in time but occurs throughout time (untouched by it) as an act eternal by its own nature'. " Schelling continues, Though this idea may seem beyond the grasp of common ways of thought, there is in every man a feeling which is in accord with it, as if each man felt that he had been what he is from all eternity, and had in no sense only come . i . ,70 to be so in time. What is this feeling? Schelling points to a guilt that seems to have been invested to us at our births, and yet for which we are somehow responsible. Schelling does not look deeper into this feeling, nor does he examine how it relates to the solicitation of evil. It remains as dark as it did for Kant, who attributed this self-positing beyond the empirical and phenomenal world of time and space: for Kant the choice is made from the intelligible world — by the noumenal self.

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What we discover in Schelling is that evil is a choice though it is a choice chosen at birth. In this sense we may speak of the pre-destiny of evil in man. Schelling writes, 'When, through the reaction of the depths to revelation, evil in general had once been aroused in creation, man from eternity took his stand in egotism and selfishness; and all who are born are born with the dark principle of evil attached to them. .. .'71 Thus, we have chosen to stand on the side of selfishness from eternity, and have determined our lives in this choice. This is radical evil, for 'Only an evil which attaches to us by our own act, but does so from birth, can therefore be designated as radical evil'. It is radical because it is not a determination from without, but from within. This choice remains dark for Schelling, since it took place in the eternal past; however, for Kierkegaard this is a choice made in time — it is an existential choice. We will now turn to an examination of this choice between good and evil, as well as to the ontological guilt under which we find ourselves. At this point, suffice it to say that at some level we are in time as already guilty; it is in this guilt that we spend our lives, and with which we must struggle. This guilt means that freedom finds itself solicited by evil in terms of a radical egoism and selfishness. It is the task of freedom to pick up this basis (for the spirit of evil provides a basis for the spirit of love) and be transformed through a self-positing which allows the good to be manifested through one's selfhood. In other words, we must awaken to the possibility of good and evil, and allow the good to arise out of this propensity to evil.

Notes 1.

2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11.

Immanuel Kant. Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals. Immanuel Kant: Philosophical Writings. Ed. Ernst Behler, pp. 52^125. Trans. Lewis White Beck. New York: Continuum, 1986, p. 66. Kant, 1986, p. 68. Kant, 1986, p. 68. Kant, 1986, p. 86. Kant, 1986, p. 87. Kant, 1986, p. 85. Kant, 1986, p. 96. Kant, 1986, p. 97. Kant, 1986, p. 103. Kant, 1986, p. 110. 'A man may not know even himself as he really is by knowing himself through inner sensation. For since he does not, as it were, produce himself or derive his concept of himself as a priori but only empirically, it is natural that he obtains his knowledge of himself through inner sense and consequently only through the


12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19.

20. 21.

22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34.

35. 36. 37. 38. 39.

40.

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appearance of his nature and the way in which his consciousness is affected.' (Kant, 1986, p. 114 [my emphasis]). Kant, 1986, p. 115. Kant, 1986, p. 116 (my emphasis). Kant, 1986, p. 116 (my emphasis). Kant, 1986, p. 117. Kant, 1986, p. 117. Kant, 1986, p. 120. Kant, 1986, p. 120. John R. Silber. 'The Ethical Significance of Kant's Religion'. Introduction to Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone, pp. Ixxix—cxxxiv. New York: Harper, 1960, p. xciv. Silber, p. civ. Immanuel Kant. Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone. Trans. Theodore M. Greene and Hoyt H. Hudson. New York: Harper, 1960, p. 17. In the translation by Greene and Hudson, the Willkur is translated as 'will"" in order to differentiate it from Wille. Kant, 1960, p. 19. Kant says that the disposition is 'the ultimate subjective ground of the adoption of maxims' (1960, p. 20). Kant, 1960, pp. 20-1. Kant says that these predispositions have 'immediate reference to the faculty of desire and the exercise of the will w ' (1960, p. 23). Kant, 1960, p. 25. Silber, p. cxxii. Kant, 1960, p. 27. Kant, 1960, p. 30. Silber, p. cxxv. Kant, 1960, p. 31. Silber, p. cxxix. Silber, p. cxxix. Much of Schelling's language and approach may seem foreign to our 21 st century ears, but some profound insights about Being can be drawn from them, and these insights will be essential for Kierkegaard's approach to the problem of evil. F. W. J. Schelling. Of Human Freedom. Trans. James Gutmann. Chicago: Open Court, 1936, p. 33. Schelling, p. 34. Schelling, p. 35. Schelling, p. 36. How does this arousal happen? In this question we find the reason for Schelling's allegorical language. He explains it as God's imaginative response. In other words, it is a creative act, and in this sense remains a part of the dark depths that is, it remains hidden in the basis of God's existence. Schelling, p. 36.

22 41. 42.

43. 44.

45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71. 72.

Kierkegaard's Analysis of Radical Evil Martin Heidegger. Schelling's Treatise on the Essence of Human Freedom. Trans. Joan Stambaugh. Athens, OH: Ohio UP, 1985, p. 136. This analysis reminds me of a quote sometimes attributed to Michelangelo: 'Every block of stone has a statue inside it and it is the task of the sculptor to discover it.' Schelling, p. 37. The 'self-will of creatures stands opposed to reason as universal will, and the latter makes use of the former and subordinates it to itself as a mere tool' (Schelling, p. 38). Schelling, p. 38. Schelling, p. 38. Schelling, p. 41. Schelling, p. 40. Schelling, p. 41. Schelling, p. 40. Schelling, p. 41 (my emphasis). Schelling, pp. 41-2. Schelling, p. 42. Schelling, p. 48. Schelling, p. 50. Schelling, p. 50. Schelling, p. 50. Schelling, p. 51. Schelling, p. 79. Schelling, p. 79. Schelling, p. 69. Schelling, p. 69. This problem will unfold more fully as we examine Kierkegaard's view of evil, so it is not necessary to grasp the problem completely at this point. Schelling, p. 59. Schelling, p. 60. Schelling, p. 61. Schelling, p. 63. Schelling, p. 63 (my emphasis). Schelling, p. 64. Schelling, p. 64. Schelling, p. 66 (my emphasis). Schelling, p. 67.

1 The Struggle of Self-Becoming: Spiritless Self-Evasion

The task of every human being is to become a 'self. The self is not a readymade, substantial entity that we possess simply by virtue of existence; rather, it is a choice. As we have seen, both Kant and Schelling believe the self must choose itself in its freedom, though this choice is made outside time (for Kant all free acts transcend the phenomenal world which comes to us through time, and for Schelling it was a choice made in the eternal past). Kierkegaard, however, believes this choice is made within time, and that the nature of the self should be conceived in terms of a self-becoming. He develops this view in terms of the unique structure of the human self. Further, it is clear from The Sickness Unto Death - the work in which this structure is most systematically presented that self-becoming is connected to the problem of evil.

The Self as a Relation We begin at the paradox of human freedom discussed at the end of the introduction - namely, that 'man's being is essentially his own deed'. The proble can be stated in a question: If we are to choose and become ourselves while in temporal existence, who are we while in the midst of this becoming? In his upbuilding discourse 'To Gain One's Soul In Patience', Kierkegaard problematizes this issue in terms of gaining what is already possessed: [I]f a person possesses his soul, he certainly does not need to gain it, and if he does not possess it, how then can he gain it, since the soul itself is the ultimate condition that is presupposed in every acquiring, consequently also in gaining the soul. Could there be a possession of that sort, which signifies precisely the condition for being able to gain the same possession?1 For Kierkegaard, the human self finds itself in just such a condition, in that self-becoming is its very nature. Thus, the change that takes place in selfbecoming is not like the Aristotelian notion of kinesis, where the change, process, or telos of the action is geared toward the creation of another object — for example, the telos of the act of building a house is found in the house that is built. Rather, it is along the lines of the Aristotelian notions ofenergeia and entelechy, where the process is the telos, and where change is internal and bound

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within the form or structure of the process itself. Becoming a self is what the self is', our Being is in the process of (self) becoming. Kierkegaard writes, One who comes naked into the world possesses nothing, but the one who comes into the world in the nakedness of his soul does nevertheless possess his soul, that is as something that is to be gained, does not have it outside himself as something new that is to be possessed.2 This situation is due to the ontological structure of the self as a relation that relates itself to itself, and to the structure of the self as a self-contradiction. Kierkegaard gives his structural definition of the self in The Sickness Unto Death: A human being is spirit. But what is spirit? Spirit is the self. But what is the self? The self is a relation which relates to itself, or that in the relation which is its relating to itself. The self is not the relation but the relation's relating to itself. A human being is a synthesis of the infinite and the finite, of the temporal and the eternal, of freedom and necessity. In short a synthesis. A synthesis is a relation between two terms. Looked at in this way a human being is not yet a self. In a relation between two things the relation is the third term in the form of a negative unity, and the two relate to the relation, and in the relation to that relation; this is what it is from the point of view of soul for soul and body to be in relation. If, on the other hand, the relation relates to itself, then this relation is the positive third, and thais is the self. The process of self-becoming consists in the continual struggle of bringing the poles of the self into equilibrium. This is not an external act, nor an all-final point to be reached in which we finally become something completely other than we formerly had been. Rather, we become what we always are: a selfcontradiction continuously seeking equilibrium. Part of Kierkegaard's purpose in writing The Sickness Unto Death was to show the ever-changing stance of the self to itself, especially as it stands in its murelation to itself. In other words, his definition of the self speaks not only to the possibility of becoming a self, but more importantly, to the possibility of not being a self - of being in what he calls 'despair'. Even if it is true that one exists as becoming, one may choose against this structure, and not accept the task of self-becoming. The self, then, is a possession that can be gained or lost, but which remains a type of possession even in this gaining or losing. Again, Aristotle's concepts of energeia (act) and entelechy may be helpful here. An animal too has its entelechy, and could be said to possess itself in this form. It has its entelechy in the form and eidos of the species. Thus, it fulfils its form in simply being. It possesses itself — its form - in all its acts. In Schelling's terminology, an animal's particular will becomes a tool for the universal will, which is to say that it plays out its

The Struggle of Self-Becoming 25 particularity within its eidos or species. In humans, however, there exists a more radical separation between the particular and universal wills. Humans become conscious of themselves as particular wills; thus, they possess themselves as this separation of the 'deepest pit and the highest heaven'. For Kierkegaard, they possess this as something to be gained — that is, as something to be united. They may choose not to be themselves, and so not accept themselves as this task of self-becoming. If one does not take up this task, then one loses oneself. What is the self lost in? It is lost in what Kierkegaard calls the 'negative unity'. The negative unity is simply the various syntheses that make up the self. It is possible, and actually quite probable, that most people exist as a mere negative unity. This negative unity is a rather innocuous phenomenon, for in it one exists, as John Elrod puts it, in 'immediate unity with one's natural condition'. This is a self that lacks self-consciousness and freedom. The self is not conscious of the contradictory poles that make up its structure, and so it does not, as a positive third element, unify them. It flits between the poles of these syntheses, at one moment living out of its finitude in denial of its infinitude, and in the next moment in its infinitude in a rejection of its finitude. The unity of these syntheses remain, but only as a negative unity, in which one lives 'according to the categories of nature and culture totally devoid of an awareness of one's self as a self. This is what Kierkegaard calls spiritlessness and the aesthetic stage of existence. The spiritual self, on the other hand, is aware of the syntheses of the self, and of the possible misrelations of these syntheses. This is why Kierkegaard calls it a 'positive third' — that is, something distinct from and above the mere negative unity which makes up the syntheses. It is a positive unifier of the opposing poles of the syntheses. It realizes there is a self as it is (real), and also a self as it could be (ideal); a self which is bound by its past (necessity), and yet is open to the future (possibility); a self that is scattered in the moments of its life (temporal), though somehow continuous throughout this flux (eternal); a self that is limited (finite), but whose imagination, feeling, will, and knowledge take it beyond its limitations (infinite). This triadic structure constitutes Kierkegaard's ontological understanding of the self, a self which is not constituted as substance, but as a struggle in which it must gain itself. As in all struggles, the possibility of failure is an ever-present danger, and, if we are to believe Kierkegaard, failure is much more common than success. The self initially approaches the world as a negative unity - as already having lost itself in the categories of nature and culture. Kierkegaard says, 'What people aspire to — to possess the world a person was closest to it in the first moment of life, because his soul was lost in it and possessed the world in itself.' The problem we face, however, is that we cannot both possess the world, and possess ourselves as something to be gained. In possessing the world, we are possessed by it — that is, we abandon ourselves to it. This is due

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to the contingent nature of the world, and the fact that our possession of it can be lost or diminished. If we give ourselves over to the longing and desire of possessing the world (allowing its possession to guide our lives), its contingent nature binds us, and we are forced to bow to its contingencies as we attempt to gain it. A good example of this possession can be found in a work like Machiavelli's The Prince. If ever there was a guide to possessing the world, this is it. There are pages and pages of practical formulas to help the would-be prince gain the world and keep it in his possession. And yet, toward the end of the book, we discover that these formulas and guides do not ensure the possession of the world, but only prove to be ways in which we have a better chance of holding onto the world against the whims offortuna. It isfortuna who rules. And so, in spending the 'periods of calm'8 building the dikes and floodgates in an attempt to control the torrents offortuna, she shows her strength over us, and it becomes apparent how thoroughly she possesses our lives. Kierkegaard expands on this theme: What is the temptation that in itself is many temptations? Certainly it is not the glutton's temptation to live in order to eat. . . . [I]t is to live in order to slave. The temptation is this, to lose oneself, to lose one's soul, to cease to be a human being and live as a human being instead of being freer than the bird, and godforsaken to slave more wretchedly than the animal. Yes, to slave! Instead of working for the daily bread, which every human being is commanded to do, to slave for it — and yet not to be satisfied by it, because the care is to become rich. . .. Instead of being willing to be what one is, poor, but also loved by God . . . to damn oneself and one's life to this slaving despondent greed day and night, in dark and brooding dejection, in spiritless busyness, with heart burdened by worry about making a living. . . . This is to be a slave tofortuna, a slave to the ever-changing whims of temporality. While those who are lost in worldliness are more likely to envy the fortunate soul, Kierkegaard is horrified to see a person succeed in this way. It is not simply watching a person being tossed around by the whims of the world that is so troubling, but the realization that the self is thereby abandoned in this futile undertaking. Having said all this, we return to the fact that in the midst of this lostness the self does not thereby completely surrender possession of itself. The structure of the self remains, and no human can become lost in the world as an animal is lost, for, unlike animals, when a human being is lost, At the same moment he is different from the world, and he senses this resistance that does not follow the movements of the world's life. If he now wants

The Struggle of Self-Becoming 2 7 to gain the world, he must overcome this disquiet until once again, like the undulation of the waves, he vanishes in the life of the world - then he has won the world. However, if he wants to gain his soul, he must let his resistance become more and more pronounced and in doing so gain his soul, for his soul was this very difference: it was the infinity in the life of the world in its difference from itself.10 This resistance is the eternal, the infinite, the ideal, and the possible, which do not allow for complete and utter lostness. So even while lost to itself, the self continues to possess itself in, and as, this difference - as something to be gained away from the world. While lost in the world, the self remains, at some level, heterogeneous to the life of the world. It is the structure of the self as a self-relating relation that allows the self to become free from the world in which it is lost. But this is not all that is at work in becoming oneself, because the structure of the self is a derived relation. In other words, this structure is established by an Other, which for Kierkegaard is God. 11 The possibility of despair is due to the fact that God has released the self from his hand, and yet the self only becomes itself by freely turning and relating itself back toward God - whether in humility or pride. Thus, we are released from the hand of God that we may choose ourselves in him. The task of existence is to free ourselves from worldliness, in order to find ourselves in the power that established the structure of the self. Thus, Kierkegaard says that one's soul is gained from God, aw ay from the world, and through oneself. This is a difficult task, which is why most people abandon it, and thus abandon themselves. Kierkegaard's authorship is an attempt to make us feel the contradictions within ourselves, in hopes of awakening us to the struggle of becoming a self. We will begin our analysis of despair and evil by examining our least awakened state of consciousness: spiritlessness.

The Spiritless Evasion of the Self Spiritlessness and Choice For Kierkegaard, an understanding of evil can be arrived at prior to all ontical, public, and relational manifestations of evil, because the ground of evil is found in the individual's choice against his or her self and the Good. Although evil, when it manifests itself— and it does not always do so — is committed against others, the seat of evil is not in these actions; evil is first and foremost an ontological matter. Another way of saying this is that we commit evil against the Good before we commit it against others, in that our relationship with others is always mediated by our relationship with the Good. In this chapter we will examine the ontological structure of the self with this view of

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evil in mind, and come to see how the potential for evil arises, primordially, from this structure, and not from our relationship with others. As we have seen, we do not first come upon an actualized self, but the self in its negative unity. This self is characterized by potentiality and movement. In the same way, we will see that, although the ground of evil is found in the structure of the self, the structure itself allows only for the potential of evil; the actualization of evil must be addressed through an analysis of the process of self-becoming, which consists of a deepening of self-consciousness and freedom. As we explore the structure of the self in terms of the finite and infinite poles, we will be examining the ways the self despairs of itself, and how it maintains itself in a mere potential for selfhood. The process by which selfhood (as well as evil) is actualized will be the theme of the last four chapters. Since we will be looking only at the potential for selfhood in this chapter, we will be dealing with the 'spiritless' mode of the self. A spiritless individual has no interest in actualizing the self, is satisfied with dwelling in existence as potential, and finds all talk of becoming a self ludicrous (who else am I, the spiritless person asks, if I am not myself?). The spiritless self is secure in the power of its negative unity. It reacts to what comes to it externally, and seeks to define itself through its relation to the world. This is essentially selfdeception and an evasion of the self s true task. To gain a clearer understanding of this, we must recall that multiplicity is not the milieu of freedom. The Catholic theologian, Karl Rahner, makes this point well when he writes, 'Freedom does not consist in always being able to do the opposite of what has been done up to now, but consists in being able to effect once and for all into finality'. For Rahner, the essence of freedom is not the willing of a multiplicity of external things, but the ability to take possession of oneself: a free act is originally not so much the positing of something else, of something external, of some effect which is distinct from and opposed to the free act itself. It is rather the self-fulfillment of one's own nature, a taking possession of oneself, of the reality of one's own creative power over oneself. Thus, it is coming to oneself, as self-presence in oneself. In the introduction we saw that for Kant freedom of will is not found in the willing of heterogeneity, but in willing one thing — the maxim of reason — and in this, one gains the unity of character found in personality. Kierkegaard is very Kantian (and Rahnerian) in this regard: freedom, as the seat of selfhood, is not the ability to 'undo' oneself from moment to moment (the ability to posit the opposite of what has been posited up until now), nor to will in a number of different directions, but is taking possession of oneself, and projecting oneself in a single direction.

The Struggle of Self-Becoming The willing or choice that arises out of this self-possession is qualitatively different from that which arises out of the merely potential self. The potential self does not so much choose, as avoid existential decisions - those choices that project and posit the self. A spiritless self runs from all situations that require creative choice, and simply reacts to what is happening around it externally. Kierkegaard does not attribute any actualization to the spiritless self. Even in the case of evil, he finds it questionable whether we could call a potential self a self that sins: Where in all the world could one find a real sin-consciousness . . . in a life so immersed in triviality and chattering mimicry of 'the others' that it can hardly - is too spiritless to - be called sin, and merits only, as the Scripture says, to be 'spewed out'. While Kierkegaard does not believe an individual makes a self-conscious choice to be spiritless, he is not willing to say that spiritlessness is something which has come upon an individual by necessity, and for which the individual has no responsibility: Ts it something that happens to a person? No, it is the person's own fault. No person is born spiritless; and however many take it with them to the grave, as all they have got out of life — that is not life's fault'. The person is responsible, not because spiritlessness wasfreely chosen as the meaning around which life is to be gathered, but because it is accepted through default. While it could be argued that there is an aspect of human choice in this default, there is a fundamental difference between spiritless 'choices' and the choice of an actualized individual: while spirit is characterized by earnestness (an acquired originality of disposition), spiritlessness is characterized by indifference. As Kierkegaard states, 'the lives of most people, characterized by the dialectic of indifference, are so far from the good (faith) as almost to be too spiritless to be called sin, yes, even almost too spiritless to be called despair'. It is just this distinction between earnestness and indifference that is to be made clear in this work, especially in reference to the notion of evil. In order to understand the nature of spiritless indifference, it must be contrasted to the Kierkegaardian view of the earnestness of freedom. Freedom and Repetition

Kierkegaard believes human existence gains continuity in a moment of passion, and through the continual repetition of this moment, whereby a person invests his or her existence with meaning. This moment gathers one's past and future: it redeems the past by drawing it up into the passion, and gives expectancy to the future. In this, a continuity is gained in and through the passion. Frederick Buechner describes this event or moment,

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As humans we know time as a passing of unrepeatable events in the course of which everything passes away including ourselves. As human beings, we also know occasions when we stand outside the passing of events and glimpse their meaning. Sometimes an event occurs in our lives (a birth, a death, a marriage — some event of unusual beauty, pain, joy) through which we catch a glimpse of what our lives are all about and maybe even what life itself is all about, and this glimpse of what 'it's all about' involves not just the present but the past and future too. Inhabitants of time that we are, we stand on such occasions with one foot in eternity. 20 Although these moments are unrepeatable in an aesthetic or immediate sense, the meaning they contain is repeatable, and just this repeatability of meaning is what Kierkegaard means by the term 'repetition'. Kierkegaard says, 'For an existing person, the goal of motion is decision and repeti This passion, because it is a decision, is not something passively undergone, as Buechner seems to imply, but a choice. A good example of this is found in one of Kierkegaard's journal entries: There is something missing in my life, and it has to do with my need to understand what I must do, not what I must know — except, of course, that a certain amount of knowledge is presupposed in every action. I need to understand my purpose in life, to see what God wants me to do, and this means that I must find a truth which is true for me, that I must find that Idea for which I can live and die. ... The Idea was what I lacked in order to live a complete human life and not merely knowledge. So I could not base the development of my philosophy of life — yes, on something one calls 'objective' — on something not my own, but upon something which reaches to the deepest roots of my existence and wherein I am connected into the divine and held fast to it, even though the whole world falls apart. Yes, this is what I lack and this is what

I am striving for. Just because one has a moment of passion around which one's life is potentially gathered, does not mean it will continue to be gathered in the future. To gain continuity, one must repeat the passion in an existential decision. This 'idealizing passion' intensifies the interest in one's existence, and yet, since one's existence is not finished, it does not define one's life onceandfor all. Because we are in the process of becoming, there is the ever present possibility of losing this passion. Thus, while the earnestness of the eternal manifests itself in infinite passion, the passionate decision may, in time, come to nothing. Kierkegaard discusses this in terms of Jesus' parable of the foolish maidens:

The Struggle of Self-Becoming 31 I prefer to remain where I am, with my infinite interest, with the issue, with possibility. . . . The five foolish maidens had indeed lost the infinite passion of expectancy. So the lamp went out. Then a cry arose that the bridegroom was coming. . . . The door was shut and they were shut out, and when they knocked at the door, the bridegroom said to them: I do not know you. This was not just a quip by the bridegroom but a truth, for in a spiritual sense they had become unrecognizable through having lost the infinite passio Repetition is the oil in the lamp that keeps the flame of infinite passion burning, and gives to existence the continuity of the eternal. Repetition brings to each moment the same originality found in the moment of passion, around which one's life was gathered. One may gather one's life in a moment of passion, but to bring continuity over one's entire life, one needs repetition. Repetition, in its 'maturity' - when it is self-conscious is earnestness. Kierkegaard says that earnestness . . . is the acquired originality of disposition, its originality preserved in the responsibility of freedom and its originality affirmed in the enjoyment of blessedness. In its historical development, the originality of disposition marks precisely the eternal in earnestness, for which reason earnestness can never become habit. Repetition and earnestness point to the responsibility laid upon every human being to acquire and preserve the 'originality of disposition'. When Kierkegaard speaks of the originality of disposition, he is pointing to the essence of freedom. Kierkegaard took from Kant and Schelling the view that disposition is something chosen and acquired ('man's being is his own deed'}, though he rejects that an acquired originality of disposition takes place outside time: he sees it as an historical development. This development is not simply a quantitative building up of experiences, but a rise in consciousness and freedom through a series of qualitative leaps. In The Concept of Anxiety he writes: 'When the originality of earnestness is acquired and preserved, then there is succession and repetition, but as soon as originality is lacking in repetition, there is habit. The earnest person is earnest precisely through the origin-

ality with which he returns in repetition'. 3 Self-becoming is a matter of acquiring and preserving. The acquiring takes place as qualitative leaps in the moment; the preserving is the continual repetition of these leaps throughout

one's life. 6 To be earnest is to keep the originality of the acquired disposition ever before one. True, the moment is the important element of acquiring a continuity of disposition, but this still must take place in temporality, for one may only repeat what is in time. Kierkegaard gives an example that will be helpful:

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Every Sunday, a clergyman must recite the prescribed common prayer, and every Sunday he baptizes children. Now, let him be enthusiastic, etc. The fire burns out, he will stir and move people, etc., but at one time more and at another time less. Earnestness alone is capable of returning regularly every Sunday with the same originality to the same thing. Take away the originality from disposition and one has habit. Perhaps one gains enthusiasm once in a while, but mostly one is simply going through the motions. Earnestness, on the other hand, comes before the same leap (the same existential, passionate decision) with the same originality, by which all things again become new. Without this originality, one loses passion and becomes disinterestedly involved. Think back to the foolish maidens who had lost their infinite passion. Kierkegaard says they became unrecognizable to the bridegroom through their having lost the earnestness of their infinite passion. They were unrecognizable because they did not have the same disposition; they did not have the same disposition because they did not have it in its originality. It is true that one may make all the right external movements when one lacks this originality of disposition (one may obey the letter of the law), but these actions are derived, not from passion (the spirit of the law), but from habit. Kierkegaard says that most of us live our lives without any true direction, without a grasp of the eternal and what is required of us. There are some, however, who, at some moment in their lives, find the passion in which all things become new. Their existence is transformed by being gripped by a new meaning, which gives continuity to their lives through the realization of a task they have as human beings. The problem, however, is that after time they lose the original passion that accompanied this transformation, and so they now 'fulfil' this task out of habit. To speak of habit, however, is simply to speak of having lost the sense of one's task. This brings us back to the issue of spiritlessness, and its evasion of freedom's task. In the remainder of this chapter we will be examining the self-deception of spiritlessness, with a continual eye on how the self is able to maintain itself as a mere potential of selfhood. This will give us a basis by which to examine how evil is actualized through the self s relation to itself. Further, through this analysis we will come to see the characteristics, aims, and dangers of remaining as a mere potential self.

The Task of Becoming Oneself Self-becoming takes place within a continual mode of expansion and contraction. For instance, in terms of finitude and infinitude, Kierkegaard writes that 'The development must accordingly consist in infinitely coming away from

The Struggle of Self-Becoming 33 oneself, in an infinitizing of the self, and in infinitely coming back to oneself in the finitization'. The human self is always more than it is at any given moment, but it is this 'more' in such a way that it never loses contact with what it immediately is. The self should continually move away from what it is at the moment, and yet it can only do this as itself. In this infinite moving away and returning, the finite is always changed in some way, so that one is not returning to the same limitations. Merold Westphal describes this expansion and contraction as follows: As infinite the self must move away from itself, never becoming a onedimensional self that allows the given to define the horizon of reality. But as finite the self must always come back to itself, recognizing that our dreams not only should, but also do, exceed our grasp.29 While our dreams exceed our grasp, we are to take what we can from them and make them concrete. This is why Kierkegaard expresses self-becoming as becoming concrete: 'To become oneself.. . is to become something concrete. But to become something concrete is neither to become finite nor to become infinite, for that which is to become concrete is indeed a synthesis.' Whenever the self loses itself in the expanding poles of its syntheses (the eternal, infinite, possibility, ideality), what it needs is self-understanding, because in its expansion it has lost sight of the self it is. When the self loses itself in the contracting poles (the temporal, finite, necessity, reality), it needs freedom, that which allows it to choose itself in its becoming. To be spirit is to be conscious of oneself in one's freedom, and thus relate oneself to both one's limitations and one's possibilities. We will come to see that the responsibility and meaning of the self is found in the attempt to fulfil this task. Further, the potential for evil arises out of this task.

The Despair that Abides in Infinitude Imagination Above we noted that the idealizing passion is that around which a person gathers his or her life. The imagination is the capacity that allows for the infinitizing of the self. It is through the imagination that we are taken beyond ourselves into the possibilities and ideals that exceed our present situation. In his journal, Kierkegaard writes: Imagination is what providence uses to take men captive in actuality, in existence, in order to get them far enough out, or within, or down into

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actuality. And when imagination has helped them get as far out as they should be - then actuality genuinely begins.32 The imagination helps the self get out of its given situation, and the way the world normally comes to it. According to Kierkegaard, there are far too many people who never take in the expanding breath of infinitude, and so remain within the categories of the purely sensate. Life comes to them as pleasant or unpleasant, fortunate or unfortunate, and so forth. What they lack, and need more of, is imagination. Imagination presents a danger, however: while it is necessary for moving beyond oneself, it does not, by itself, move back into the self— it does not make the imagined possibilities and ideals its own. If the imagination is not combined with earnestness, then it becomes a capacity that moves the self away from itself, dissolving the tensions within the self. Kierkegaard says that if a person understood himself or tried to understand himself, if he truly was concerned about understanding himself, if the inner being announced itself within him in that concern then he will not occupy himself withflights of fancy and fortify himself with dreams but in his adversity will be concerned about himself. These flights of fancy are evasions in which fantasy becomes the mode of existence. The evasion takes place by giving the imagination free reign to lead one farther and farther away from the finite pole of the self. Since imagination has only a negative relation to the finite - as that which it seeks to move beyond and away from — it is up to spirit to bring the meanings and possibilities which imagination envisions down into one's finite situation. Spirit will not allow one's limitations to be evaded, and continually keeps its eye on the place to which it is to return — namely, the self. We will examine several concrete forms of this despair by looking at the imagination's influence over the capacities of feeling, knowing, and willing. Kierkegaard says of the person whose imagination is given free reign, that 'His feeling is purely immediate, his knowledge only strengthened through contemplation, his will not mature'. 34 We will look at each of these capacities, beginning with infinite feeling, and ending with infinite knowing. This will show us that spiritlessness is able to maintain itself in self-deception, and has a profound need for self-knowledge, in order to overcome its despair. Infinite Feeling

Feelings and emotions are extremely important for Kierkegaard, because they are what often give the impetus for movement within a person's life. One need

The Struggle of Self-Becoming 35 only see how love can determine the direction of life to understand how this is the case. The problem is that feelings can become completely grounded in imagination. In this, feelings lose all relation to finite limitations, and one becomes emotionally 'moved' by a phantasm. While feelings arising only within the imagination may seem to have an affective power, this is an illusion, for even this 'power' is based on the imagination. For example, some people speak eloquently about their love for humanity, and about their desire for everyone to be at peace with one another. These feelings show themselves to be real, however, only when confronted by an actual person. What makes the feeling concrete is the love one has and shows toward one's neighbour, or even more telling, one's ability to be at peace with one's adversary. It is all too easy to love 'humanity', the difficulty comes in loving the person who just cut in front of you in line. Indeed, it is usually those who profess such love that are unable to concretize it, for they assert it only to reassure themselves - and others of their love; the one who truly loves people spends his or her time and energy in action - in actually doing what love requires. When feelings are infinitized in this way, 'the self is simply more and more volatilized and eventually becomes a kind of abstract sensitivity which inhumanly belongs to no human'. Thus, one imagines oneself to be other than who one is, and evades oneself in despair over oneself. Being unwilling to face one's true relationship with others - one's selfcentredness and cruelty - one deceives oneself by imagining a kind of abstract or displaced love for humanity. Infinitized feeling can take another form. There is a feeling of fond resolution that can seem all-consuming, but which has no staying power (passion) behind it. Such a feeling is captured by the circumstances of the moment, but as soon as the circumstances change, the conviction and feeling disappears. The feeling is never made concrete, because it cannot remain stable and consistent throughout the changes of the finite. Although the feeling lacks the power necessary to make the resolution concrete, it can be held fast in the imagination, and may actually be held onto for quite a while, even though it remains unreal. Kierkegaard characterizes this as shortsightedness: [I]n selfish shortsightedness his conviction is continually being altered. If it is not altered it is an accident, since the cause of its exemption is only that by sheer chance his life was not touched by any change. But the stability of such a conviction is mere fantasy on the part of the one whom fate has pampered. . . . Rather, its true stability is revealed when everything is changed. It is rare indeed that a man's life is able to escape all changes, and in the changes the conviction based on immediatefeeling is a fantasy, the momentary impression simply inflated into a consideration of the whole life.'

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A mundane example of this infinitized feeling is the New Year's Resolution. The feeling arose through the beginning of a new year, and its accompanying reflection on the past year. In this self-reflection, one discovers some things one would like to change about oneself. Unless this moment is truly the 'moment of eternal passion', and is held onto through repetition, this feeling of the moment is simply imaginitively extended through time. It shows itself to be a fantasy when the difficulty of existence confronts it — that is, when actuality works against the feeling of the resolution. The resolution felt substantial in the imagination, but proved to be without reality. This shows the danger of all types of despair that abide in the infinite: such despair is full of conviction and resolution, it is 'passionate' and 'moving', though all this happens only in the imagination. One is simply evading and denying the reality of one's existence, and because the power of the imagination makes the fantasy seem so real, the individual is allowed to keep the deception from rising to consciousness. Such people are not free, but are bound by the changes that take place in the immediate situation. A true resolution is like a promise an individual makes to himself or herself. A person who is self-consciously free has the power within the self to keep the promise. This is what distinguishes self-conscious choice from the empty promises and 'choices' of spiritlessness. Nietzsche recognized this same distinction when he wrote: 'To breed an animal with the right to make promises — is not this the paradoxical problem nature has set itself with regard to man? And is it not man's true problem?'37 The problem facing humanity, according to Nietzsche, is whether it has sufficient power and hold upon itself to follow through with its promises. Kierkegaard is pointing to the same problem, though from the aspect of selfconsciousness: does the person have sufficient self-consciousness to grasp onto what imagination brings before his or her eyes, and make it an actuality? Will a person be honest enough to count the costs, and determine whether he or she is willing to pay the price for actualizing the ideal? Spirit is this honest transparency toward oneself. There may turn out to be no movement of the infinite into the finite because one is unwilling to shoulder the responsibilities placed on the self by the finite. To speak of an 'unwillingness' is to point to an infinitized will that remains a mere potential capacity. By allowing the will to reside in the infinite pole of the self, spiritlessness deceives itself into thinking that it is making choices upon it resolutions. Thus infinite feeling consoles itself through the empty assurances of an infinitized will. Infinite Willing Like infinite feeling, infinite willing is a matter of evasion: one imagines one is willing, and yet this willingness is a fantasy. With infinite feeling one is caught

The Struggle of Self-Becoming 3 7 up in doing great things, making great changes, and imagines one is willing to act on these resolutions. The problem is that in order to fulfil resolutions, one must usually start with the small things, those which are, more often than not, mundane, and not very extraordinary. A garden is not created by throwing an arm full of flowers on the ground, but one must till the soil, dig holes, plant, weed, water, and the like. A will becomes infinitized when it is unwilling to start with these 'small' tasks, and when it despises the moments of small beginnings: [T]he more it [the will] is infinitized in its purpose and decision, the closer and more contemporaneous it becomes with itself in that small part of the task which can be carried out now, immediately . . . so that when furthest away from itself (when it is most infinitized in its purpose and decision), it is simultaneously as near as can be to itself in the carrying out of the infinitely small part of the task that can be accomplished this very day, this very hour, this very moment. oo

Thus, using the example of the garden, the will is infinitely away from itself as it imagines a beautiful garden, with all sorts of exotic specimens and colours; simultaneously, however, the will is concrete in its carrying out of the smallest tasks that such infinitized will necessitates. The will can maintain itself in the infinite by the continual reassurance that the resolution will be carried out when the time is right. Kierkegaard says the problem with these assurances is that the time is always right - there is always a step to be taken in the direction of the fulfilment of the resolution. What keeps the will infinitized is the little word 'if: people kept on using this assurance: Tf it were required of me, I would be willing to forsake everything, sacrifice everything . . . .' Meanwhile, the world has seen an almost complete moral disintegration - but not one of the assurers found that it was required of him; he merely went on giving the assurance 'that i f . . .V39 A concrete resolution knows nothing about this ' i f . . . ' , because the requirement of such a resolution is to act, not to assure. However, this assurance is the means by which the self remains unconscious of its self-deception, and thus evades the task of self-becoming. To test one's resolution one must merely see the path one's life has taken since the resolution arose: Tf year after year my life continually expresses that I am just like everybody else, then I shall at least shut up about assurances 'that if... We see again that the issue revolves around a self-deception — namely, an unwillingness to become concrete with regards to one's will. The unwillingness is due to the difficulty involved in concretizing the possibilities and ideals

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of imagination. In the end, one is not honest about one's desires or abilities to fulfil the resolution. Kierkegaard says that self-knowledge does not consist in the ready assurances of despair, but in eyeing these assurances suspiciously: Earnestness is precisely this kind of honest distrust of oneself, to treat oneself as a suspicious character, as a financier treats an unreliable client, saying, 'Well, these big promises are not much help; I would rather have a small part of the total right away'. 41 It is not easy to admit that one does not have the power of self to face the difficulties and tensions of becoming oneself, or that one is more interested in being comfortable than in actualizing one's ideals. If the courage to face this knowledge about oneself is not present, then the imagination can be used to hide this reality. If these evasions start to fall apart, and consciousness of despair begins to arise, the self has still another way to deceive itself in its infinite willing: one may see the action of the will as something that follows — as a matter of course — upon the consideration of how to proceed in one's resolution. Such a view believes that the problem is in the planning, in the 'making certain', and in understanding. As Kierkegaard says, 'We make out that if we only understand the right it follows automatically that we do it. What a grievous misunderstanding or what a sly fabrication!' 42 Here again, we find a self-deception based on a continual assurance that what is grasped infinitely in the moment will become concrete if or when the time is right — when one has all the facts and contingencies worked out. This leads to the issue of infinite knowing. Infinite Knowing Infinite knowing is an accumulation of knowledge that one fails to relate to one's existence. There is an objective and disinterested kind of knowing that moves away from the self. Nicolas Berdyaev, in his book The Destiny of Man, explains the importance for philosophy to keep an existential connection to the issue it seeks to understand: The only way radically to distinguish between philosophy and science is to admit that philosophy is unobjectified knowledge, knowledge of the spirit as it is in itself and not as objectified in nature, i.e., knowledge of meaning and participation in meaning. Science and scientific foresight give man power and security, but they can also devastate his consciousness and sever him from reality. Indeed it might be said that science is based upon the alienation of man from reality and of reality from man. The knower is outside reality, and the reality he knows is external to him. Everything becomes an

The Struggle of Self-Becoming 3 object, i.e., foreign to man and opposed to him. The world of philosophical ideas ceases to be my world, revealing itself in me, and becomes an objective world standing over against me as something alien to me.4 This type of knowledge can become a place where the self can hide itself from its task. For Kierkegaard, the significance of all knowledge is measured in whether, and how, it is appropriated by the individual. All knowledge becomes essential by becoming self-knowledge. As we will see, self-knowledge is the only knowledge the value of which is without qualification. Knowledge not related to oneself may be interesting, but it can also be dangerous to the task and purpose of one's existence: To come to oneself in self-knowledge. . . . In any other knowledge you are away from yourself, you forget yourself, are absent from yourself. . . . To forget oneself. . . to go away from oneself by losing oneself in knowing, in comprehending, in thinking, in artistic production, etc. — precisely this is called being sober. From the Christian point of view this is intoxication. For the person in the aesthetic stage of life — whether the aesthetic individual is an artist, a professor, a political analyst, or any other of a number of occupations that traffic in knowledge - whose overarching goal is to enjoy life, knowledge is significant to the extent that it brings pleasure and joy. No doubt, to understand has its pleasures. The issue of life, however, is not about what one knows and can espouse, but about how one is: [W]e all know how to talk about the good; no cultured person would put up with being thought ignorant of it, with being thought personally unable to describe it profoundly and eloquently, because to understand . . . is a pleasure. But personally to strive to be the honest, upright, and unselfish one — no, that would indeed be an effort. " One can spend a lifetime studying various views of what is good and worth pursuing, but if one does not act on it, then, in one's hands, the knowledge becomes empty and a means of evasion. This is the case because, in the end, it is not knowledge that changes one's life, but action. Most agree that action is what changes one's circumstances, but Kierkegaard says more than this: one becomes oneself only in action. One relates to oneself and to the Good through action, for it is in action that one's desires, passions and goals are tested and evaluated. I can learn all about how I should relate to the Good, but if I do not act on this knowledge, then my life is not changed in any substantial way, and the knowledge is superfluous. More often than not, this knowledge becomes a means of evading one's unwillingness to relate one's life to the Good, and knowledge about the Good

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is viewed as a sufficient relationship to it. This is the case because one's knowledge can be far ahead of what one is capable of at the present moment: 'In every human being there is a capacity, the capacity for knowledge. And every person - the most knowing and the most limited - is in this knowing far beyond what he is in his life or what his life expresses'. Most of us already know far too much for our own good; what we need is to come back to ourselves and act on what we know. Knowledge can become a means of venturing off into boundless territories that have nothing to do with our own existence. Kierkegaard says 'the more understanding increases, the more it becomes a kind of inhuman knowledge in the production of which man's life is squandered'.49 Knowledge is not in itself bad, but the state of knowledge is.50 Knowledge is to be understood as the prerequisite to action; if one does not start with the small tasks the Good requires in the moment, then one is being led away from the Good by knowledge of it. Kierkegaard views this abstract state of knowledge as a spiritless form of rebellion against the Good. Spiritlessness is not the conscious and earnest movement against the Good we will come to see as radical evil, but is a weak evasion and lack of earnestness toward one's existence, and one's relationship with the Good. Spiritlessness' conscious belief is that it is on the side of the Good, and assures itself that when enough knowledge has been gained, it will certainly act accordingly. As usual, these assurances are evasions. It evades and denies its actual relationship to the Good, because it is possessed by an unconscious anxiety of what will be found if it relates its knowledge to its life: One fears that one's knowing, turned inward toward oneself, will expose the state of intoxication there, will expose that one prefers to remain in this state, will wrench one out of this state and as a result of such a step will make it impossible for one to slip back again into that adored state, into intoxication. Anyone who has applied the ideal to one's life knows how dangerous it can be, how when it is allowed to inspect one's heart and character, one's identity and self-estimation can be decimated. So the ideal is kept at arms length, and never allowed to penetrate one's life. Kierkegaard says the failure to apply the ideal to one's life is a lack of conscience. He shows this by pointing to the story of David and Bathsheba in 2 Samuel. Although Bathsheba was married to another man, David had her brought to the palace, slept with her, and she became pregnant. To cover this up, David had Uriah — Bathsheba's husband — put at the front line of the battle, whereupon the army withdrew, leaving Uriah to be killed. David then took Bathsheba as his wife. During this time David felt no remorse for his action, though it went against the ideal he himself claimed to follow.

The Struggle of Self-Becoming 41 So God sent the prophet Nathan to tell David a story. Nathan told David about a grave injustice. There was a poor man who owned nothing but a lamb. The man loved this lamb, and treated it as one would treat a child. There was also a rich man who had many sheep. When a traveller came to visit the rich man, the latter had the poor man's lamb killed in order to serve it to the traveller. Kierkegaard says, I imagine that David listened attentively and thereupon declared his judgment, did not, of course, intrude his personality (subjectivity) but impersonally (objectively) evaluated this charming little work. . . . Then the prophet says to him, 'Thou art the man.' See, the tale the prophet told was a story, but this 'Thou art the man' - this was another story - this was the transition to the subjective. When the story became personal when the issue was no longer about a king objectively rendering judgment over a matter within his kingdom — David gained radical self-knowledge, his conscience awakened, and he repented. Kierkegaard uses the story in order to question whether one really comes to know the ideal through objective knowledge of it. If the ideal is not applied to existence, one does not know it, for the ideal is what it is only in relation to human existence. Until it is expressed in life - until it is given flesh and blood, one's own flesh and blood — one does not truly understand what the ideal is calling for what it means. Kierkegaard says that to believe that a disinterested knowledge in the Good is in some way to relate correctly to the Good is selfdeception; to claim to be dealing with ideals, with what is good and meaningful for human existence, and then to be completely unrelated to them in one's own life is hypocrisy. Kierkegaard believes that valuing an objective and speculative form of knowledge of the Good will eventually lead to a loss of all ethical and religious - that is, earnest forms of existence: Prior to the outbreak of cholera there usually appears a kind of fly not otherwise seen; in like manner might not these fabulous pure thinkers be a sign that a calamity is in store for humankind — for example, the loss of the ethical and the religious? Therefore, be cautious with an abstract thinker who not only wants to remain in abstraction's pure being but wants this to be the highest for a human being, and wants such thinking, which results in the ignoring of the ethical and a misunderstanding of the religious, to be the highest human thinking.J By the choice of the method of thought, the objective thinker is using thought as a diversion from something. What is being diverted is the individual's

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misrelation to his or her own self. The abstract thinker blocks the path of existential self-knowledge, with its inherent struggles and tensions, in order to evade the path of self-becoming. As against this comfortable and safe infinitizing of feeling, willing and knowing, Kierkegaard would rather we commit outright sins and evil acts, for then we could at least have the self-understanding that we are wretched, instead of this deceitful rebellion against the Good in the complacency of objective knowledge about the Good. It has always been the judgement of Christianity, according to Kierkegaard, that it is better to face God as a tax collector, harlot and a swindler, than as a self-righteous Pharisee. In this, Christianity turns 'ethics' on its head, and we find that the rebellion against the Good is often perpetrated by those who are most religious, whereas the irreligious - if they feel the pain of their weakness - are closer to God than the Pharisee ever was: 'it is terrible living life to become mold on the immanental development of the infinite. Then instead let us sin, sin outright, seduce girls, murder men, rob on the highways — that at least can be repented, and God can at least catch hold of such a criminal'. Somewhat ironically, it turns out that the spiritless, cultured rebellion against the Good holds within itself a great danger. It seems sophisticated, and while it is adept at keeping within the norms of society, it uses infinite feeling, willing, and knowledge to evade its true relation to the Good. Its depravity only becomes apparent when the norms of a society, which such a person willingly and even conscientiously follows, calls for the butchering of other human beings — something we saw happen over and over again in the twentieth century, and which continues on into the twenty first. This is due to the fact that spiritlessness always sides with the expedient, the comfortable, the secure, and the tranquil. If the established order is relatively humanitarian or 'civilized', then the people within that order will live accordingly; however, if it becomes fearful, defensive and barbaric, then the people will follow those norms. A spiritless rebellion against the Good loses sight of that which can lift it out of this danger. This will become more clear as we now turn to the despair that abides in finitude.

The Despair that Abides in Finitude In this form of despair, the evasion becomes a cultural affair. As we will see, worldliness develops a system whereby the individual may evade the responsibility of becoming a self, by the levelling of all selves down to the lowest common denominator. To relate only to the finite pole of the self is to become trapped within the established order and its modes of existence, because it is the infinite that allows the self to transcend the established order of things.

The Struggle of Self-Becoming 43 Kierkegaard develops many categories (strewn throughout his authorship) to describe this form of despair, such as, worldliness, the secular mentality, sensibility, probability, sagacity, moderation, and the levelling of the crowd. Each of these processes work together in order to clamp down on the individual, making sure he or she does not try to rise above the established order within the culture. The clamp does not have to be very tight though, because this is not a trap the individual wishes to escape: one can find great comfort in the despair that abides in the finite, for the 'strength' of this despair is that it allows one to feel quite at home in the world, and provides numerous means of maintaining one's denial and self-deception. As we look at this form of despair, we will see that Kierkegaard has a particularly strong distaste for its inner workings, because he saw it as the power behind the spiritlessness that was overwhelming his age. His, and ours, is an age of spiritlessness that has turned its back to spirit.5 Kierkegaard sees this as the greatest tragedy to happen to humanity, for in moving away from spirit, we move away from ourselves en masse. As we look at this despair, we will find that what we view as a normal and comfortable life is in reality an insidious trap that threatens to plunge Western civilization into irretrievable despair. To relinquish the infinite is not simply to stop growing, or to stop moving ahead, but is actually to begin a retrogression, as the 'ideals' and requirements for a human being become less and less. One need only watch advertisements on television for a few hours - paying attention to the 'ideals' they hold up, the goals they offer and present, and their definition of success to get a sense of this narrowing reductionism.

The Secular Mentality or Worldliness Sensibleness and Levelheadedness Kierkegaard says, 'worldliness is precisely to ascribe infinite value to the indifferent'. 58 For Kierkegaard, to speak of'infinite value' is to point to that which encompasses and defines one's entire life; the 'indifferent' is that which has nothing to do with the task of becoming oneself. Thus, in this form of despair, one gives one's entire life over to what has no connection to the task of becoming oneself. One is 'intoxicated in one's attachment to this earthly life, the temporal, the secular, and the selfish'.59 The goal of existence for the secular mentality is, first and foremost, to secure for itself an earthly comfort, which, of course, will take one's entire life to gain. As for the task of becoming oneself, this is meaningless, because, after all, the point is not to gain oneself, but to gain self-satisfaction. The self does not take on infinite importance, only its comfort does. Feeling at home, secure and comfortable in the world is the one goal that spans the individual's entire existence, and all tasks gain significance

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only in relation to how they help attain creature comforts, Kierkegaard says, 'The lostness of spiritlessness, as well as its security, consists in its understanding nothing spiritually and comprehending nothing as a task, even if it is able to fumble after everything with its limp clamminess.' The despair that abides in the finite does not comprehend the loss of the self and its task, because it is too busy being a success in the world: A man in this kind of despair can very well live on in temporality; indeed he can do so all the more easily, be to all appearances a human being, praised by others, honoured and esteemed, occupied with all the goals of temporal life. Yes, what we call worldliness simply consists of such people who, if one may so express it, pawn themselves to the world. They use their abilities, amass wealth, carry out worldly enterprises, make prudent calculations, etc., and perhaps are mentioned in history, but they are not themselves. In a spiritual sense they have no self, no self for whose sake they could venture everything, no self for God - however selfish they are otherwise.61 The first action that must take place, before there is any hope of being a success in the world, is the abandonment of the task of becoming oneself.62 One cannot have both an infinite, eternal concern for one's self, and seek to be a success in the world. This is because of the qualities necessary for succeeding in the world: sensibleness, levelheadedness, and sagacity. These are all qualities we readily perceive as good to have, and yet for Kierkegaard, these are the planks on which we walk into spiritual death. Levelheadedness and sensibility speak to moderation; the infinite and eternal, on the other hand, are immoderate, demanding and risky. When the secular mentality seeks moderation, it is not seeking a balanced relation between the finite and infinite, but the safest course of action. Moderation seeks mediocrity, which it then goes on to interpret as worldly success. The point in moderation is to keep from having to face inconveniences, difficulties and anything that can possibly disrupt one's tranquillity. When it comes to the earnest aim of life, Kierkegaard thinks in terms of the possibilities and ideals that face each individual, and before which all worldly aims are low indeed. In the face of these eternal and infinite ideals, the wisdom of moderation is pathetic: 'Too little and too much spoil everything. If he were to think the thought in its eternal validity, it would promptly aim a fatal blow at all his worldly thinking, aspiring, and pursuing, turning everything upside down for him, and this he cannot long endure.' 63 Kierkegaard views the mentality that seeks to guard against inconveniences as dangerous because it is actually guarding itself against the infinite — that which disrupts the flow of the finite current. In order to stay within the flow of the finite one must keep from making any sudden or grand moves in

The Struggle of Self-Becoming 4 existence, and one must definitely not commit oneself to anything, for who knows where the current will turn next - one might accidentally commit oneself to something which, next week, runs against the current. Thus, 'Cleverness strives continually against commitment. It fights for its life and its honor, for if the decision wins, then cleverness is put to death.' One evades the decision in which one would need to stake oneself, the decision that comes along with the idealizing passion - the resolute choice for oneself. In this despair, the self remains a mere potential self by never conceiving of an actualization. Thus, spiritlessness and denial are held fast through a conventional wisdom that continually esteems the self in its mere potentiality. By neglecting the infinite pole of the self, it comes to rest in its current state of despair, and finds its satisfaction in the relative safety and predictability of the finite. Probability The problem with any ideal is that there is no guarantee of success, and one never knows for certain what will happen in one's life if it is actualized. So moderation and prudence call for continual reflection on the probability of success. Seeking probability, however, is nothing other than a rejection of the infinite, because the infinite is beyond the realm of the probable. The closer one is clamped to the finite, the more certainty that is needed in order to 'act', and so there are those within the secular mentality who proclaim, T stick to the facts. I am neither a fanatic nor a dreamer nor a fool, neither drunk nor crazy. I stick to the facts; I believe nothing, nothing whatever, except what I can touch and feel; and I believe no one, not my own child, not my own wife, not my best friend; I believe only what can be demonstrated — because I stick to the facts.' Such a person is incapable of moving in any essential or transforming way, because he or she is always gathering more facts and evidence. Even those who venture out a little further than the facts, will still never choose against the probable. Kierkegaard views this use of probability as a spiritual issue, and goes so far as to say that 'probability, Ghristianly understood, is perhaps the most dangerous defilement'. 67 The issue of probability moves us into the ethicoreligious concerns that are always at the heart of Kierkegaard's critiques. Simply put, he views the probable as rebellion against oneself and God: 'A person who never relinquished probability never became involved with God. All religious . . . venturing is on the other side of probability, is by way of relinquishing probability.' This is because the probable deals only with the finite, and is familiar only with the facts; the ethico-religious, on the other hand, deals with good and evil, truth and falsity. A person living by what is

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merely probable will give lip-service to these latter categories, but not act on them. Kierkegaard writes, The person who inquires about the probable and only about that in order to adhere to it does not ask what is right and what is wrong, what is good and what is evil, what is true and what is false. No, he asks impartially: which is the probable, so that I can believe it - whether it is true is a matter of indifference or is at least of less importance; which is the probable, so that I can adopt it and side with it whether it is evil or wrong is a matter of indifference or is at least of less importance. From time to time, an individual is called on to act against the probable, to risk loss for the chance at gain. I am not talking here about anything analogous to a gambler's risk, where one gives up a part of one's material possessions for the chance to gain more. Rather, the risk is with one's own existence. Not that one will lose oneself— for the self is lost as a result of never taking this type of risk - but one may step out into the infinite, and find that the ideal is an illusion. No doubt, where there is risk, there is also potential for making a mistake, but venturing and risk are necessary for human development, and only by stretching beyond the probable can the highest human potential be discovered and attained. Kierkegaard writes, The world thinks it is dangerous to venture in this way, and why? Because one might lose; the prudent thing is not to venture. And yet by not venturing it is so dreadfully easy to lose what would be hard to lose by venturing and which, whatever you lost, you will in any case never lose in this way, so easily, so completely, as though it were nothing — oneself. For if I have ventured wrongly, very well, life then helps me with its penalty. But if I haven't ventured at all, who helps me then? William James said that we must, in a sense, meet truth halfway, put life to a test and see what boils over. 71 We must move out into the tension and danger of life; if we simply sit in complacent probability, then we will discover nothing of what it means to be human, and nothing of what it means to be before God. We seldom consider whether there may be an unconditioned requirement laid upon us by existence, or that we only become ourselves by seeking to fulfil this requirement. Instead of pondering this possibility, we conceal 'ourselves in finitude and among the finitudes in the same way as Adam hid among the trees'. 72 To move beyond the finite is considered fanatical. Think of the power behind the accusation of being a fanatic, and how we so readily shrink from any action or belief that would put that label on us. A fanatic is intoxicated, even dangerous — think of all the religious fanatics. Indeed, we cannot deny

The Struggle of Self-Becoming 47 that many of these fanaticisms are dangerous, but Kierkegaard is not proposing a fanaticism that has no contact with the finite, but asks us to venture into the infinite with an eye to a return to the finite, by which we are continually disciplined and corrected for our false fanaticism — that is, if we remain open to correction, and do not hold onto our infinite ideals at the cost of the finite. Kierkegaard is not chiding the secular mentality for not being open to fanatics (though there are times when he seems to relish such openness), but for its inability (that is, unwillingness) to fathom that there is a passionate, enthusiastic and earnest movement toward the ideal that flies in the face of probability, moderation, and all the other virtues of the secular mentality. The Ultimate Rebellion of Spiritlessness Here we see how the seeds (or potential) for evil are found in the structure of the self, particularly in terms of how the spiritless self abides in a rebellion against the Good. This rebellion consists of an unwillingness on the part of the secular mentality to come to terms with an unconditioned requirement — that is, with an ideal upon which one will stake one's entire life, without demanding control over the consequences that follow from it. Indeed, the secular mentality seeks to abolish the unconditioned. Kierkegaard says that in abandoning the unconditioned requirement 'it is really you [God] that people want to abolish, and this is why I cling so firmly to it and denounce sensibleness, which by abolishing the unconditioned requirement wants to abolish you'. ' This is, in Schelling's words, an attempt to usurp the universal will, and to establish existence on the basis of one's particular will, or a humanly established order. Kierkegaard views this as the idolatry of our age. The secular mentality wants to be in control of existence - determine the order of existence — and to this end it must become the sole judge of reality, even God's reality. With this we move into an area of rebellion where spiritless pride becomes apparent; we attempt, as C. S. Lewis says, to put 'God in the dock'. Lewis writes, The ancient man approached God (or even the gods) as the accused person approaches his judge. For the modern man the roles are reversed. He is the judge: God is in the dock. He is quite a kindly judge: if God should have a reasonable defence for being the God who permits war, poverty and disease, he is ready to listen to it. The trial may even end in God's acquittal. But the important thing is that Man is on the Bench and God in the Dock. 75 Kierkegaard expresses this same idea: God is not like something one buys in a shop, or like a piece of property that one, after having sagaciously and circumspectively examined, measured

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and calculated for a long time, decides is worth buying. With regard to God, it is the ungodly calmness with which the indecisive person wants to begin (indeed, he wants to begin with doubt), precisely this that is the insubordination, because in this way God is thrust down from the throne, from being the master. When one has done that, one actually has already chosen another master, self-will, and then becomes the slave of indecisiveness. What Kierkegaard despises about this rebellion is its movement toward an indolent, disconsolate spiritlessness, as the attempt is made to put the particular self-will in the place of the universal will. The secular mentality is the means by which the modern age has sought to achieve this most human of endeavours. It has found that the best way to get rid of God's universal will is not through a frontal attack, but by simply letting God slip from our memories. Kierkegaard would welcome a wholehearted (unconditional) attack against God; at least this is passionate, and therefore contains something of spirit in it. To be offended by God may be an unhappy relationship to the infinite and eternal, but at least it is a relationship — at least one is still before God. For all Nietzsche's atheism, his enthusiastic attacks were at least right in the face of God. What Kierkegaard detests is 'disconsolateness': a refusal to find any consolation in what is higher. Disconsolateness chooses to sink into spiritless emptiness, where it can be left alone in its own little world, see itself as king and master, and find at least some contentment within its little kingdom: What is disconsolateness? Not even the wildest scream of pain or the presumptuousness of despair, however terrible, is disconsolate. But this understanding with oneself, arrived at in dead silence, that everything higher is lost, although one can still go on living if only nothing reminds one of it - this is disconsolateness. Not even to grieve disconsolately, but to have entirely ceased to grieve, to be able to lose God in such a way that one becomes utterly indifferent and does not even find life intolerable — that is disconsolateness and is also the most terrible kind of disobedience, more terrible than any defiance — to hate God, to curse him, is not so terrible as to lose him in this way or, what is the same thing, to lose oneself.77 It is here where we see the notion of evil begin to become dialectical in Kierkegaard, for when he speaks of defiance, he is speaking of a radical, spiritual evil that consciously rages against the Good or God. This is, in a way, the strongest intensification of evil. And yet here he says spiritless disconsolateness is more terrible still. This seems inconsistent, in that he sees the weakest form of evil (a mere potential for evil) as more terrible than the more actualized forms. What Kierkegaard sees as terrible in disconsolateness, however, is not its

The Struggle of Self-Becoming 49 weakness, but the comfortable and secure way it unconsciously gives up the Good, and the fact that it has so easily spread throughout Western society. Kierkegaard condemns the established order of Western society as being thoroughly permeated by a rebellion against the Good, and just because the rebellion is unconscious and takes place in the most normal and 'moral' actions does not mean that it is less dangerous and perhaps even more insidious than conscious evil. What is so terrible about disconsolateness is not that it acts in 'immoral' or criminal ways, but that it rebels with such happy lukewarmness. It may appear pious, and yet it lacks all conscience: Of course, a lack of conscience does not manifest itself as criminal acts — which would be foolish, stupid, and ill-advised — no, no, it manifests itself with moderation, to a certain degree, and then with taste and culture; it makes life cozy and comfortable - but yet is it not too much to make it into earnestness and culture!',78 Such people put their individual wills over the universal will. They are completely self-centred, seeking only what brings them comfort. If called on by the 'right' circumstances, the most horrendous acts will be enthusiastically committed, though not out of any conscious defiance of the Good, but simply for the sake of comfort. This form of evil is most likely to be committed against those who have come to be viewed as enemies of such comfort. What is also terrible about this form of rebellion is that the self has lost complete contact with the Good. When this happens we become too spiritless to see the loss we have suffered, and we lack the concern for ourselves necessary to be passionate about the 'death of God'. Kierkegaard lived in a time when God's death was taking place. He is, in a sense, the Nietzschean 'madman', at whom the crowd laughs. He has not overstated the loss of spirit, but I believe it is more likely that we have not sufficiently appreciated our loss. We no longer have enough spirit even to grieve the death of God. When Nietzsche proclaimed that God was dead, he asked, Are we not straying as through an infinite nothing? Do we not feel the breath of empty space? Has it not become colder? Is not night and more night coming all the while? Must not lanterns be lit in the morning? Do we not hear anything yet of the noise of the gravediggers who are burying God? Do we not smell anything yet of God's decomposition? Gods too decompose. God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we, the murderers of all murderers comfort ourselves?'>79 We comfort ourselves through the disconsolateness of worldliness, and mock any ideal not conditioned (sanctioned) by our culture. Like Nietzsche, Kierkegaard recognizes that the death of God is a trivial joke for Western

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civilization, and believes it will remain so. To feel the loss of God would be a sign of earnestness and spirit, but to lose God as if one has lost nothing at all, this is what makes spiritlessness so offensive to Kierkegaard: To lose something trivial in such a way that one does not pick it up, well, that perhaps is all right, but to lose one's own self (to lose God) in such a way that one does not even care to bend down to pick it up, or in such a way that it entirely escapes one that one has lost it! Oh, what terrible perdition! Not only is there certainly an infinite difference between what one loses and what one loses, but also between how one loses. To lose God in such a way that one takes offense at him, is indignant with him or groans against him; to lose God in such a way t h a t . . . one despairs over it - but to lose God as if he were nothing, and as if it were nothing! The Single Individual It is with this that we come to one of Kierkegaard's most important categories: 'the single individual'. The difference between one who feels the death of God in the innermost being, and those who are spiritlessly disconsolate, is that the former is a single individual, while the latter are lost in the crowd. One can relate to God - whether in faith or defiance only as a single individual, never as a member of the crowd: 'only as an individual can a man ever relate himself most truly to God, for he can best have the perception of his own unworthiness alone; it is impossible to make this really clear to another person.' In the midst of the crowd, one no longer feels the heat of the universal will's all-consuming fire, nor does one shiver in the coldness as the fire goes out. The spiritless person is never alone, because there is tranquillity and comfort within the established order and the crowd. It is because of this deadly comfort that Kierkegaard picks up the category of 'the single individual' with such fervency. He says that Tn times of peace the category "the single individual," is the category of awakening; when everything is peaceful, secure, and indolent - and the ideal has vanished - then the single individual is awakening.' In order to see why this category is so important for awakening from the spiritless despair that abides in the finite, we will first examine what Kierkegaard calls the 'established order'. The Established Order and the Crowd According to Kierkegaard, The worldly point of view always clings closely to the difference between man and man, and has naturally no understanding (since to have it is

The Struggle of Self-Becoming 51 spirituality) of the one thing needful, and therefore no understanding of that limitation and narrowness which is to have lost oneself, not by being volatilized in the infinite, but by being altogether finitized, by instead of being a self, having become a cipher, one more person, one more repetition of this perpetual Einerlei [one-and-the-same]. It is ironic that those within the secular mentality look for ways to distinguish themselves from others — distinguish in the sense of gaining honor, being 'on top', succeeding, being more talented, and so forth - and yet do so from within a levelling that seeks to destroy all distinctions. This is the case because, within the crowd, one is always looking to others to see what it means to be a successful human being, so that one discovers who one is and what is possible only from the crowd. This causes a narrowing of possibilities, in which one loses oneself to the way things are done within the established order, to the possibilities it gives, and to what it requires of an individual. In a spiritless group 'one becomes a human being by aping others. One does not know by himself that he is a human being but through an inference: he is like the others — therefore he is a human being. Only God knows whether any of us is that!' Kierkegaard is not against human communities and groups per se, but only as they are used as sources of evasion. When this happens, it is necessary to point to the single individual as the only way in which a person can again feel the responsibility of what it means to be a human being: Nowadays the principle of association . . . is not positive but negative; it is an escape, a distraction and an illusion. Dialectically the position is this: the principle of association, by strengthening the individual, enervates him; it strengthens numerically, but ethically that is a weakening. It is only after the individual has acquired an ethical outlook, in face of the whole world, that there can be any suggestion of really joining together. For Kierkegaard, then, pointing to 'the single individual' is an attempt to awaken the conscience in the person who has become lost in the crowd: Wanting to hide in the mass or the crowd, to be a little fraction of the crowd, instead of being an individual, is the most corrupt of all escapes. Even if this makes life easier by making it more thoughtless in the din — this is not the question. The question is that of the responsibility of the individual — that every individual human being ought to be a single individual, ought to make up his mind about his conviction, just as in the next world eternity will single out the busy one who thought he was in a group, single out the poorest wretch who thought he was overlooked, single him out as individually

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responsible, so distinctly individual that an eternity seems to lie between him and the next man. To destroy the sense of one's responsibility, is to destroy the unconditioned, or, what amounts to the same thing, to make it conditioned on the established order. The unconditioned requirement cannot be felt while being a part of the crowd. Only by realizing one is singled out by all eternity, only then can the full force of the unconditioned requirement be felt. And yet it is this that the established order and crowd cannot tolerate: 'nothing so offends sensibleness as the unconditioned, and . . . sensibleness will never unconditionally acknowledge any requirement but continually claims itself to be the one that declares what kind of requirement is to be made'.88 While spirit seeks the ascension and expansion in the consciousness that comes from being before the unconditioned requirement as a single individual, spiritlessness seeks to make life easier by a continual lowering of the bar; indeed, it seeks to get rid of the bar altogether, replacing the universal will with the particular will of the established order. This, of course, is all done in such a way as to create the illusion that we are all ascending. Kierkegaard gives an analogy of this lowering that interprets itself as an ascension: Imagine a school, let it have a class of one hundred pupils, all of the same age, who are supposed to learn the same thing and have the same criterion. To be number seventy and below is to be far down in the class. Now, if the other thirty pupils from number seventy had the idea that they might be allowed to form a class by themselves. If so, then number seventy would be number one in the class. That would be an advancement, yet, well, it might be put that way, but according to my conception that would be sinking even lower, sinking into contemptible false self-satisfaction, because it is still much higher to put up willingly with being number seventy according to a genuine criterion. . . . What is spiritlessness? It is to have changed the criterion by leaving out the ideals, to have changed the criterion in accord with how we human beings who now live here in this place happen to be.89 Kierkegaard is speaking to Christendom here, to those who profess to be Christians, and yet whose criterion has become so low as to abolish Christianity altogether. He says that instead of imitating Christ as an ideal, 'there is ... being like everybody else, and being a little bit better is greatness'. In the midst of this regression there will be a continual message that progress is taking place, though the reality is that we are becoming less and less human. Only as the single individual facing eternity - God or death - is one able to break free from this illusion. The situation is much like that described by Ivan Ilych as he faced death:

The Struggle of Self-Becoming 53 'It is as if I had been going downhill while I imagined I was going up. And that is really what it was. I was going up in public opinion, but to the same extent life was ebbing away from me. And now it is all done and there is only death.'" One finds one's worth in conformity with the crowd, while detachment from the group becoming a single individual is to become insignificant. The crowd also provides a sense of significance and worth when everything has lost its meaning, and in this way helps us maintain our self-deception. Primitivity To ape others is to lack primitivity. Primitivity is to stand before God as a single individual — in one's particularity an individual with a facticity and past, and who is also open to the ideal and the future. Evading oneself by hiding in the crowd is based on the presupposition that one cannot go wrong in life if one simply does what everyone else is doing, and remains within the status quo. However, it is in this place of comfort and security that one loses oneself. Kierkegaard writes, For every human being is primitively organized as a self, characteristically determined to become himself; and although indeed every such self has sharp edges, that means only that it is to be worked smooth, not ground away, not through fear of man wholly abandon being itself, or even through fear of man simply not dare to be itself in that more essential contingency (which precisely is not to be ground away) in which a person is still himself for himself. The unconditioned requirement, before which each person stands and gains significance, differs from person to person, for we each have our own facticity to deal with, our own limitations to be overcome and transcended, and our own needs. We are rough to begin with, and must be worked smooth, but our shape is given by the unconditioned itself, and is done only as a single individual - definitely not in any comparison to others. There is to be no turning to the right or to the left, checking oneself against others, seeing how one measures up against them. The only concern is to stand alone before God, and take up the task existence has laid upon you. One cannot check to see if one is fulfilling one's task by comparing oneself to others. No other person can be used as a crutch or support. We are called to be engaged with God, to be uplifted, and transformed. The infinite requirement calls us to the task of becoming more than we were before. The crowd and the established order know absolutely nothing about this uplifting; indeed, it is their goal to make sure the criterion for being human becomes more and more paltry, all for the

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sake of comfort and self-esteem. Actually, the established order does not really provide a criterion, but an evasion of all criteria, for nothing is sacred, and nothing is free from the danger of being overthrown tomorrow - replaced by its opposite. Given all this, the problem becomes how, in a completely spiritless age, we can become a 'single individual', and begin the journey toward spirit. Kierkegaard has little optimism of being able to free ourselves from finitude's despair and its concomitant levelling: 'The abstract levelling process, that self-combustion of the human race, produced by the friction which arises when the individual ceases to exist as singled out by religion, is bound to continue, like a trade wind, and consume everything.' This lack of optimism may be another reason Kierkegaard focuses in on the category of'the single individual'. He is pessimistic about a mass movement toward spirit: such a movement would be, given the current situation, a contradiction. Thus, the only hope is for each individual to move toward spirit alone by picking up the unconditioned requirement. A movement out of spiritlessness is possible, if we are willing to recognize and choose despair. It is a somewhat paradoxical choice, but Kierkegaard sees it as essential for a movement out of the spiritlessness of the aesthetic stage of existence. With this choice the self takes itself, for the first time, as a task to be picked up. This does not mean despair is completely overcome; it may be the case that despair is intensified, for there are forms of evil that are neither weak, ignorant, nor lacking in spirit. We will now turn to this movement out of spiritlessness.

Notes 1. EUD, pp. 162-3. 2. EUD, pp. 163-4. 3. SUD, p. 43. 4. John W. Elrod. Being and Existence in Kierkegaard's Pseudonymous Works. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1975, p. 40. 5. Elrod, 10. 6. EUD, p. 164. 7. EUD, p. 165. 8. Niccolo Machiavelli. The Prince. Trans. Daniel Donno. New York: Bantam Books, 1985, p. 84. 9. CD, pp. 21-2. 10. EUD, p. 165. 11. SUD, pp. 43-4. 12. EUD, p. 167. 13. There are several syntheses by which to analyze the structures of the self (for example, the eternal and the temporal, possibility and necessity, ideality and

The Struggle of Self-Becoming 55

14. 15. 16.

17. 18. 19. 20.

21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26.

27. 28. 29.

30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37.

actuality). I have chosen the synthesis of the infinite and finite because of the particular issues it presents in terms of a potential or spiritless evil. Karl Rahner. Theological Investigations: Volume II (Man in the Church). Trans. KarlH. Kruger. Baltimore: Helicon Press, 1967, p. 248. Karl Rahner, The Hearer of the Word. Trans. Joseph Donceel. New York: Continuum, 1994, pp. 79-80. Nietzsche was also aware of the distinction between acts of freedom, and 'acts' which are born out of bondage to the external. He writes, 'All truly noble morality grows out of a triumphant self-affirmation. Slave ethics, on the other hand, begins by saying no to an "outside," an "other," a non-self, and that no is its creative act. This reversal of direction of the evaluating look, this invariable looking outward instead of inward, is a fundamental feature of rancor. Slave ethics requires for its inception a sphere different from and hostile to its own. Physiologically speaking, it requires an outside stimulus in order to act at all; all its action is reaction' (Friedrich Nietzsche. The Geneaology of Morals. The Birth of Tragedy and The Genealogy of Morals. Trans. Francis Golffing, pp. 146-299. New York: Doubleday, 1956, pp. 170-1). SUD, p. 134. SUD, p. 134. SUD, p. 134 (my emphasis). Frederick Buechner. Listening to Your Life. Ed. George Connor. San Francisco: Harper/Collins, 1992, p. 267. CUP, pp. 312-13. Quoted in Louis P. Pojman's Classics of Philosophy, New York: Oxford University Press, 1998, pp. 902-3. CUP, pp. 16-17. CA, p. 149 (my emphasis). CA, p. 149 (my emphasis). It should be noted that it is in these leaps that evil finds its intensification, just as all selfhood is intensified in these qualitative leaps. The self finds more and more integration (integrity) within its personality as it is in-gathered through these passionate leaps. CA, p. 149. SUD, pp. 59-60. Merold Westphal. 'Kierkegaard's Psychology of Unconscious Despair' in International Kierkegaard Commentary: The Sickness Unto Death. Ed. Robert L. Perkins, pp. 39-66. Macon, Georgia: Mercer UP, 1987, p. 56. SUD, p. 59. SUD, pp. 60-1. JRNLII,#1832. EUD, p. 93 (my emphasis). PH, p. 118. SUD, p. 61. PH, pp. 1 1 3-14 (my emphasis). Nietzsche, 1956, p. 189.

56 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59 60. 61. 62.

63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71. 72. 73. 74. 75. 76.

Kierkegaard's Analysis of Radical Evil SUD, p. 62. JFY,p. 135-6. JFY, p. 133. FS, p. 44. JFY, p. 115-16. Nicolas Berdyaev. The Destiny of Man. New York: Harper & Row, 1960, pp. 6—7. JFY, p. 105. JFY, p. 115. JFY, p. 116. Not only is faith without works dead, but so is knowledge without works. JFY, p. 118. SUD, p. 61. PA, pp. 67-9. JFY, p. 118. FS, p. 38. 2 Samuel 12: 1-13. JFY, p. 119. CUP, pp. 306-7. CUP, p. 545. SUD, p. 47. SUD, p. 63. JFY, p. 118. CA, p. 95. SUD, p. 65. 'Precisely by losing himself in this way, such a person gains all that is required for a flawless performance in everyday life, yes, for making a great success out of life. . . . Far from anyone thinking him to be in despair, he is just what a human being ought to be' (SUD, p. 64). EUD,p.300. PH, p. 127. JFY, p. 97. JFY, p. 99. JFY, p. 102. JFY, pp. 99-100. JFY, pp. 104-5. In Christian Discourses Kierkegaard writes, 'The world does not truly hate evil but loathes what is unsagacious, that is, it loves evil' (p. 181). SUD, pp. 64-5. William James. The Writings of William James: A Comprehensive Edition. Ed. John J. McDermott. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977, p. 312. JFY, p. 113. JFY, p. 167. JFY, pp. 102-3. C. S. Lewis. God In the Dock: Essays On Theology and Ethics. Ed. Walter Hooper. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1970, p. 244. CD, pp. 88-9.

The Struggle of Self-Becoming 5 7 77. 78. 79. 80. 81. 82. 83. 84. 85. 86.

87. 88. 89. 90. 91. 92. 93. 94.

CD, p. 90. FS, p. 40. Friedrich Nietzsche. The Gay Science. From The Portable Nietzsche. Trans, and Ed. Walter Kaufmann, pp. 93-102. New York: Penguin, 1976, p. 95. CD, p. 90. JRNL II, #2009. JRNL II, #2014. SUD, p. 63. CD, p. 40. JRNL III, 3,558. PA, p. 79. This same theme of evasion is expressed in The Sickness Unto Death: 'By seeing the multitude of people around it, by being busied with all sorts of worldly affairs, by being wise to the ways of the world, such a person forgets himself, in a divine sense forgets his own name, dares not believe in himself, finds being himself too risky, finds it much easier and safer to be like the others, to become a copy, a number, along with the crowd.' (pp. 63-4). JRNL II, 1996 (my emphasis). JFY, p. 155. JFY, pp. 199-200 (my emphasis). JFY, p. 200. Leo Tolstoy. The Death of Ivan Ilych and Other Stories. Trans. Aylmer Maude, pp. 95-156. New York: Signet, 1960, p. 148. PA, pp. 52-3. SUD, p. 63. PA, pp. 55-6.

2

The Despair of the Aesthetic Stage of Existence

In the preceding chapter we looked at despair in terms of the structure of the self, specifically, in how the structure allows for the possibility of spiritless forms of despair. As we move into the intensification of despair, the issues of self-consciousness and freedom become central, because the self becomes more and more conscious of its state of despair, and begins to choose itself in this self-knowledge. This choosing involves the basic distinction between good and evil. With regard to the choice of evil, an increase in consciousness results in an intensification of despair. The most intense despair is completely transparent to itself. Kierkegaard writes, 'The devil's despair is the most intense despair, for the devil is pure spirit and to that extent absolute consciousness and transparency: in the devil there is no obscurity as a mitigating excuse; his despair is therefore the most absolute defiance.' The ability to evade despair is central to the issue of self-consciousness. The less consciousness one has of oneself, the more pockets that exist in which to hide from facing one's rebellion against the Good. If despair persists as consciousness grows, there are less pockets of obscurity, and the act of despair becomes more and more a conscious act — a growing awareness that one is seeking to evade the Good. If consciousness continues to develop, then the pockets become practically non-existent. At this point the rebellion against the Good is no longer a matter of seeking a place in which to evade one's responsibility, but a conscious willing against the Good. It should be noted, however, that both spiritlessness and defiance are grounded in a despair over the Good, and the self s misrelationship to it. In the preceding chapter I have argued that, according to Kierkegaard, the weaker forms of despair have their own modes of danger, and are able to engage in horrendous acts in order to evade responsibility to the Good. Spiritless despair has no concern about the Good, and relates to the world and itself in terms of comfort and security. We have seen that, at times, Kierkegaard wishes the more intense forms of despair would manifest themselves in place of the weaker; what he is really wishing for is more consciousness, and more self-knowledge. Just as Socrates recognized that those who are unaware of their own ignorance are furthest from the Good (wisdom), Kierkegaard knew that those who are unaware of their despair have the least relation to the Good. The danger of spiritlessness is this lack of relation. The more intense forms of despair have a closer relationship to the Good (this closeness is


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something to be desired), and yet because their rebellion against the Good is more intense, there is an intensification of despair and evil (something that is not desirable). The strongest form of despair is more dangerous than spiritlessness in terms of its qualitative character - it is qualified as spirit. As spirit it is not concerned about comfort, but has taken possession of itself in its opposition to the Good. Although those in unconscious despair are capable of enthusiastically committing terrible atrocities, they can still be kept in check — tamed, if you will — if by nothing else than the fear of punishment. They are malleable, and are often very law-abiding, though their obedience is based on self-concern, rather than concern for the Good. A defiant evil, on the other hand, cannot be kept in check so easily. It is spirit, and this means that it determines itself from itself, and will do what it wills in self-conscious freedom. In this, it can become extremely destructive. We now turn to this intensification of despair by examining the move from the aesthetic stage to the beginnings of the ethical stage. In the remaining chapters we will be examining the ethical and religious stages in more detail. These existence-stages move toward an ever-increasing consciousness of the self. The development of this consciousness is portrayed by Kierkegaard in his pseudonymous writings. Kierkegaard used pseudonyms in his authorship because each book was written from the standpoint of someone within a particular existencestage; thus, since these books do not necessarily represent Kierkegaard's own standpoint, he did not author them under his own name. Kierkegaard goes so far as to say that nothing written by a pseudonym should be attributed to him, just as one would not attribute a line spoken in Hamlet to a belief Shakespeare himself held. The pseudonyms are to be regarded as performers in an extended portrayal of the different stages of existence. In The Sickness Unto Death, the pseudonym Anti-climacus looks at the increase of consciousness - from spiritlessness to defiance — in terms of an intensification of despair. This analysis coincides with the general growth of consciousness portrayed in Kierkegaard's other pseudonymous works. Because this movement from one existence stage to another is always accompanied by the despair of the preceding existence-stage, it would be reasonable to expect that what is written in The Sickness Unto Death will tie in well with the movement through the various stages of existence. I believe this is the case. However, since Kierkegaard was no system builder, it is by no means worked out systematically. Existence does not allow for a completely closed system, because consciousness fluctuates, as does despair, and so the various forms of despair can be found in the various existence-stages. Still, a relatively cohesive exposition can be given of the movement of consciousness, and its concomitant movement of despair. What will be discovered is an ever-increasing inability to evade oneself and one's task, along with a growing consciousness of how

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weak one is in relation to this task. Despair arises out of this sense of weakness and lack of control. In the end, the question is whether we will be crushed by the responsibility placed on us — thereby having a heavy and hopeless relationship to the Good - or humbled by it, and so uplifted into a joyful relationship with the Good through faith.

The Aesthetic Stage of Existence Immediacy and the Enjoyment of Life The spiritless form of despair falls under the aesthetic stage of existence. As we have already seen, at this stage the self lives in such a way that it is not conscious of its self in any Kierkegaardian sense of the term. Two important qualities characterize the aesthetic stage. First, it exists in immediacy, though this does not mean aesthetes are devoid of reflection. Judge Wilhelm, who looks at the aesthetic stage from the vantage point of the ethical, recognizes that aesthetes may often live in very intense modes of reflection, though this reflection is by no means self-reflection. He writes, It is not at all my intention to deny that in order to live esthetically . . . a multiplicity of intellectual gifts may be necessary, indeed, that these may even be intensively developed to an unusual degree, but they are still enslaved and lack transparency. For example, there are animal species that possess much sharper, much more powerful senses than human beings do, but they are in bondage to animal instinct. Thus, the reflection within the aesthetic stage is never able to separate itself completely from its immediacy, no matter how philosophical or poetic it may be. The second quality of the aesthetic stage is the meaning and purpose it proposes for life: aesthetes believe that the meaning and purpose of life is to enjoy life. This life-view has as many variations as there are definitions of enjoyment, though all the variations have in common the belief that certain conditions must be met in order for life to be enjoyable, conditions that are 'not there by virtue of the individual himself. For some these conditions are completely external to the individual, such as wealth, honour, status or free time (retirement). Thus, the task of existence is found in the attainment of these conditions. For others, however, a condition for enjoyment may be found within the individual. As the Judge says, 'It is a talent for practical affairs, a talent for business, a talent for mathematics, a talent for writing, a talent for art, a talent for philosophy. Satisfaction in life, enjoyment, is sought in the unfolding of this talent.' This remains


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immediacy because, at this level, the self remains a conglomeration of disorganized forces, in which there is nothing higher than the immediate moment to bring some talent, mood or thought to the fore. The aesthete does not have control over these forces, and in this sense lacks a self that has taken hold of itself. Aesthetes are at the prey of the moment, and have not developed personalities that encompass their entire lives. These forces are analogous to Schelling's dark ground, which remains a seething cauldron of disorganized powers, because it has not yet been penetrated by a higher ideal. No doubt certain talents or capacities may be developed, but there is still no self that rules over them as a whole; thus, they are organized by the need of the moment — what the need is calling on for the sake of enjoyment. The Various Forms of Spiritless Despair in the Aesthetic Stage of Existence We will now move to the various forms of despair within the aesthetic stage. While there is a rise in consciousness in these forms, none of them break completely free from immediacy, nor is the true nature of despair understood by them. The first form of despair is an unconsciousness of being in despair. To a person at this level of despair, if life is pleasant and enjoyable, it would seem ridiculous to speak of being in despair. Comfort and satisfaction are proof enough that all is well. Anti-climacus tells us, however, that we are not to trust the word of a completely sensate person concerning the self s health. The person who measures human existence in terms of enjoyment has such a low conception of the self that he or she is unable to assess the truth concerning the health of the self. Anti-climacus writes: 'However vain and conceited people may be, the conception they usually have of themselves is very humble; that is, they have no conception of being spirit, the absolute that a human can be.' What concerns and interests such people is not whether they are in despair, but whether they are happy. What they fear more than being in despair - what they fear more than being in error about the meaning of existence is being uncomfortable or bored. Anti-climacus says, however, no matter how happy they are, they are nevertheless in despair: Every human existence not conscious of itself as spirit, or not personally conscious of itself before God as spirit, every human existence which is not grounded transparently in God, but opaquely rests or merges in some abstract universal (state, nation, etc.), or in the dark about its self, simply takes its capacities to be natural powers, unconscious in a deeper sense of where it has them from, takes its self to be an unaccountable something; if there were any question of accounting for its inner being, every such existence, however astounding its accomplishments, however much it can

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account for even the whole of existence, however intense its aesthetic enjoyment: every such life is none the less despair. Though life goes on without a hitch, and grand things are accomplished, one may nevertheless be in despair, because despair has reference to a deep and profound level of the self — so deep that although the whole world be gained, the despair will remain untouched. Despair can be felt only in the shudder whose tremors reverberate deep into the soul. In the face of that depth of the self, all the externals are merely diversions. Pascal illustrates this well in his Pensees: When I see the blind and wretched state of man, when I survey the whole universe in its dumbness and man left to himself with no light, as though lost in this corner of the universe, without knowing who put him there, what he has come to do, what will become of him when he dies, incapable of knowing anything, I am moved to terror. . . . Then I marvel that so wretched a state does not drive people to despair. I see other people around me, made like myself. I ask them if they are any better informed than I, and they say they are not. Then these lost and wretched creatures look around and find some attractive objects to which they become addicted and attached. Though people are not 'moved to despair', Kierkegaard and Pascal have recognized the depth of their hopelessness: they have such a meagre conception of the self, that they are unable to grasp the longing and pain that underlies all their activities. They cannot fathom that despair is not an issue of circumstances — whether they are pleasant and enjoyable — but concerns a lack of development, and hence the meaninglessness of their existence. A higher form of despair may eventually arise in the aesthetic individual, a form Anti-climacus calls 'Pure Immediacy'. In this form of despair there is a small rise in reflection within the aesthetic stage, due to a person's inability to make the world go his or her way. While despair is acknowledged, its true source remains dark - it is still essentially ignorant of despair - because it believes as life becomes better, the despair will disappear. The person in pure immediacy believes despair consists in losing something in the world or something temporal, when in reality it consists in the loss of the self— the self's unwillingness to grasp its eternal validity, and the task for which it was established. The presence of despair is felt within 'pure immediacy' only because an item that was being used to cover up the real source of despair was lost. Thus, with the loss of this item, the despair hidden beneath the surface shows itself, though the true source of despair is not recognized. When the fortunes of the world are good, life is enjoyable; when the fortunes turn bad, one 'despairs'. This is a passive relation to the world, in which the self relates to itself through


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the conditions of its circumstances: 'there is no infinite consciousness of the self, of what despair is, or of the state's being one of despair. The despair is mere passivity, a succumbing to external pressure; it comes not at all from within ,9 as an action. Thus, despair is thought to be the result of unfortunate external circumstances. The self is so connected and possessed by the world, the only way for it to sense its despair is for the world to deal it a blow: So he despairs . . . he calls it despair. But to despair is to lose the eternal — and of this loss he says nothing, he doesn't dream of it. To lose the earthly is not in itself to despair, and yet that is what he speaks of and he calls it despair. He is unaware that the struggle of life is not found in seeking what is temporal — that which brings enjoyment to the sensate, and satisfies his immediate desires but in seeking what is eternal. And so he points at the wrong object of despair: 'he stands there pointing at something that is not despair, explaining that he is in despair, and yet, sure enough, the despair is going on behind him unawares'. As in all forms of the passive despair of spiritlessness, this is ultimately an unwillingness to be oneself. 12 Since the self does not even have enough self to will to be itself, it wishes it were someone else: it says to itself, 'If only I could have been born wealthy (or beautiful, athletic, intelligent, and so forth), then I would be a happy self People at this level of consciousness have come to identify themselves so much by externals that they believe they can change their selves by changing their externals. They try to gain a different self by buying a better model car, changing careers, wearing designer clothes, perhaps losing some weight, undergoing any number of surgical augmentations, or even by changing relationships. Anti-climacus says, 'One imagines a self (and next to God there is nothing so eternal as a self), and then one imagines it occurring to a self whether it might not let itself be another — than itself.' * If life has dealt a sufficient number of blows, more reflection might arise, though without moving the person out of immediacy. Eventually the realization may arise that life is not always — or even often — enjoyable, and so the belief that life brings enjoyment simply of itself begins to fade. Enjoyment is no longer to be found immediately in the experience, but reflectively. One now becomes aware of one's enjoyment, and thus begins to enjoy one's enjoyment — one enjoys oneself. This enjoyment is still connected to the external world because 'although he, as he says, enjoys himself only in the enjoyment, but the enjoyment itself is linked to an external condition'. Since the external world has let one down so many times, the capacity to lose oneself completely in the world is weakened. This shows that a separation has taken place — however small and ethically insignificant between the

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external and internal, so that there is a recognition that the self is somewhat disconnected from the external. The importance of this is that the conditions of enjoyment can, to some extent, be discarded, so that one is not so easily amused by bread and circuses. One's tastes become more refined, and there is a desire for higher forms of amusement. What the moment offers is no longer enough, because one knows it will more than likely leave one dissatisfied and even bored in the end; therefore, one dresses up what the moment gives, adding to it through reflection, and enjoying oneself reflectively. Through the despair of pure immediacy, one has learned that the world does not always flow with milk and honey, no guarantees have been handed out by existence, and so one must learn to intercede on one's behalf. Still, the purpose of such a life-view, no matter how much it is couched in the language of selfdevelopment (see, for instance, Oprah], is still enjoyment within the temporal, and so remains enamoured by a temporal goal. This life-view also ends in a particular type of despair, which Anti-climacus calls the despair of'reflective immediacy'. Whereas pure immediacy completely identified itself with the world, and thus could only sense its despair when the world dealt it a blow, reflective immediacy has come to realize that its self is 'essentially different from the environment and the external world and their effect upon it'.15 Thus a small amount of reflection becomes the basis for this despair. This can happen in two ways. First, the self may reflect upon itself in terms of its situation, and come to recognize weaknesses and imperfections that make it recoil.1 As in all cases of spiritless despair, its despair is in its unwillingness to be itself, to own this less-than-adequate self. The second way it despairs is through its imagination, which is able to discover a possibility that would wrench it out of its immediate contact with the world. Perhaps it reflects on a possible physical illness, or a failure in some worldly endeavour. Whatever it may be, this reflection causes it to despair. In all this, however, the aesthete remains in immediacy in a very important sense: the thought of the possibility of a catastrophe or failure is still always related to the external world. The weakness found is seen as something to despair over only because one is still relating to the world in an immediate way. Reflective immediacy is too possessed by the finite to venture into the infinite in any ethical sense: The difficulty he has stumbled on requires a complete break with immediacy, and he does not have the self-reflection or the ethical reflection for that. He has no consciousness of a self that is won by infinite abstraction from all externality. This self, naked and abstract, in contrast to the fully clothed self of immediacy. 17 Thus, although one has a sense of being separate from the world, a complete break with it has not been achieved, and so one cannot stop seeking one's


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nourishment from the world. In the end, one still loves the world too much to give it up. Anti-climacus uses an analogy to clarify what is happening within reflective immediacy: His relation to the self is like that of a man to his place of residence which may come to disgust him because of the smoke or whatever other reason. So he leaves it, but he does not move away, he does not establish a new residence, he continues to regard the old one as his address, he reckons the problem will pass. So too with the person in despair. As long as the difficulty remains, he dares not (as the saying so suggestively puts it) 'come to himself; he does not want to be himself. But no doubt it will vanish, perhaps it will change, the sombre possibility will surely be forgotten. The despair has become more personal at this point, in that the self is becoming something over which one despairs, though the self is still not self-conscious enough to remain with itself, and to face its failures in any decisive manner. If the difficulty does not pass, it may decide to give up reflection and this whole business of inwardness, diving back into pure immediacy, and again lose itself in the world and its desires. If, however, it has sufficient strength to stay with the difficulty, it may move into a deeper form of aestheticism ('despair itself), where the knowledge of human failings and weaknesses actually become a source of enjoyment. At this level, the self is no longer at stake in the fortunes and misfortunes of external circumstances, because it recognizes that all of existence ends in misfortune. Still, it does not give up the view that the purpose of life is enjoyment. The aesthete has recognized the despair of finding life in external conditions, though this recognition is not grasped in a way that the aesthetic existence itself is despaired of. True to the aesthetic stage of existence, the aesthete has found this despair to be interesting. Although such aesthetes' thinking and art may reach depths beyond any of their predecessors, both the philosopher and artist stand 'outside' existence as observers and nonparticipants (that is, remain indifferent to their own existences), and so remain within the aesthetic stage. Thus, the aesthete may come to the place of recognizing the meaninglessness, incoherence, and emptiness of the aesthetic existence. The author of Part I of Either/Or is called simply 'A', and is a representative of the aesthetic stage of existence. He writes, My life is utterly meaningless. When I consider its various epochs, my life is like the word Schnur in the dictionary, which first of all means string, and second a daughter-in-law. All that is lacking is that in the third place Schnur means camel, in the fourth a whisk broom. 20

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Just as there is nothing unifying the various meanings of the word Schnur, so there is nothing that unifies the various decades or years of A's life. True, the general purpose and meaning are said to be enjoyment, but because the objects and conditions of this purpose change from moment to moment, there is nothing higher that ties these moments together into a meaningful whole. As an aesthete, A does not become horrified by this knowledge; indeed, he seems barely to have been touched by it. He does not grieve for himself, for others, or for the human race in general. Ever the aesthete, he simply finds his source of enjoyment in this meaninglessness. He writes, When I was very young, I forgot in the Trophonean cave how to laugh; when I became an adult, when I opened my eyes and saw actuality, then I started to laugh and have not stopped laughing since that time. I saw that the meaning of life was to make a living, its goal to become a councilor, that the rich delight of love was to acquire a well-to-do girl, that the blessedness of friendship was to help each other in financial difficulties, that wisdom was whatever the majority assumed it to be, that enthusiasm was to give a speech, that courage was to risk being fined ten dollars, that cordiality was to say 'May it do you good' after a meal, that piety was to go to communion once a year. This I saw, and I laughed. 21 While A can see through the shallowness of the lowest levels of love, friendship, passion, courage, cordiality and religion he is much too cynical to see the possibility of any higher manifestations of these human pursuits. He can access and understand them only in regards to his low conception of human existence. All higher ideals appear to be nonsense to him, because they are beyond his meaning-structure. Kierkegaard calls this type of recognition of meaninglessness 'finite resignation', because the aesthete does not resign the finite for the sake of something higher - namely, to become himself- but does so for the sake of enjoying the finite.22 The irony in this situation is that, although A realizes nothing in the finite can satisfy him, this very thought does, somehow, satisfy him. In the initial stage of finite resignation, there can be a light-heartedness that takes nothing seriously, and often such aesthetes can have an amazing sense of humour, as they make light of, and show the insignificance of others' selfimportance and pretentiousness. In all of this, however, the aesthete is evading the task of becoming a self. A uses his laughter in order to cover over what is missing in his life: because his life is empty, all of existence becomes trivial for him, a mere joke for his own amusement. He finds great satisfaction in his ability to see what others cannot recognize, and pats himself on the back for his astute observations of the finer nuances of this great comedy. In all this, however, A laughs to hide his fear: he does not have the courage to appropriate


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the despair existentially, because when he does he will have transcended the aesthetic stage, and will have surrendered enjoyment as the meaning of life. As finite resignation increases, the greatest danger the aesthete faces is boredom, and so this dark spiritlessness drinks from the cup of enjoyment in ever deeper gulps in its attempt to escape boredom's persevering encroachment; this, in turn, causes the cup to be emptied even quicker. Spiritlessness finds it more and more difficult to be interested in anything for very long, and must have a constant flow of novelty. There is a growing hunger, which nothing in the world seems to satisfy, and yet which demands a constant flow of new diversions. As something new is discovered, it is ravenously seized upon; then, when it has been consumed, the spiritless person again sinks into inactivity, not out of satisfaction, but in a boredom that remains starved. At this point life becomes a dark comedy, and this darkness provides the sustenance the aesthete desires. A begins to feed off the intense feelings of the darker and more sorrowful aspects of life. He writes, 'Life for me has become a bitter drink, and yet it must be taken in drops, slowly, counting.' 23 He feels alive only in the midst of his pain. It is not surprising, then, that depression becomes a constant — and often welcome - companion. A says, 'My depression is the most faithful mistress I have known no wonder, then, that I return the love.' Depression becomes a refreshing relief from the dryness of existence. Pain and sorrow at least have an intensity desire can latch onto, while the malaise of a lukewarm existence feels like death. And so A welcomes pain as a relief. He writes, Cornelius Nepos tells of a general who was kept confined with a considerable cavalry regiment in a fortress; to keep the horses from being harmed because of too much inactivity, he had them whipped daily in like manner, I live in this age as one besieged, but lest I be harmed by sitting still so much, I cry myself tired. In its most intense forms, the aesthete may seek out physical pain as a means of relief from the encroaching consciousness of despair. The aesthete at this level has too much reflection to go back to pure immediacy, and yet all enjoyment has been sucked out of life. In the face of this despair, the Judge gives some strange advice: Choose despair! The Judge tells A to choose himself in his eternal validity - the task of self-becoming - by choosing despair. A is to leap into the ethical stage of existence by despairing of the aesthetic life. He must appropriate the despair into himself, thus moving beyond it. Choosing despair is a choice for becoming oneself, and for gaining one's personality, by gathering oneself away from the multiplicity of immediacy. In choosing despair one 'activates' one's will for the first time, gathering one's life around this absolute choice. In reality, choosing despair is not something an aesthete does, it is an ethical act.

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Kierkegaard's Analysis of Radical Evil The Ethical Stage of Existence: Self-Choice

The Negative Choice of Choosing Despair The ethical stage consists in choosing oneself. It begins, however, with the negative choice of choosing despair, which brings about a leap from the aesthetic stage into the ethical. The last form of aestheticism described above is a kind of transitional point: it is still connected to the aesthetic view that life is to be lived for enjoyment, though it has discovered that sorrow and unhappiness are the inevitable results of this pursuit. Even if the aesthete tries to cover this realization through busyness or diversions, it can never be completely escaped: 'it will still break out at certain moments, more terrible than ever. . . . What, then, is there to do? I have only one answer: Despair, then!'26 The Judge says that A is like a woman in labour who is terrified at what is demanding to be born, and distressed at the pain it will cause. What A fears is the responsibility of the task his self puts on him. He wants to continue to take existence lightly, and yet, because the eternal remains a part of who he is, the triviality of his light-mindedness is too sorrowful for him to stand. And so the Judge tells him to give birth to his despair, which is nothing less than giving birth to himself.27 As I watch and interact with my students who are in the midst of this struggle, and I listen to their dissatisfaction with what the world has to offer, I am struck by their refusal to free themselves from the world — that is, to give up on the world. If I ask them about an ideal they might want to live for, they can usually formulate some vague 'something' they feel passionate about — some thing that has nothing to do with worldly success and enjoyment. If I ask what this ideal might mean for them, they have a sense that it would entail a radical change in the direction of their lives, and a revaluation of their values (how they measure what is significant and insignificant). As we talk about this change, it does not take long before the uncertainty that is a part of every ideal causes the student to wonder whether the risk would be worth it ('it', meaning the world that will be given up). This is the fear and trembling the Judge is pointing to in the analogy of the labouring woman. This struggle, according to the Judge, is not an intellectual issue (a matter of certainty about one's ideal), but a question of whether one has the courage to choose against the worldly. He would say that this struggle is not with intellectual doubt, but with 'personality's doubt'. 28 The Judge says that doubt is thought's despair, while despair is personality's doubt. In other words, doubt is often less about intellectual honesty, than about fear and timidity; unwilling to risk one's life on a thought content that is uncertain, one puts doubt between the thought and the action. When this unwillingness to risk is attached to one's very existence, and to the overall


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direction of one's life (to the personality, or the self one is), then one remains hidden in dreams, terror and depression. Thus, Kierkegaard does not regard doubt as a sign of intellectual freedom (freedom from prejudices, ideologies and so forth), but as that which oppresses, entraps and keeps one from acting. Despair, then, is the personality's unwillingness to give birth to itself because of its doubt and fear its lack of faith, if you will. This doubt is not broken by methodically working through life's uncertainties — which would be an endless task anyway. To choose despair is to take hold of one's existential doubt in a free resolution. In this choice one moves beyond personality's doubt into the openness of freedom and self-knowledge. This break is not done quantitatively - through a methodical building up of knowledge - but through a leap. The Judge tells A, 'Generally speaking a person cannot despair, a person must will it; but when he truly wills it, he is truly beyond despair. When a person has truly chosen despair, he has chosen what despair chooses: himself in his eternal validity.' 29 Self-Knowledge As always, this process is not simply about choice (freedom), but also about self-consciousness. A needs to come to the point where he understands despair, not as something suffered from outside, but as a matter of the self. He interprets the despair he feels as coming from the world, and so the world becomes his enemy that which brings trouble and boredom, and thwarts his attempts at enjoyment. Because his focus remains in the world, he is oblivious to the true abode of despair. He does not recognize that the 'job' of despair - one of its formative lessons — is to destroy his immediate relation to the world, so that he can find himself and his task. A realizes the meaninglessness of the aesthetic existence, but rather than actively shouldering this despair, he passively suffers under it. He has no sense of what leaping out of the aesthetic stage would mean for his life, and this 'unknown' fills him with dread (angst). In a sense, he is unconsciously fighting for his life — that is, to keep the only view of life he has ever known. In choosing despair, one becomes conscious of how much one has been fighting the task of self-becoming. Jeremy Walker, in his book Kierkegaard: The Descent into God, says that 'the first important outcome of the project of self-knowledge is the knowledge that one is essentially opposed to the whole project'/ In other words, one's ignorance of one's self or lack of self — is a 'willed' ignorance; one is choosing to ignore oneself. The movement out of despair, and actually part of the work of despair, is to become conscious of this self-deceit. The first movement of self-knowledge is to recognize and admit the barriers one builds to this knowledge. There is no doubt that one knows things about oneself, but this accidental self-knowledge is only knowledge of

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the self's relation to what is not the self— the world. An inauthentic selfknowledge is nothing but a mask behind which the self can hide from itself. Genuine self-knowledge is knowledge of the self s relation to itself. At this point, the aesthete must allow 'the power of despair . . . [to] consume everything until he finds himself in his eternal validity . . . because the one who despairs finds the eternal human being'. Despairing Over the Earthly In Toto This issue of the eternal in the human being brings us again to Anti-climacus' analysis of despair in The Sickness Unto Death, specifically the despair he calls 'despairing over the earthly in toto'. This form of despair is the next step in the consciousness of despair, and serves as the basis by which the aesthete 'chooses despair'. This consciousness is a movement from despairing over the loss of some particular earthly thing (or some particular weakness or possibility one's reflection has discovered) to a type of despair that gives access to the category of totality. To despair over something earthly points to a particular loss, while despairing over the earthly itself is a totalizing despair. In describing this, Anti-climacus writes, 'When with infinite passion the self despairs in imagination over something earthly, the infinite passion makes of this particular, this something, the earthly in toto [as a whole], that is to say the totality concept is inherent in and belongs to the despairer.' Despairing over the earthly leads to an understanding that, in order to despair over a finite loss infinitely, or a temporal loss eternally, the infinite and eternal aspect of this despair must come from the self, since no particular thing in the world is infinite or eternal. Thus, despairing over the earthly in toto mediates between immediacy and a despair directed inwardly as despair over oneself or of the eternal. The aesthete may come to see that it is not the loss of an individual item that causes despair, but the despair of the eternal within the self— that which gives totalizing meaning to the world. Spiritlessness may come to see that the true nature of its despair is not that it lacks something in the world, but that it lacks spirit. It is this realization that becomes the basis for choosing despair: one comes to realize that, when one loses some particular thing in the world, and despairs over 'the earthly' (that is, when the world becomes meaningless and hopeless because of a number of particular loses), this means that the self 'increases the total loss infinitely, and then despairs over the earthly in toto'.33 One recognizes, in other words, that one has attributed infinite worth to the finite. This can be made clearer by looking at Kierkegaard's Christian Discourses, and the distinction between the goal of temporality and the goal of eternity. In despairing over the earthly in toto, one comes to see that one has given


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oneself completely over to temporality's goal, and that this 'giving oneself over completely' is actually to despair of eternity's goal. Kierkegaard writes, [T]he sufferer himself is a synthesis of the temporal and eternal. If now temporality inflicts upon him the greatest loss it is able to inflict, then the issue is whether he, traitorous to himself and to eternity, will give temporality's loss the power to become something totally different from what it is, whether he will lose the eternal, or whether he, true to himself and the eternal, does not allow temporality's loss to become anything else for him than what it is, a temporal loss. If he does this, then the eternal within him has won the victory. To let go of the lost temporal thing in such a way that it is lost only temporally, to lose the lost temporal thing only temporally, is a qualification of the eternal within the loser, is the sign that the eternal within him has been victorious. On the other hand, in bestowing the temporal with eternal value, one does not value the eternal at all, and has, in a deeper sense, lost the eternal - despaired of the eternal. One is not earnest about oneself, but has fixed 'a temporal loss eternally fast in your soul'. J When one comes to see that 'despair' over a temporal loss is actually despair over the eternal, a deeper understanding of the true nature of despair has been gained. One finally realizes it is not the world one despairs over, but one despairs over oneself - one despairs over the self one is, and so is unwilling to be oneself.

The Ethicist has Chosen Despair This consciousness of despair, and the concomitant choosing of it, is the negative aspect of choosing oneself. As long as A is simply 'in despair', he despairs over the world, and remains immediately connected to it. If he would choose despair, however, he would change the direction of his life from the immediate and the temporal, and begin to move toward freedom, transparency, and himself in his eternal validity. This is to discover that the self is more than the sum total of its relationships to things within the world. In the Postscript, Climacus says that 'The ethicist has despaired. . . . In despai he has chosen himself... . Through this choice and in this choice he becomes open.'' What is this openness? Later Climacus writes, 'With the passion o the infinite, the ethicist in the moment of despair has chosen himself out of the terror of having himself, his life, his actuality, in esthetic dreams, in depression, in hiddenness.' 37 One chooses oneself out of the hiddenness, where everything is done behind masks. In coming out of hiding into openness, one becomes open to one's task the very thing one was hiding from. The self is open to receiving its task, and so is open to the light that will bring more self-knowledge.

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This is no easy choice. The Judge says that it is 'an act that takes all the power and earnestness and concentration of the soul'.38 This is because it is the self's first real act, an act rising up from within the self, apart from any other propulsion, if you will. In the aesthetic stage the self reacts, being moved by the determination of the sensual desires over which it has no control. In choosing despair one chooses by the determination of one's own will. The Judge says, reminiscent of what was discussed in The Sickness Unto Death as despair of the earthly in toto, When I despair over losing the whole world, I damage my soul, for I make it finite in the very same way, since here again I see my soul is established by the finite.... Every finite despair is a choice of the infinite, for I choose it just as much when I attain it as when I lose it, for my attaining is not under my control, but my choosing it certainly is. Finite despair is, therefore, an unfree despair; it does not actually will despair, but it wills the finite, and this is despair.39 When one wills and is lost in the finite, one is bound by necessity, by fate, and ultimately by its triviality. When I despair of it by choosing it, then I, for the first time, take control of the direction of my life, for I am no longer bound by what is external to me, but bind myself to myself in my eternal validity I bind myself to the Good. I am no longer defined by what is not me, but begin to define myself in terms of my task. To 'choose despair' is an act of resolve, in which a person 'chooses himself in his eternal validity'.

Notes 1. SUD,p. 72. 2. Kierkegaard discusses his use of pseudonyms in 'A First and Last Explanation' (CUP, pp. 625-30). Since at this point the movement between the existencestages becomes crucial for our examination of evil, I will begin to use the pseudonyms' names when pointing to specific books. 3. E / O I I , p . 179. 4. E / O I I , p . 180. 5. E / O I I , p . 183. 6. SUD, p. 73. 7. SUD, p. 76. 8. Blaise Pascal. Pensees. Trans. A. J. Krailsheimer. New York: Penguin, 1984, p. 88. Kierkegaard echoes Pascal's sentiments concerning diversions: 'Or perhaps he tries to keep his own condition in the dark by diversions and other means, for example, work and pressure of business, as ways of distracting attention, though again in such a way that he is not altogether clear that he is doing it to keep himself in the dark' (SUD, pp. 78-9).

The Despair of the Aesthetic Stage of Existence 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19.

20. 21. 22.

23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40.

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SUD, pp. 80-1. SUD, p. 82. SUD, p. 82. SUD, pp. 82-3. SUD, p. 84. E/O II, pp. 190-1. SUD, p. 85. SUD, pp. 84-5. SUD, pp. 85-6. SUD, p. 86. This is, to some extent, like those who dabbled in the French rendition of existentialism, not out of a concern for the self, but out of an aesthetic enjoyment of the dark themes presented by it. One may see it today in certain strains of rock music, in the 'Goth' culture, and in an aesthetic enjoyment of art that focuses on the grotesque. There is a particular kind of pleasurable quality in reflecting on despair. Still, this despair does not lead such people to pick up the task of the self, but actually calls for an ever increasing intensification of the bizarre. E/O I, p. 36. E/O I, p. 34. Those who are spiritual also recognize the emptiness of the finite, yet they are able to gather themselves in what Kierkegaard calls 'infinite resignation'. Those in infinite resignation are able to resign the finite for the sake of something infinitely higher. E/O I, p. 26. E/O I, p. 20. E/O I, p. 21. E/O II, p. 208. E/O II, p. 206. E/OII,p.211. E/O II, p. 213. Jeremy Walker, Kierkegaard: The Descent Into God. Montreal: McGill-Queen's UP, 1985, p. 147. E/O II, p. 209. SUD, p. 91. SUD, p. 91. CD, p. 141. CD, p. 139. CUP, p. 253-4. CUP, p. 258. E/O II, p. 208. E/O II, p. 221 (my emphasis). E/O II, p. 221.

3 Ethical Self-Choice

The Positive Self-Choice Choosing Freedom

Choosing despair is an absolute choice: When I choose absolutely, I choose despair, and in despair I choose the absolute, for I am myself the absolute; I posit the absolute, and I myself am the absolute. But in other words, with exactly the same meaning I may say: I choose the absolute that chooses me; I posit the absolute that posits me for if I do not keep in mind that this second expression is just as absolute, then my category of choosing is untrue, because it is precisely the identity of both. 1 I choose myself absolutely, and yet only the self, as absolute, is able to make such an absolute choice. I, in one and the same act, choose the absolute and become the absolute that does the choosing. Here, again, we find the paradox of the self-positing of the self. The paradox consists in the fact that, while what is chosen already exists - otherwise it would not be chosen, but created - it comes into existence only by my choosing it: 'It is, for if it were not I could not choose it; it is not, for it first comes into existence through my choosing it, and otherwise my choice would be an illusion.' What the absolute choice brings into existence — though does so only as already existing — isfreedom. When I choose myself as free, I do not create freedom, because if it did not already exist, I could not choose it; yet this freedom does not exist until I choose it. Further, this choice is more than simply a choice concerning abstract freedom, it is a choice to become oneself: He chooses himself - not in the finite sense, for then this 'self would indeed be something finite that would fall among all the other finite things — but in the absolute sense, and yet he does choose himself and not someone else. .. . This self has not existed before, because it came into existence through the choice, and yet it has existed, for it was indeed 'himself This is an absolute choice because one chooses absolutely - one absolutely despairs of the aesthetic existence. At the same time, this absolute choice

Ethical Self-Choice 75 posits the ethical. It is an absolute choice, not simply because it changes the direction of one's entire life, and the categories by which one confronts the world, but more importantly, because through it one discovers oneself in one's eternal validity. The Judge says, [T]o become conscious in one's eternal validity is a moment that is more significant than everything else in the world. . . . It is an earnest and significant moment when a person links himself to an eternal power for an eternity, when he accepts himself as the one whose remembrance time will never erase, when in an eternal unerring sense he becomes conscious of himself as the person he is.4 Self-identity is radically altered in this knowledge and choice: it is to choose oneself as one whose remembrance time will never erase. Whether this eternity be conceived within a Judaeo-Christian view of an eternity with God, or in the Nietzschean conception of an eternal recurrence, it is to shoulder the eternal within oneself. Indeed, this is what is chosen: [Wjhat is it, then, that I choose - is it this or that? No, for I choose absolutely, and I choose absolutely precisely by having chosen not to choose this or that, I choose the absolute, and what is the absolute? It is myself in my eternal validity. Something other than myself I can never choose as absolute, for if I choose something else, I choose it as something finite and consequently do not choose it absolutely.'' The phrase 'eternal validity' does not speak to some substance of the self that I choose, but speaks to my essence as freedom. Freedom becomes, for the first time, my responsibility and task. I give myself the task of becoming myself — becoming more free and more transparent as spirit. The problem of evil arises around this issue of self-possession. As traditionally conceived, evil is problematic because it is difficult to determine where a rebellion against Being can originate. If it originates in Being itself, how can it be considered a rebellion against Being? Whatever exists is within Being, and so would be within the inner necessity of Being — would be a part of its order, and so, it seems, could not be a rebellion against this order. Thus, according to the traditional view, evil, as a rebellion against Being could not exist — that is, evil is a privation or lack of Being, a movement into nothingness and nonessence. But is evil really devoid of essence? The description of freedom as an absolute self-positing is the answer idealism gives to this question. Idealism came to see that the Being of humans is freedom, which means that this Being itself is to be chosen. For Schelling, man posits freedom by his own deed, a deed that is possible only through

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freedom. This is what Kierkegaard is struggling to make clear through Judge Wilhelm's ethical understanding of existence. Kant and Schelling were able to resolve the difficulties inherent in this self-positing by pointing beyond time. In other words, by the time we philosophers come upon the issue, the positing has already taken place in the eternal - it is, in an important sense,finished,in that freedom has already been posited. Kierkegaard, however, believes this choice takes place in time, at the moment when one takes hold of oneself, and determines one's essence as free. In this, one determines oneself for the first time by taking possession of oneself. Only in this choice is the inner necessity of one's Being determined from oneself. It is in this self-determination, which is a part of the inner necessity of Being, that a rebellion against Being can find its place. As a dissolubility between the dark depths and the light of reason, the inner necessity of Being dictates (ordains) that I should have the ability to determine my own inner necessity apart from the universal will of Being itself, for I exist as the contradiction of the deepest pit and the highest heaven. It is this prescribed inner necessity of Being that allows for the possibility of radical evil: I have been granted, from Being itself, the possibility of determining myself in opposition to the universal will of Being. This possibility arises from the structure of the self, a structure in which the self is born out of the principle of contradiction through which I must choose myself: 'whereas nature is created from nothing, whereas myself as immediate personality am created from nothing, I as free spirit am born out of the principle of contradiction or am born through my choosing myself.' As we move deeper into an understanding of the self in terms of consciousness and freedom, we will find an intensification of the self around its relation to the Good. Although the ethical is usually viewed as the highest relation to the Good, we will find areas of evasion that show the ultimate despair of this relation. To discover this we must examine Kierkegaard's analysis of the ethical stage of existence. Choosing One's Facticity In choosing oneself as free, one does not annihilate the aesthetic; rather, in this choice, the esthetic is absolutely excluded or it is excluded as the absolute, but relatively it is continually present. In choosing itself, the personality chooses itself ethically and absolutely excludes the esthetic; but since he nevertheless chooses himself and does not become another human being by choosing himself but becomes himself, all the esthetic returns in its relativity.

Ethical Self-Choice 77 Although an individual's concrete contents or capacities are given by nature, when the ethical self posits itself, these capacities are transformed by finding their proper place in the individual's life. They become determined by the self, rather than externally determined. As the ethical individual is gathered away from the external through the absolute self-positing, a new consciousness of the aesthetic qualities that is, the talents, moods, social influences, inclinations, and so forth — is gained. Before choosing oneself these capacities were simply seen as things nature bestowed upon the individual, products of fate, if you will; after the choice, these become things for which one is now responsible. Aesthetes do not feel responsible for the moods or social influences they suffer, nor can they help the talents and inclinations given to them by nature or their upbringing. The ethicist, however, feels responsible for these concrete contents, and shoulders them as the material out of which one becomes oneself. Further, in choosing oneself, one begins the movement of self-possession, or in-gathering. Aesthetes have their lives on the periphery, living in immediate contact with things; the ethicists, on the other hand, reside in the centre, in the heart and core of the self- the home of personality and so their concrete contents find their meaning in the choices that personality makes. It is in these choices that all the relative or accidental qualities of the self- its facticity - become transformed into essential qualities, and so are products of the self. While these qualities always existed as a part of the self, they are, for the first time, produced by the ethical self in the sense that they now find their meaning as a part of a newly integrated whole. They are undefined raw material until the self becomes absolute enough to define and form them out of itself. These capacities, which the ethicist always had, are for the first time coming into existence as his. No longer has he merely been thrust into existence, forced into forms not of his own making, given desires and goals not of his own choosing, but he has taken hold of himself, and now places himself into the world in absolute terms. The Judge says, As a product he is squeezed into the forms of actuality; in the choice he makes himself elastic, transforms everything exterior into interiority. He has his place in the world; in freedom he himself chooses his place — that is, he chooses this place. 10 We are moving into the realm of spirit here. Spirit is not tossed around by circumstances, nor is it taken in by what the world presents as desirable and worthy of pursuit. Spirit moves within itself, deciding for itself what its existence means, and what it is to do. Its passions, talents, desires and tastes no longer make sense apart from the meaning given to them by the self. The task of the ethical individual is to gather all these qualities into a well integrated whole or personality. Every feature of the self is to be transformed from a

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mere finite ability, into an ideal and a task. Thus, my talents become infinitized through the possibilities the ideal presents me. They do not exist simply so I can create conditions for my enjoyment, but as the contents I must work on as a self that has absolutely chosen itself. Through choosing myself I become aware of the responsibility I have for what I have been given by nature and by society, so that what has been given to me is posited for the first time as mine — as my responsibility.

The Self as a Task The Transformation of Existence: The Actual and the Ideal; The Particular and the Universal For the aesthete, the task of existence is to find means of enjoyment, and a pleasant (secure and comfortable) existence. In ethical self-choice the task changes, in that one recognizes oneself as a task to be taken up and performed. The self is both the task and that which fulfils the task. !! Thus, in this absolute self-choice, I come to myself as both actual and ideal. Above it was said that the self becomes pregnant with itself in the ethical self-choice. This is possible because one is always both the actual and the ideal, but only potentially so. This ideal remains as a mere potential until one gives it to oneself.12 The self's ethical task is to actualize this ideal in the concrete contents and situations of its life. The Judge says, What he wants to actualize is certainly himself, but it is his ideal self, which he cannot acquire anywhere else but within himself. If he does not hold firmly to the truth that the individual has the ideal self within himself, all of his aspiring and striving becomes abstract. The ideal does not exist out beyond the stars, disconnected from the individual, in which case the individual's task would be to claw his or her way to some abstract ideal. We possess an inner teleology that fits with the concrete contents of our individual lives. This means the ideal is intimately connected to the finite contents that make up the material self. How do I know or discover who I am to become? How do I know the direction that will ennoble my talents, capacities and other such concrete contents? The Judge answers these questions vaguely, stating that it is the ideal of every human being to become the 'paradigmatic human being': 'Every person, if he so wills, can become a paradigmatic human being, not by brushing offhis accidental qualities, but by remaining in them and ennobling them. But he ennobles them by choosing them.' 14 The ethical individual has a vision of the ideal as the paradigmatic human being, and the task of the self is to actualize

Ethical Self-Choice 79 this ideal. Another way to say this is that one is, as a particular individual, to become the universal individual. This is not to become someone completely different, as though one dies to one's particularity to become the universal. One does not throw off all one's aesthetic concretions, but gets under them, and emerges through them. The Judge describes this transformation as selfbecoming because the universal human being is within the individual as a potentiality: [T]o transform himself into the universal human being is possible only if I already have it within myself Kara Sufaîf [potentially]. .. . If the universal human being is outside, there is only one possible method, and that is to take off my entire concretion. This striving out into the unconstraint of abstraction is frequently seen. . . . But that is not the way it is. In the act of despair, the universal human being came forth and now is behind the concretion and emerges through it. Duty: Taking Responsibility for One's Future Repentance is the way in which one shoulders the responsibility for one's past; duty is the way in which one shoulders the responsibility for one's future. Repentance is the recognition that one has chosen to be self-centred rather than gaining the view of the universal, and is a decision to turn from this mindset (metanoia}\ duty is the working out of this change of mind in the future by transforming one's particularity into the universal. For example, when a person marries, the particularities of love come under the universal; the universal is then actualized, because love has found its place and calling by being put under the realm of freedom. In this transformation, love is no longer something one 'suffers', if you will, but is chosen, committed to and affirmed through this free choice. In this actualization of the universal, the concrete contents are not thrust away, but find their deeper expression in marriage. Thus, one's concern for the beloved is no longer simply a matter of mood — which may pass - but becomes the basis of a promise, and is thus posited by one's freedom. One's accidental characteristics are put under the universal, transforming them from mere immediate and contingent passions, to a lifelong commitment. Indeed, the marriage vows are an expression of a movement from aesthetic to ethical love. It is a promise that, no matter how things change, one will remain concerned about the welfare of the beloved, and will care for the beloved with deep ethical passion. This concern is no longer an accidental quality of love something that burns hot and then fades away — but is now an essential quality of one's love for the beloved, for without this concern, love is not expressed. This is but one example of the expression of one's duty; it is one's task to become the universal in all aspects of one's life. I am becoming myself because

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the universal I am to become is accessed through my particularity. Thus, it is said that I have my duty. This means that freedom consists in self-determination. If duty is seen as a multiplicity of particular rules and regulations I am to obey, then it comes to be something standing outside myself. This would mean ethics is a working away from who I am in order to become someone else; however, ethics is not a task whereby I continually fight against myself as I try to cover myself with the universal - trying to keep my ugliness from spilling out - but is a type of self-actualization. When the ethical task is seen as simply following rules, the task becomes heavy, burdensome, and even detestable. These rules become means I must suffer through because I want to keep out of trouble, stay out of hell, or not look bad in the eyes of others. These are all pitiful teleologies, because they do not touch the deeper personality, and remain externally directed. But when I grasp the universal within myself, see its beauty and security, and desire it above all else, then ethics becomes beautiful and full of joy. I no longer do what is 'right' in order to avoid unpleasant circumstances, but discover the meaning and purpose of my existence from within, and gather my life in such a way that it makes sense as a coherent whole. To say that humans have an inner teleology is to point to every individual as an end in himself or herself. Human dignity consists in being this end. The Judge expresses this dignity in terms of beauty: If at times I have a free hour, I stand at my window and look at people, and I see each person according to his beauty. However insignificant he may be, however humble, I see him according to his beauty, for I see him as this individual human being who nevertheless is also the universal human being. I see him as one who has this concrete task for his life; even if he is the lowliest hired waiter, he does not exist for the sake of any other person. He has his teleology, he actualizes this task, he is victorious. . . . He is bound to be victorious, of that I am convinced; that is why his struggle is beautiful. This beauty is seen from a couple of different aspects. First, because the teleology is internal to the individual, the Judge has confidence that the individual will be victorious in the ethical struggle. The Judge is both confident and optimistic that the battle to actualize the universal is not a futile undertaking, and will end in victory. Second, and closely connected to this, the beauty and dignity of a human being consists in the fact that he or she is self-sufficient. The individual has an inner teleology, and it would be a contradiction for Being to require something of the individual that he or she is incapable of fulfilling; therefore, the individual is self-sufficient in regards to this teleology. While we are self-sufficient in regards to the ethical task, even the most ethical person realizes there are several things in the self that will not readily bend to the universal. What are we to make of the times we fail to discharge

Ethical Self-Choice 81 our duty? The first step in overcoming this failure is to repent. To repent is to sorrow over one's personal failures. This sorrow arises because of one's love for the universal. The Judge grieves over standing outside the universal: 'At this point, he [the ethicist] says, I have placed myself outside the universal; I have deprived myself of all guidance, the security, and the reassurance that the universal gives; I stand alone, without fellow-feeling, for I am an exception.' 18 He comforts himself in the midst of failure by viewing his grief as a sign that he is still within the universal, and submitted to it. It is those without an ethical consciousness who do not grieve over their failures, and so the grief of failure brings solace to the ethicist. If ethicists are to have stability and integrity, however, then they must do more than grieve over their failures, they must overcome them; if they cannot be overcome, then the ethicist is neither sovereign over the self, nor selfsufficient. Thus, the ethical person must continue to act in such a way as to bring all aspects of the self under the universal. The Judge says, The person who lives ethically will also be careful about choosing his place properly, but if he detects that he has made a mistake, or if obstacles are raised that are beyond his control, he does not lose heart, for he does not surrender sovereignty over himself. He promptly sees his task and therefore is in action without delay. Although his task may begin in the sorrow of repentance, as sovereign and selfsufficient, he is to act in such a way that this split within his personality is healed, and he again becomes a well-integrated whole. The Judge is confident of the ultimate victory of the ethical life. If it could not be victorious, then the personality is not absolute — is not its own objective. This would be to confess that the aesthetic stage of existence is the truly consistent stage. To believe there is a place where the self is not self-determined is to confess that ultimately the self is not free — that freedom is not its essence and is bound by the whims of circumstances. In order for the ethical stage to be consistent, personality must be absolute, and must determine the world, rather than being determined by the world. If there is any area where the personality is not self-determinative, then it is no longer absolute, but is conditioned by that which constitutes its failure to achieve continuity.

The Despair of the Ethical Stage of Existence The Law Judges The ethical existence has opened up the self to freedom, self-consciousness and self-possession. It is a movement from the immediate and scattered existence of

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the aesthete, into the realization that one is not a self as a matter of course. Still, as the ethical stage progresses, problems arise, contradictions that will not allow the self to gain the repose it believed was possible. As transparency within the ethical stage deepens — as more and more pockets of evasion are infiltrated by the light of self-consciousness - an underlying anxiety begins to make itself felt: the ethicist comes to suspect that the ethical stage itself has become an evasion of the self s task - that is, that the ethical stage also ends in despair. To recognize this is not to say the self took a wrong turn by becoming ethical, but that, while the ethical stage is necessary for the self to become itself, it is not sufficient. Despair arises from the attempt to remain within the ethical stage after the contradictions have become apparent. Kierkegaard calls this despair because one is unwilling to continue to take the steps necessary for becoming oneself. The overarching contradiction arising within the ethical stage is due to the ethical individual's inability to bring the ideal to fruition. The pseudonym Vigilius Haufniensis writes in The Concept of Anxiety: Ethics proposes to bring ideality into actuality. . . . Ethics points to ideality as a task and assumes that every man possesses the requisite conditions. Thus ethics develops a contradiction, inasmuch as it makes clear both the difficulty and the impossibility. What is said of the law is also true of ethics: it is a disciplinarian that demands, and by its demands, only judges but does not bring forth life. The authentic purpose of the ethical stage is not to find existential victory or repose in the ideal, but to gather the individual from lostness in the world. The ideal within the ethical stage lifts the face upward, ennobling the individual's stature. The self is no longer shuffling along with its head down, focused on dust. Its gaze has been raised to a much broader horizon, and this lifting of the gaze is the task of the ethical. However, to believe that the ability to lift one's gaze is somehow a sign of one's capacity to put one's life in order - to bring order to all one sees within the horizon - is a mistake, and a source of despair. Self-Sufficiency Self-sufficiency with regard to the task of the self is always defiance. Glenn writes, It is the ultimate self-reliance that he [Judge Wilhelm] has in common with the defiant types of despair described in The Sickness Unto Death. He understands an unconditional self-affirmation, whereas Kierkegaard thought that

Ethical Self-Choice 83 affirmation of our true selves is ultimately dependent on a 'condition' that can be given only by God. We have already seen that Kierkegaard believed despair could be overcome only by transparently resting in the power that established the relation of the self to itself, but our neediness before God will become even more apparent as we look at the despair of the ethical stage, and its fulfilment in the religious stage. The problem with the ethical stage is that it seeks to establish itself by its own power — through self-choice — and yet the power needed to bring together ideality and actuality, infinitude and finitude, the universal and the particular, is not within it. And so the ethical stage's self-sufficiency becomes its despair. This self-sufficiency is the despair of all systems of ethics. While these systems may offer guidance in right action, and may provide reasonable accounts of what we ought to do, they do not provide any internal power for fulfilling the ethical requirements. They may provide incentives, reasons, and even a kind of passion for what is right, but they do not offer the kind of internal oneness with the Good that is necessary for ethical victory. Ultimately they do not allow for what Augustine called 'wholly willing' the Good. The human self is fractured, in self-contradiction, and the best ethics can do is determine this failure negatively as a judgement: no one measures up to what a true ethical system demands (by 'true ethical system' I mean one that does not lower the demands of the ideal in order for human beings to attain to the demands of the 'ethical'). Ethical self-sufficiency turns God into an 'invisible, vanishing point', and so cuts itself off from the source of power necessary for self-becoming. While lip service is given to God by the Judge - and perhaps even held in the highest regards in the end God becomes superfluous to the ethical task. What is important for the ethical individual is how to relate to one's duty. Although the Judge says that one's duty in civic life is the same as one's duty to God, God does not play any essential role in this relationship, except as the one who ordained the whole situation. The pseudonym of Fear and Trembling, Johannes de Silentio, says, The ethical is the universal and as such, in turn, the divine. It is therefore correct to say that all duty is ultimately duty to God; but if one cannot say more one says in effect that really I have no duty to God. The duty becomes duty to God by being referred to God, but I do not enter into relation with God in the duty itself. Duty finds its essence in being traced back to God in the sense that he established the relationship of the self to itself (established the inner teleology), and so ordained the self as that which gives itself the task of becoming itself.

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However, when duty becomes the emphasis - as it always does for the ethical stage - then God becomes unnecessary. The ethical stage sets up a kind of Deistic notion of God with regards to the self. Just as Deists view God as a being who created the universe, set it in motion, and then left it to itself in order to run according to its own efficient mechanisms, so the ethicist views God as having created the self and its relations, thus allowing the self to fulfil itself according to the freedom given to it by God - that is, by its own sufficient capacities. The Deistic God is needed to establish everything, but once this is done, he becomes superfluous to its ongoing movement - its becoming. Just as the universe has been given the requisite conditions for continuing in its eternal, circular motions, so too, according to the Judge, the self has been given the requisite conditions for fulfilling itself. And so de Silentio says that in the ethical stage, The whole of human existence is ... entirely self-enclosed, as a sphere, and the ethical is at once the limit and completion. God becomes an invisible, vanishing point, an impotent thought, and his power is to be found only in the ethical, which fills all existence. So if it should occur to someone to want to love God in some other sense than that mentioned, he is merely being extravagant and loves a phantom which, if it only had the strength to speak, would say to him, 'Stay where you belong, I don't ask for your love.' Because the self is self-contained, this containment defines and fills all existence. God becomes defined and related to in terms of how he fits into the notion of duty. This is what is meant by saying that God is not related from interiority, but only through the exteriority of duty. Ethics cannot comprehend anything outside its own demand, and so it cannot recognize any telos beyond itself. De Silentio says that ethics 'rests immanently in itself, has nothing outside itself that is its telos but is itself the telos for everything outside, and when that is taken up into it, it has no further to go'.23 The ethical seeks to bring the self into repose by confining it in the straightjacket of the universal. But then there is no breathing room for spirit. By seeking to tame and constrain spirit, it disregards the self as both the highest heaven and the deepest pit. Or more to the point, it believes the deepest pit can be fully integrated into the highest heaven. The deepest pit, however, cannot be overcome in self-choice; it cannot, by power of the human will, be forced to conform to the universal will. The longings and cravings of the deepest pit continually attach to certain objects or actions to which a person becomes addicted. The Judge is optimistic that all these areas will soon be brought under the universal, and just this is his despairing evasion of reality. Gerald May, a psychiatrist who has written extensively on addiction, notes in his book Addiction and Grace, 'For the addicted person . . . struggling only with

Ethical Self-Choice 85 willpower, desire to continue the addiction will win. It will win because . . . it is always operative. Willpower and resolutions come and go, but the addictive process never sleeps.' No human is strong enough to get under, and shoulder the dark ground. It is infinite in depth, and never rests in its demand for satisfaction. True, we may be able to behave, to act as if we have integrated our wild longings into our meaning structure, but if they are not truly transformed (if they are only subdued), they will eventually find an opportunity to seek satisfaction. The problem the ethicist faces is not that he or she has occasional lapses (as the Judge believes), but that the 'process never sleeps'. The task of spirit, then, is not to enslave the dark energies under the power of the highest heaven, because this cannot be done, and any attempt to do so will end in despair. By its continual failures, the self shows it is not absolute in this task, and remains relative and contingent: it can fulfil the ethical ideal only to a certain degree. Thus, in its despair, it seeks to dissolve the painful tension by relating to only one pole of the self. While the spiritlessness of the aesthetic stage relates only to the longing and cravings of the self, the ethical stage relates only to the call of duty. The ethical stage has done its work in awakening the self to the universal (to that which is above the cravings and longings of the particular will), though it becomes blind to the power of its original darkness, and to the inability of primordial longing to be satisfied in resolutions and 'absolute' choices. As Berdyaev says, 'Man is a free being and there is in him an element of primeval, uncreated, pre-cosmic freedom. But he is powerless to master his own irrational freedom and its abysmal darkness. This is his perennial tragedy.' This darkness is not revealed until the end of the ethical stage, when its attempt to tame this wild, seething cauldron of forces by its own strength ends in despair. One of the tasks of the ethical stage is to bringjust this darkness to light, and it does this very well. If one remains earnest in the task of selfbecoming, then by the end of the ethical stage one comes to realize just how infinitely wild and dark the human heart is, and much of the early optimism begins to fade, being replaced by guilt and judgement. The Ethical Stage's Over-Optimism The State of Sin The despair of the ethical stage rests in the fact that it is unable to fulfil its own requirement. Michael Wyschogrod writes, The basic characteristic of the ethical situation is that full justice can never be done to ethical demands. Being universal in nature, ethical rules set up a horizon towards which the ethical personality strives without ever being

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able to reach it. The expression for this situation is guilt for guilt is an ethical determination, the ethical expression for ethical failure. But guilt is also the extreme point of ethics, the point at which ethics is destroyed. The magnitude of guilt that is the inevitable result of a strictly ethical point of view is staggering to the subject. He is lost in the sheer impossibility of the ethical demands. At this point a new leap takes place.28 None of us are truly naive enough to believe that we always measure up to the ethical demand, but we do not always see the infinite gap between the requirement and where we stand; we believe that freedom is able to span the separation between what we should be and what we actually are. The Judge believes that he is able to fulfil the demands of ethics through free resolutions. For instance, the guilt of lust can be overcome by the resolution to love only one, and this resolution is expressed in the duty of marriage. If he did not believe this, then he would not be in the ethical stage, but the aesthetic. The longings and cravings that drive the aesthetic individual must be transformed through the power of freedom and the light of reason by willing the universal. Desire, which before had been a wild force, enslaving one under its power, becomes tamed and made beautiful by the power of ethical freedom. George Connell points out, however, While this optimism about the human condition is the basis for ethical endeavor, the repeated process of resolution and failure makes the self increasingly recognize the depth of its guilt. Thus, the collapse of the ethical caused by bringing the self to the threshold of the discovery of sin can, in a sense, also be described as its culmination. . . . [The] ethical stage is an unstable form of selfhood; it naturally develops toward immanent religiousness if the self is honest with itself.29 Instead of leading to a right relation with the particular and universal, the ethical stage actually increases the tension. As freedom and transparency become awakened and increased, it is much more difficult to hide failures from oneself. It is not much different from what happens as one increases one's knowledge in certain areas: the more one learns, the more one discovers how little one knows. In terms of the ethical: the more one actualizes the ideal, the more one discovers how far one truly is from actualizing the ideal. This tension finds its highest pitch in the consciousness of sin. Sin is a religious category, and as such, is a category upon which ethics becomes shipwrecked: ethics is incapable of dealing with sin, because it is outside its sphere of influence. Ethics may understand individual sins, or the breaking of individual laws and rules, but the category of sin is totalizing, in that sin is a state of being. It is this state of sin that ethics is incapable of comprehending, except as that which is its limit. Haufniensis writes,

Ethical Self-Choice 87 Sin, then, belongs to ethics only insofar as upon this concept it is shipwrecked with the aid of repentance. If ethics is to include sin, its ideality comes to an end. The more ethics remains in its ideality, and never becomes so inhuman as to lose sight of actuality . . . the more it increases the tension of the difficulty. 31 Ethics, then, is not that which actualizes the ideal, but it brings about the collision and tension between the ideal and the actual. The Judge speaks about the particular and universal as if the positing of the self in ethical self-choice necessarily brings about a reconciliation between the actual and the ideal. He acts as if the ability to bring the actual and ideal together in a single sentence is a sign that they can be held together in existence, if only enough ethical passion is present. And yet, as transparency progresses, the individual comes to discover how really impotent are the ethical passions and resolutions. What the ethical ideal actually accomplishes (its true task), is to bring to light the religious ideality as the ideality that can be actualized. In the end, ethics is a stage that points beyond itself. Its ideal cannot be actualized, and so it points to that upon which it is shipwrecked. The ideal is not abandoned in the religious stage, nor is it lowered; the ideal remains just as stringent, but an individual's relationship to it is transformed by the leap into the religious stage. In bumping up against the religious stage, the ethical comes in contact with categories that suspend it. Those with even a limited acquaintance with Kierkegaard have heard faith described as the ideological suspension of the ethical, in which one apprehends an absolute duty to God', however, Kierkegaard also stresses sin as that which suspends the ethical. Climacus writes in the Postscript: The ideological suspension of the ethical must have an even more definite religious expression. The ethical is then present at every moment with its infinite requirement, but the individual is not capable of fulfilling it. This powerlessness of the individual must not be seen as an imperfection in the continued endeavor to attain an ideal, for in that case the suspension is no more postulated than the man who administers his office in an ordinary way is suspended. One is not to see one's powerlessness as a weakness to be overcome ethically; rather, it is to be seen as that upon which the ethical itself is shipwrecked. It is not simply that one is currently powerless with regard to fulfilling the ethical ideal, but that one is, as Climacus puts it, heterogeneous with the ethical requirement. In other words, one does not have it in oneself to fulfil the ethical requirement, and this is what the ethical, in its despair, ignores. Climacus writes,

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The suspension consists in the individual's finding himself in a state exactly the opposite of what the ethical requires. Therefore, far from being able to begin, every moment he continues in this state he is more and more prevented from being able to begin: he relates himself to actuality not as possibility but as impossibility. Thus the individual is suspended from the ethical in the most terrifying way, is in the suspension heterogeneous with the ethical, which still has the claim of the infinite upon him and at every moment heterogeneity is only more definitely marked by heterogeneity. Although the ethical is not completely ignorant of its guilt, it is, by its very nature, optimistic of the possibility of fulfilling its task. As we know, according to the traditional formulation of evil, guilt is seen as a weakness of will; ethics is optimistic this weakness can be overcome by positing the absolute, and through resolutions. Kierkegaard, however, does not view the problem as simply weakness of will — whatever that may be — but as a radical, ontological opposition to the ethical requirement, which 'is sin as a state in a human being'. Against the persistence of the state of sin in which humans find themselves, the spiritless answer is to lower the requirement to a place where people can reach it. This is no longer an option for the ethical, since it has become too much of a self for such a digression. 5 The ethical stage's initial answer to failure is repentance, and so it returns to this repentance after every failure. Repentance Kierkegaard holds that ethics is shipwrecked with the 'aid of repentance'. What does this mean? Repentance is the means through which the ethical seeks to gain control of its past failures. By repenting of its guilt, it accepts its responsibility, and then seeks to transform itself into the universal. The problem is that repentance can only deal with guilt by sorrowing over it, and has no power over the possibility of future guilt. Ethical repentance is never able to get ahead of guilt, but must always follow behind it. This is its grief. In the face of its failures, the highest the ethical can attain is to grieve over its guilt — it cannot do away with it. As the sense of guilt increases with a greater self-consciousness, one expends all one's energy repenting. In Fear and Trembling, de Silentio says that the ethicist, 'can make the movement of repentance under his own power, but he also uses absolutely all his power for it and therefore cannot possibly come back under his own power and grasp actuality again'.36 Sorrow over failure is 'the deepest ethical selfcontradiction'. There comes a point when the ethical has reached its limit, and the continual sorrow over its ethical failure leads freedom back into necessity and fate.

Ethical Self-Choice 89 Kierkegaard comes at the same point from another direction in The Concept of Anxiety. As long as the Judge stands firm in the conviction that the ethical life will end in victory, the sorrow of repentance is sweet — like the sweet aroma of a sacrifice given to the ethical requirement. Its sweetness is found in being of one mind with the requirement, and knowing the requirement is derived from within oneself as an inner teleology. As the ethical existence progresses, however, the state of sin becomes more and more disclosed. At first this is not disclosed in consciousness, but in a disclosure arising from anxiety. The sweet sorrow begins to turn more and more into dread, as a presentiment that something deeper and uglier resides in the self than initially thought. The original darkness and the universal are not so easily reconciled, and this darkness demands to be affirmed as a part of the self. The tension of this internal contradiction begins to make itself known, and the ethicist senses the heterogeneity with the ethical requirement. Seeking to remain within the universal, the ethicist's only course of action within this rising consciousness of guilt is to repent. This repentance, however, leads the ethicist further and further away from freedom - that is, deeper and deeper into the discovery of the state of sin. As the tensions of the poles within the self begin to unravel, anxiety takes hold of the individual. At this point, repentance is no longer a means of freedom, but becomes the work of a slave. Haufniensis describes this movement in The Concept of Anxiety: Sin advances in its consequences; repentance follows step by step, but always a moment too late. It forces itself to look at the dreadful [the dreadful exemption], but like the mad King Lear . . . it has lost the reins of government, and it has retained only the power to grieve. At this point, anxiety is at its highest. Repentance has lost its mind, and anxiety is potentiated into repentance. . . . Sin conquers. Anxiety throws itself despairingly into the arms of repentance. Repentance ventures all. It conceives of the consequence of sin as suffering penalty and of perdition as the consequence of sin. It is lost. Its judgment is pronounced, its condemnation is certain, and the augmented judgment is that the individual shall be dragged through life to the place of execution. In other words, repentance has gone crazy. This is a description of the despair of the ethical. It anxiously senses itself to be in a state over which its willpower is powerless, and yet this discovery has not yet become conscious and chosen. Repentance remains its only defence against this growing consciousness. It soothes its battered identity by asserting that its sorrow at least shows it is a lover of the universal. However, as its powerlessness against its sin grows more and more conscious, it begins to wonder if its repentance is truly sorrow. After all, if one were truly sorrowful, why does one continue to fail?

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In its powerlessness over guilt, repentance eventually goes crazy. Kierkegaard means by this that repentance is no longer the sweet sorrow of an ethicist who is optimistic of victory, but is now driven by the anxiety of being unable to get out from under the guilt. Repentance begins to lose its bearings in this dizzying anxiety. Its continuous failure becomes so all consuming that the ethical person begins to see the ideal, not as a beautiful goal, but as that which is beyond its reach. Eventually it no longer even seeks to actualize the ideal, but expends all its power in repentance. The growing consciousness of its weakness becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy: having gone crazy, it actually produces sin. For example, an alcoholic who becomes conscious of his or her problem, and the suffering it has caused, may become obsessed with the power alcohol holds over him or her. When this happens, the tension created by the fixation on the ideal (sobriety), and one's past failures to reach this ideal, may become so tightly wound that something has to give, and so the alcoholic goes on a drinking binge. Kierkegaard writes concerning repentance that has gone crazy: The most terrible punishment for sin is the new sin. This does not mean that the hardened, confident sinner will understand it this way. But if a man shudders at the thought of his sin, if he would gladly endure anything in order to avoid falling into the old sin in the future, then the new sin is the most terrible punishment. There are collisions here (especially in the sphere of sinful thoughts) in which anxiety over the sin can almost call forth the sin. When this is the case, a desperate wrong turn may be made. Vigilius Haufniensis described it thus: Repentance loses its mind. As consciousness grows, it begins to sense itself as an exemption from the ethical, and yet this takes place in anxiety. Its conscious understanding of life is still defined by ethical categories; its anxiety is due to a presentiment that there is something beyond the conscious limits of the ethical existence — it is anxious over what is beyond its horizons, and in this sense its anxiety is without an object. What is so dreadful for the ethicist is the realization — held just below the surface - that humans do not will the good simply by becoming conscious of it, that our freedom does not always tend toward the universal, and that we may actually choose against it. The ethicist is anxious about the ideological suspension of the ethical. De Silentio quotes from Richard III in order to give an example of how sin is the suspension of the ethical: I, that am rudely stamped, and want love's majesty I strut before a wanton ambling nymph; I, that am curtailed of this fair proportion,

Ethical Self-Choice 91 Cheated of feature by dissembling nature, Deformed, unfinished, sent before my time Into this breathing world scarce half made up, And that so lamely and unfashionable That dogs bark at me as I halt by them. .. .42 De Silentio says people like Gloucester cannot be saved by fulfilling their civic duty or by obeying the order of society: 'Ethics really only makes fun of them.' 43 These 'half made up' human beings are not necessarily more imperfect than others, but they have become conscious of the contradiction of the self, and their inability to reconcile their particularity with the universal. The conscious realization that one cannot measure up begins to bring about a break with the ethical/44 The Ethical Stage's Despair: Inclosing Reserve The criticism implicit in Kierkegaard's view of the despair of the ethical stage is that ethical systems do not take into account that we are imperfectible. If an ethical system were to take sin seriously, it would thereby exceed itself, for it is powerless to overcome sin. On the other hand, if ethics ignores sin, it is a futile discipline, calling on people to do the very thing they are incapable of. In the end, the ethical stage must be despaired of, though hope calls from beyond this despair; it calls from the religious stage of existence. As we saw with regards to the aesthetic stage, in order to leap into the next stage of existence, one must choose to despair of the existence-stage (the meaning-structure) one is in. In being chosen, despair becomes an act, rather than something passively suffered. This choice for despair is an intensification of despair. As despair intensifies, a greater consciousness of the actual nature of one's despair increases. Further, this intensification of despair is closer to salvation, because in the awareness of what despair is, there is a chance one will seek to obtain the cure. The more clear one's conception of despair, the more apparent it becomes what is needed for its cure. In this greater consciousness, there is also a greater freedom. The Judge understood this freedom in terms of self-determination. In this, the self's eternal validity is the absoluteness of the task of positing itself. As the consciousness of failure at this task grows, the requirement is no longer seen as something uplifting, but as something that crushes the self. One correctly sees one is too weak to lift or fulfil the requirement, but continues to believe that it is one's duty to do so. The decision one is confronted with at this point is whether to be completely crushed over not being able to wrench oneself from this weakness, or to be broken and humbled by it — whether one will continue in pride, or become poor in spirit. As Kierkegaard says, 'What lifts up more, the

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thought of my own good deeds, or the thought of God's grace'.45 To be humbled by one's powerlessness is to leap into the religious stage of existence by choosing to despair of the ethical stage; to take pride in one's weakness is to intensify one's despair, and move into the form of despair that transcends the ethical stage: inclosing reserve. In transcending the ethical, inclosing reserve falls under the spiritual category of the 'demonic', though it is still not yet outright spiritual defiance. Kierkegaard calls inclosing reserve demonic because it is despair and anxiety over the Good. In the ethical stage, where one still holds onto the belief that one can fulfil the ethical requirement, one's weakness is sensed in the mood of anxiety over evil ~ that is, it is the possibility of new guilt that causes the ethical person to become anxious. In the movement into the demonic, one has despaired so much over one's guilt that one accepts and chooses oneself as guilty — which is the right thing to do, since one is guilty — but does so in despair and anxiety, rather than humility. Pride begins to manifest itself more powerfully in this anxious despair, in that one gains strength from one's guilt — becomes proud of one's guilt — though still in a brooding and only relatively conscious manner. 46 Kierkegaard says that anxiety over the Good is an unwillingness to be open to redemption. It has lost the optimism of the ethical stage, and in this sense is on the brink of defiance; it differs from defiance only in the sense that its despair becomes something it chooses to suffer under, rather than something it freely, willingly and defiantly takes upon itself. Another way to put this difference is that defiance is freedom choosing or willing to be itself against the Good, while inclosing reserve wills against the Good in unfreedom — and so wills not to be itself, that is, itself as free. Thus, a strange state of affairs has arisen within inclosing reserve, in that a deeper self-knowledge has led to unfreedom rather than freedom. And yet, this is neither the unfreedom of spiritlessness, nor that of being externally determined; rather, this unfreedom is posited by freedom: 'Freedom is posited as unfreedom, because freedom is lost.' The freedom that is lost is the optimistic ethical freedom of autonomy and self-sufficiency. The ethical requirement cannot be fulfilled, and so one realizes one is not self-sufficient. This recognition is posited by self-conscious freedom as unfreedom. It is still a free choice, because the reaction to one's failures and weaknesses is self-chosen. Haufniensis says that freedom 'underlies unfreedom or is its ground'. This choice for unfreedom is inclosing reserve's attempt to close itself off from the Good - that which is freedom, openness, truth and disclosure. Its continual torment is just this inability to close itself off from the Good. If it could turn away from the Good, there would be no sense of weakness, and so no torment, but it is too conscious to return to such spiritless disconsolateness. It has become a single individual before the Good, and so

Ethical Self-Choice 93 remains in continual anxiety. 50 As Dostoevsky's 'Underground Man' puts this unfreedom: The more aware I was of goodness and of everything 'lofty and beautiful,' the deeper I sank into my slime, and the more likely I was to get mired down in it altogether. But the main point is that all seemed to take place within me not by chance, but as though it had to be so.

This is not an external determination, but an internal determination to lock himself up inside his own wretchedness, in hopes of breaking all contact with the Good. He wants to be left alone by the Good so that he can at least lick his wounds in peace. Haufniensis writes, The utmost extreme in this sphere is what is commonly called bestial perdition. In this state, the demonic manifests itself in saying, as did the demoniac in the New Testament with regard to salvation: rieôi KOti aoi [What have I to do with you]? Therefore it shuns every contact [with the Good], whether this actually threatens it by wanting to help it to freedom or only touches it casually.. .. Therefore, from such a demoniac is quite commonly heard a reply that expresses all the horror of this state: Leave me alone in my wretchedness/52 Inclosing reserve yearns for solitude. This solitude is not the deeper spiritual ability to be away from the world due to one's contentment with oneself, but is a need to be alone with one's torment. Kierkegaard explains this need for solitude in an Upbuilding discourse:' [T]he troubled person expects no victory; he has all too sadly felt his loss, and even if it belongs to the past, he takes it along, expecting the future will at least grant him peace to be quietly occupied with his pain.' j3 A twisted knot becomes tightened within inclosing reserve: it despairs over its weakness, and hates itself because of this weakness, and yet it cannot stop reflecting on this weak self, becoming completely consumed with itself. This is why Anti-climacus characterizes it as pride/ Inclosing reserve is proud of itself: it is proud it cannot stand this weakness within itself. While one can easily imagine a proud person saying to someone else, T am too good for you', inclosing reserve says this to itself. It is proud of itself for having such a high conception of what the self is, and of being conscious that its own self does not measure up. It is proud of being determined by spirit, even though this determination comes through its weakness. Obviously, it does not completely identify itself with its weakness: in an evasion of itself, it identifies itself more as that which is tormented by its weakness, than by its actual weakness. It has moved beyond the ethical consciousness

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into a consciousness that the Apostle Paul described in his letter to the church in Rome: For the good that I wish, I do not do; but I practice the very evil that I do not wish. But if I am doing the very thing I do not wish, I am no longer the one doing it, but sin which dwells in me. . . . Wretched man that I am! Who will set me free from this body of death? What makes inclosing reserve what it is, is that it does not ask the question Paul asked - it does not seek to be free from its body of death. It despairs in the face of the Good - abiding in its wretchedness - rather than maintaining hope in the possibility of redemption. This makes its relationship to the Good extremely complex. On the one hand, the self desires to close itself off from any contact with the Good, because this contact is its torment; on the other hand, this weakness is its source of pride, and so it finds pleasure in it. The pleasure it feels is pride's selfsatisfaction that, although the self is weak against the Good, it is strong in its consciousness of this misrelation to the Good. Its torment consists in its unfree relation to the Good; its pleasure consists in its ability to 'rise above' the weakness as self-consciousness. The torment and pleasure it feels over its weakness is an expression of its contradiction as unfree self-consciousness. Dostoevsky's Underground Man expresses this pleasure of inclosing reserve: But it is precisely in this cold, loathsome half-despair, half-belief, in this deliberate burying of yourself underground for forty years out of sheer pain, in this assiduously constructed, and yet somewhat dubious hopelessness, in all this poison of unfulfilled desires turned inward, this fever of vacillations, of resolution adopted for eternity, and of repentances a moment later that you find the very essence of that strange, sharp pleasure I spoke about.56 Earlier the Underground Man describes this pleasure in terms of selfconsciousness: This pleasure comes precisely from the sharpest awareness of your own degradation; from the knowledge that you have gone to the utmost limit; that it is despicable, yet cannot be otherwise; that you no longer have any way out, that you will never become a different man; that even if there were still time and faith enough to change yourself, you probably would not even wish to change; and if you wished, you would do nothing about it anyway, because, in fact, there is perhaps nothing to change to. We see here a man who is falling in love with his despair, beginning to embrace it with some gusto, and finding pleasure in his conscious misrelation to the

Ethical Self-Choice 95 Good. Indeed, even if there were time to change, he would probably not wish to, since he has come to define himself through his despair. At this point, he is unwilling to imagine moving beyond this despair, and is content to stay within the horizons of inclosing reserve — his underground dwelling. Kierkegaard says that the person in inclosing reserve has a right consciousness about his or her weakness - Kierkegaard would find nothing wrong with the consciousness of guilt described by the Apostle Paul. The wrong turn is taken in trying to establish the self (one's identity) on the basis of this weakness: 'you must go through with this despair of the self to get to the self. You are quite right about the weakness, but that is not what you are to despair over; the self must be broken down to become itself, just stop despairing over it.' By both despairing over and loving its weakness (that is, finding its meaning in its weakness), inclosing reserve does not move beyond it. It sees its weakness as its only strength. It is not, however, to be strengthened in its weakness, but broken by it; only in this way can it go beyond inclosing reserve into a deeper consciousness of the self. We find a clue to this movement in a letter written to Judge Wilhelm by an old friend, who is now a priest in the Jutland of Denmark. The Priest's upbuilding thought is that, in relation to God, we are always in the wrong. Although this sermon is written by a Christian priest, it does not express the specifically Christian existence; it is a movement into what Kierkegaard calls immanent religion or Religiousness A. Immanent religion is part of the religious stage of existence, though it is not a fully actualized spirit. In this stage the self becomes conscious of total guilt, and so leaps into the infinite. In Relation to God One is Always in the Wrong From the vantage point of spirit, we can see that all forms of despair revolve around whether one will relate to the Good in humility or in pride. Inclosing reserve is a prideful reaction to the realization that, before the absolute, one is always in the wrong. The pride comes out in its focus on itself, its unwillingness to be itself before the absolute, and in its anxiety and despair about the absolute the dread inherent in its contact with the Good. The Priest gives three clues to a right (humble) relation to the absolute: acceptance of total guilt, the development of an absolute, unconditional, and infinite relation to God, and a radical turn from temporality's goal to eternity's goal. Total Guilt There is a gnawing pain that accompanies the consciousness of one's own weakness before the absolute, and there are also several means of finding relief. We have already looked at two despairing attempts at relief: one may

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evade the requirement by lowering it to an acceptable (that is, achievable) level, or one may despair over one's weakness in inclosing reserve, thus gaining some relief by having transcended the weakness in despair. The Priest adds a third despairing means, which he calls doubt: If a person is sometimes in the right, sometimes in the wrong, to some degree in the right, to some degree in the wrong, who, then, is the one who makes that decision except the person himself, but in the decision may he not again be to some degree in the right and to some degree in the wrong . . . ? Is doubt to rule, then, continually to discover new difficulties, and is care to accompany the anguished soul and drum past experiences into it? How can we ever determine whether we are in the right or in the wrong? Where do I go outside of my existence in order to judge whether, and to what extent, my existence measures up to the requirement? I can remember many times when I have been either too harsh or too lenient with myself. The fact that there is no way to get outside our existence in order to make such a judgement can easily lead to doubt or scepticism - much as the Learner's Paradox led to the Sophists' ethical scepticism. One becomes frozen in the knowledge of being unable to make any judgement concerning one's standing ethically. Since personality has no absolute or secure place to situate itself in existence, one may come to believe that the ethical requirement is a subjective undertaking, and the Good should be discussed only in emotive terms. Once this happens the doubt spirals out of control, and eventually the whole notion of the Good dissolves into sophistry. There is another approach, however: one can transcend the ethical stage by appropriating the thought that 'in relation to God we are always in the wrong', and so admits the defeat of the ethical stage. Louis Mackey says 'the Judge is no stranger to guilt. But he takes his guilt as a moral challenge, when in fact he would be better advised to see it as a moral defect.' To bring out why it is necessary to admit one's total guilt, the Priest describes how lovers relate to each other when a wrong has been committed. He does this in order to show that the Judge's attempts to justify his wrongs — and even his sorrow over them - exhibit how little love he actually has for the absolute and God. In reality the Judge is more impressed with himself and his own self-sufficiency than with the demand of the requirement, though he continually tells others about his love for the absolute. The Priest says that, when a wrong has been committed, the heart of a true lover would never seek to be right in relation to the beloved. It is hard to imagine a person in love seeking to shift blame to the beloved, or trying to make excuses to the beloved for the wrong. The Judge, however, in the midst of the wrong committed, maintains he is in the right. He does not blame the absolute, but maintains that his sorrow over

Ethical Self-Choice 97 having committed his wrong shows he is not in conflict with the absolute. He seeks to justify himself in the face of his failings. This conflict cannot be overcome through justification, but only by confessing that one is always completely wrong in relation to it. Mackey writes: [T]he priest tells his hearers, choose yourself. But choose yourself as you are: in the wrong against God. You lose yourself eternally as long as you continue to absolutize your freedom. You gain yourself eternally as soon as you recognize your nothingness. The decision for absolute guilt — and it is a decision, not reached by calculation but taken in freedom - is the only edifying (constructive) decision available. This is the act of freedom by which a man's self acquires absolute worth: the choice of his self as worthless in relation to God. Infinite Resignation As an Absolute Relation to the Absolute The choice for oneself as totally guilty is an absolute and infinite choice. The Priest writes, [Wjishing to be in the wrong is an expression of an infinite relationship, and wanting to be in the right, or finding it painful to be in the wrong, is an expression of a finite relationship! Hence it is upbuilding always to be in the wrong — because only the infinite builds up; the finite does not! The Priest is accusing the Judge of being disingenuous toward the absolute. The Judge claims to have chosen the absolute absolutely — that is, to be in an infinite relation to it - and yet he is not. All ethical relationships are finite and conditional in the sense that sometimes one is right and sometimes wrong. In other words, one relates contingently to the absolute, for one sometimes does not relate to it rightly. The Judge seeks to cover this contingent relationship by saying that even when he is wrong he sorrows over it. However, the Judge is sorrowful because he is not absolutely connected to the absolute, and so shows that his relationship to the Good is contingent on other things — for instance, his weakness, or the desires that are in opposition to the absolute. If one confesses one is always in the wrong in relation to the absolute, then one absolutely relates to the absolute as absolutely in the wrong. In this confession the self becomes infinitized, and makes a passionate leap into the religious stage of existence. The ethical existence is often nothing more than the worship of one's own self-sufficiency and self-righteousness; it is simply the particular will seeking to glorify itself by means of the universal will. The Priest says that if the Judge were truly interested in himself as a task - in his eternal validity

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and responsibility to the absolute — then he would choose what the Priest espouses: total guilt. In this he would leap into the religious stage of existence, and find himself as nothing before God, and yet still remain infinitely and unconditionally engaged with Him.64 The Change from Temporality's Goal to Eternity's Goal In this choice for total guilt, there is also the first radical movement away from temporal goals. Although the Judge says his choice is a choice for eternal validity, his actual existence expresses interest in his civic duty. In this, the eternal goal comes to be seen only in terms of temporal goals, and gets split up into the various activities of one's civic life. To fully comprehend the eternal goal of an eternal happiness one must make a decisive break with the temporal. The ethical life does not make this decisive break, but attempts to raise the temporal and finite up to the eternal and ideal by ennobling them. It is incapable of doing this, and so remains mired within intrinsically relative activities — relative to conditions, circumstances and the activities of others. In the end, the victory and security the Judge had expected actually increases the tension between the eternal and temporal, ideal and actual, absolute and relative. Eventually the tension between these poles becomes so great that a kind of energetic discharge looms, and a leap into the religious stage is possible. Here the emphasis is on the absolute telos of an eternal happiness. Religiousness A consists in a radical break from the finite and contingent, in hopes of finding repose within an infinite and absolute understanding with God. One's happiness and joy is found in a break from the world, so that one'sjoy rests completely in one's relationship with God. We will now examine this decisive break with the finite, in order to see the rise in selfconsciousness and freedom that results from it.

Notes 1. E/OII,p.211. 2. E/O II, pp. 213-14. 3. E/OII,p.215. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.

E/O II, p. 206 (my emphasis). E/O II, p. 214. E/O II, pp. 215-16. E/O II, p. 177 (my emphasis). Jeremy Walker says, 'The man who is living aesthetically may have a normally clear and accurate picture of himself, his likes and dislikes, his talents, goals, etc. But he will never have asked himself what it all means. So, naturally, he will

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9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15.

16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21.

22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30.

31. 32. 33. 34. 35.

be unable to answer the question that marks the ethical: What does your life mean?' (p. 167). E/OII,p.251. E / O I I , p.251. E / O I I , p. 262. E / O I I , p. 259. E / O I I , p. 259. E / O I I , p. 262. E/O II,pp. 261-2. Again, one senses the Aristotelian theme here of the fulfilment of one's form through acts which are themselves the fulfilment of the form. E/O II, p. 263. E/O II, pp. 275-6. E/O II, p. 330. E/O II, p. 252 (my emphasis). CA, p. 16. John D. Glenn Jr. 'The Definition of the Self and the Structure of Kierkegaard's Works' in International Kierkegaard Commentary: The Sickness Unto Death. Ed. Robert L. Perkins, pp. 5-21. Macon, GA: Mercer UP, 1987, pp. 14-15. FT, p. 96. FT, p. 96. FT, p. 96. FT, p. 82. Gerald May. Addiction and Grace. San Francisco: Harper/Collins, 1988, p. 52. Berdyaev, p. 103. Michael Wyschogrod. Kierkegaard and Heidegger: The Ontology of Existence. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1954, p. 88. George Connell. To Be One Thing: Personal Unity in Kierkegaard's Thought. Macon, GA: Mercer UP, 1985, p. 183. Kierkegaard distinguishes between two modes of religious existence, which he calls Religiousness A (immanent religion) and Religiousness B (paradoxical religion, or Christianity). Sin is a category of the latter, and is actually a category that distinguishes it from Religiousness A (which knows only guilt, and not sin). For our purposes, the religious stage will be dealt with more generally, and so there will be a mixure of the two modes. The reason for this is because Kierkegaard's criticisms of the ethical stage are sometimes given from within the aspect of Religiousness A and sometimes within Religiousness B. Since we are looking at the despair of the ethical stage, and not specifically at these two modes of religious existence, I will be using criticisms from both modes without explicitly distinguishing between them. CA, pp. 17-19. CUP, p. 266. CUP, pp. 266-7. CUP, p. 267. 'The more ideal ethics is, the better. It must not permit itself to be distracted by the babble that it is useless to require the impossible. For even to listen to such talk

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36. 37. 38. 39.

40. 41. 42. 43. 44.

45. 46. 47. 48.

49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57.

Kierkegaard's Analysis of Radical Evil is unethical and is something for which ethics has neither time nor opportunity. Ethics will have nothing to do with bargaining; nor can one in this way reach actuality' (CA, p. 17). FT, pp. 99-100. FT, p.98n. CA, pp. 115-16. This self-fulfilling prophecy could have many rationales behind it. For instance, one's fixation on the ideal and one's continual failure may cause one to believe that one cannot overcome the 'dependency' on alcohol, and so one simply acquiesces. Or the alcohol itself becomes a means by which one tries to forget the struggle. In either of these instances, there is a release which takes place. Eventually there must be relief from this situation, and since one does not have it in oneself to fulfil the ideal, one succumbs to the temptation. CA, p. 173. For Kierkegaard, anxiety is rooted, as a concept, in an anxiousness over nothing. This is contrasted with fear, which has a specific object. FT, p. 130. FT, p. 130. This realization of being an exception is an initial break with the ethical; after it, a further question arises as to whether one will make the break in defiance or in faith. As yet that has not been decided. What one has become conscious of, however, is that one is outside the universal. This consciousness of radical guilt has the effect of making one a single individual, perhaps singled out for all eternity. JFY, p. 153. By 'relatively conscious' I mean that it is not yet the defiance which draws its existence from its conscious hatred and despair of the Good. CA, p. 123. '[Ujnfreedom is a phenomenon of freedom and thus cannot be explained by naturalistic categories. Even unfreedom uses the strongest possible expressions to affirm that it does not will itself, it is untrue, and it always possesses a will that is stronger than the wish' (CA, p. 135n). CA, p. 123. CA,p. 123. Fydor Dostoevsky. Notes from Underground. Trans. Mirra Ginsburg. New York: Bantam, 1992, p. 6 (my emphasis). CA,p. 137. EUD, p. 20. SUD,p.96. Romans 7:19-20, 24. Dostoevsky, p. 12 (my emphasis). Dostoevsky, p. 7 (my emphasis). While it is true that it is only through having become spirit that these twisted knots begin to form in consciousness, it is not an 'excessive consciousness' that causes one's guilt, but the defiance and pride that intensifies with this growing consciousness. The defiance and pride are present

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58. 59.

60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65.

even at the lowest levels of (un)consciousness, but they become intensified and felt - in all their torment and pleasure - as consciousness intensifies. SUD,p.96. E/O II, p. 346. The Priest is speaking directly to the Judge's own definition of despair as personality's doubt. The question of guilt eventually becomes a question of the degree of guilt. In seeking to assess the degree of guilt we arrive nowhere else than in the personality's doubt, for it is unable to determine these degrees from itself (unless it is willing to take the leap which consists in the absoluteness of the thought that in relation to God one is always in the wrong, which is just what the Priest proposes). Louis Mackey. Kierkegaard: A Kind of Poet. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1971, p. 90. E/O II, pp. 347-8. Mackey, p. 94. E/O II, p. 348. JFY, p. 106. E/O II, p. 353.

4

The Final Movement Toward Defiance: Infinite Resignation

The Self's Primary Object of Relation The Distinction between the Stages The Priest's letter at the end of Either/Or II ushers in a change in the primary object of relation for the individual. In the ethical stage of existence, the individual is primarily related to himself or herself— the Judge stands before his duty, and has the criterion within himself as the paradigmatic human being. In the religious stage, the individual's primary relationship is to God. This change in the highest object of existence makes a difference in how one understands oneself and one's telos. In The Sickness Unto Death, Anti-climacus writes: The progression in consciousness we have been concerned with up to now occurs within the category of the human self, or of the self that has man as its standard of measurement. But this self takes on a new quality and specification in being the self that is directly toward God. This self is no longer the merely human self, but what, hoping not to be misinterpreted, I would call the theological self, the self directly before God. What is stressed here is the individual's object of passion. The aesthetic person is passionate about what is external, and will gladly and 'heroically' surrender the self in order to gain this object of'infinite' worth; the ethical person has the self as the object, and will gladly give up all in the world in order to gain this self. For the religious stage, the object of existential focus becomes God. It is in focusing on what is beyond both the world and the self that the religious existence arises. A movement into the religious stage of existence prepares an individual to be open to the highest human good. Kierkegaard believed that an individual's will, passions and intellect are not initially set or prepared to receive the highest good.4 Self-becoming is just this preparation, whereby the individual is continually transformed through an infinite movement away from the world and self-sufficiency — that is, from what it is initially lost in. Kierkegaard understood this preparation in terms of his Christian context, and so spoke of the highest good as an eternal happiness expressed in a relationship with God, which is viewed as the absolute telos of human life. Eternal happiness is a right relation to the will of God - a right relation to the ground of our Being. o

_

.

.

.

*^

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He believed that each of the stages has a relation to this eternal happiness, which impacts a person's will, passions and intellect. The aesthete views the eternal happiness as a great source of inspiration for poetic, theatrical or philosophical works. This type of relation to an eternal happiness is essentially disinterested: it is outside the poet as a muse, and not as something which essentially alters or affects his or her existence. Aesthetes are oblivious to their despair of the eternal, and simply seek the pleasure found in the contemplation of an eternal happiness. What an eternal happiness may actually mean for their lives is not something aesthetes find interesting. The ethical stage places an eternal happiness alongside all the other aspects of duty. It is a matter of interest, but only in its relation to the fulfilment of one's inner teleology. In other words, an eternal happiness finds its relative place within the overall ethical task of becoming oneself. Climacus writes, I do not know whether one should laugh or weep on hearing the enumeration: a good job, a beautiful wife, health, the rank of a councilor of justice — and in addition an eternal happiness, which is the same as assuming that the kingdom of heaven is a kingdom along with all the other kingdoms on earth and that one would look for information about it in a geography book. For the ethical person, an eternal happiness is something tacked on at the end of a good life. One's main concern while living is the fulfilment of one's duty, and if this is fulfilled - if one becomes the paradigmatic human being - then an eternal happiness can be expected as a reward. Certainly the Judge will say that he is interested in the Good, but he conceives the Good as inseparable from the self, and understands it in terms of an inner teleology not something distinct from the individual as his or her ground. There is no sense of standing before God as a single individual. One's responsibility is conceived in terms of personal duty, not personal relationship. Where does one find an eternal happiness when the awareness of total guilt arises, and one admits to an inability to fulfil one's inner teleology? If ethics doesn't lead to the highest human good, what does? In what does the highest human good consist? An understanding of the highest human good comes through a leap into the religious stage of existence, in which one is transformed. The change is not merely, or even essentially, intellectual in content, but existential — that is, it involves the whole person, and changes one's relationship to the world, to oneself, and to God. Climacus says that Religiousness A does not base the relation to an eternal happiness upon one's existence but has the relation to an eternal happiness as the basis for the transformation of existence. The 'how' of an individual's existence is the result of the relation

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to the eternal, not the converse, and that is why infinitely more conies out than was put in.6 In an ethical existence, one measures and understands one's relationship to the Good in terms of how one has succeeded or failed in one's duty. One's existence determines one's relationship to the Good. In the religious stage, it is the possibility of an eternal happiness that determines one's existence, in that one's existence is transformed in the relation to it. In other words, in the leap from the ethical to the religious stage, the focus changes from the selfsufficiency of the individual in fulfilling the Good, to God's power to transform a person's existence. In the ethical existence, it is the individual who has the power; in the religious existence, it is God whose power alters the individual's existence, if only the individual is willing. Self-Knowledge Essential self-knowledge consists in a purification from the evasive selfknowledge which knows itself only in relation to what is external to itself. This purification takes place in the ethical stage through a distancing of oneself from the world through an absolute choice. As we have seen, however, the ethical stage is ultimately divided by a multiplicity of civic roles and duties connected to the world; an ethical person is too much in love with the multiplicity of worldly tasks to find the purity needed for relating directly to God. As the despair of this stage is confronted and chosen in a more transparent manner, the ethical person conies to realize that all ethical efforts were ultimately attempts to be something — that is, they were attempts at selfglorification: 'The genuinely humble man is he who conies to see that all his efforts at humility have really been efforts to express his pride, the genuinely loving man he who sees that his acts of love have been acts of self-glorification. And so on.' There comes a point in the growth of consciousness when the pride of the ethical existence shows itself: all one's expressed love for the absolute or others is really self-love, and all one's righteousness is selfrighteousness, since the left hand always knows what the right hand is doing. Paul Ricoeur puts the distinction between the ethical and religious existence in 'Guilt, Ethics, and Religion' in such a way as to show that the rise in religious consciousness is able to plumb the depths of the evil inherent in the purely ethical existence: Evil, in moral consciousness is essentially transgression, that is, subversion of a law; it is in this way that the majority of pious men continue to consider sin. And yet, situated before God, evil is qualitatively changed; it consists less in a transgression of a law than in a. pretension of man to be master of his own

The Final Movement Toward Defiance 105 life. The will to live according to the law is, therefore, an expression of evil ~ and even the most deadly, because the most dissimulated', worse than injustice is one's own justice. Ethical consciousness does not know this, but religious consciousness does. Nietzsche showed how the 'darker' drives behind the ethical life are sublimated and hidden within the ethical standards of society and the individual. He came to see this drive to be the master of one's own life as the very Being of existence, and all the ethical pretensions of humility and duty as spiritless and nihilistic attempts at will to power. Unlike Nietzsche, Kierkegaard does not chastise the ethical stage for its ideals, but for its evasions. The ethical ideals are to be upheld, though it is an illusion to believe one is fulfilling them. Kierkegaard believed we are to move beyond this ethical evasion, and become conscious of the fact that our most ethical actions, while often holding to the letter of the law, are usually opposed the spirit of the law. The religious existence understands the heart is deceitful and corrupt, evasive and comfort-seeking, and the motives which drive the ethicist are far from pure. Within the religious stage there is enough self-consciousness to understand the heart, and enough freedom to allow for a purification through the existential pathos of infinite resignation, guilt and suffering. What holds this three-dimensional pathos together, and gives it a transforming energy, is the thought that to need God is one's highest perfection. The ethical existence found its perfection in self-sufficiency, and its relation to God was the same as the Deists': 'Thank you very much for what you have done, but I can manage from here.' The religious existence finds its perfection to be the opposite of this autonomous self-sufficiency: Through a more profound self-knowledge, one learns precisely that one needs God, but at first glance the discouraging aspect of this would frighten a person away from beginning if in due time he were not aware of and inspired by the thought that precisely this is the perfection, inasmuch as not to need God is far more imperfect and only a misunderstanding. Ethical self-sufficiency is a misunderstanding of oneself and one's relation to God. Part of the transformation that takes place in the movement into the religious stage is a change in this knowledge of oneself and God: one discovers that one's highest perfection is to need God, and that one is capable of nothing on one's own. This leads to a rather simple, and yet radical, consciousness of God: Insofar as a person does not know himself in such a way that he knows that he himself is capable of nothing at all, he does not actually become conscious in a deeper sense that God is. Even though a person mentions his name at times, calls upon him occasionally, perhaps in the more momentous

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decisions thinks he sees him and is moved . . . he is nevertheless somewhat piously deceived if he therefore believes it is manifest to him that God is or that the being of God would not have another manifestness in this earthly life, the meaning of which is continually confused if God is not implicitly understood. 10 Only those who understand what it means to be poor in spirit - that one is spending one's years making an uproar for nothing — only they understand that their highest perfection is found in their poverty before God. This leads us to an analysis of the existential pathos of the religious existence. The analysis of this rise in consciousness and freedom will help us understand the depths of defiant despair, and the most vehement form of evil.

The Initial Expression of an Existential Pathos: Infinite Resignation A Human Being's Highest Perfection begins with the Knowledge that One is Capable of Nothing What does it mean to be an excellent human being? The Judge had no problem answering this question: fulfilling one's duty, and becoming the paradigmatic human being. This, however, has been called into question: the impossibility of fulfilling one's ideal shows this cannot be the criteria for humans. We have looked at three wrong reactions to this problem: lowering the ideal, the despair of inclosing reserve, and a scepticism that mocks ethics. Kierkegaard says religious existence gives a different view of human excellence: But what is a human being? Is he just one more ornament in the series of creation; or has he no power, is he himself capable of nothing? And what is his power, then; what is the utmost he is able to will? What kind of answer should be given to this question when the brashness of youth combines with the strength of adulthood to ask it, when the glorious combination of willing to sacrifice everything to accomplish great things, when burning with zeal it says, 'Even if no one in the world has ever achieved it, I will nevertheless achieve it; even if millions degenerated and forgot the task, I will nevertheless keep on striving - what is the highest?' Well, we do not want to defraud the highest of its price; we do not conceal the fact that it is rarely achieved in this world, because the highest is this: that a person is fully convinced that he himself is capable of nothing, nothing at all. Kierkegaard is convinced that the meaning of human existence is never found without going through this thought, and that one knows oneself best only


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when this thought is existentially understood. It is difficult to fully grasp and accept this until one has an understanding with oneself— that one is ultimately dependent on a power other than oneself. Religious existence, then, is a move from self-sufficiency to this total dependence. It is a coming to terms with this dependence on God, and the realization (perhaps 'acceptance' would be a better term) that this dependence is itself the meaning and good of human existence. To be capable of nothing is to realize one's impotence in fulfilling the ideals required of a human being. Such a contradiction makes no sense within the ethical stage, but the religious person has grasped its significance: it takes the focus off oneself and puts it on God. Inclosing reserve sensed it was capable of nothing, but this was its torment, because it sought to remain independent from the Good — that is, to be something good in its own right. The despairing move of inclosing reserve is to refuse to relate to anything higher than its own weakness. Although it knows it is capable of nothing, it still thinks that being capable of something is human perfection. Indeed, the more independent and self-sufficient a person is, the more perfect he or she is said to be. Inclosing reserve is what it is because it has consciousness enough to know it cannot reach this perfection, yet not enough consciousness to realize this is not human perfection. We are not to despair of our weakness, but work ourselves through it into a dependence on God. It is in this transformation of the human ideal that one becomes conscious that God is. 13 Human success is not to be measured by external exploits or fulfilments of duty, but by this relationship to God. Kierkegaard is writing to Christendom, to those who claim to know God, to have a close relationship with God because they are members of the Danish Church, yet who believe they are capable of so very much, and who take this self-sufficiency as a sign of their perfection. Kierkegaard wonders what part God plays in this self-sufficiency. In the end, he finds that God is simply a relative help used in order to take care of those few aspects of existence in which the individual presently feels weak. Given this relationship to God, it is not surprising that religion came to be viewed as a crutch for the difficulties of human existence. This came out especially in Marx, Nietzsche and Freud. Religion in general, and Christianity in particular, came to be seen as the opium of the people, the expression of spiritlessness and nihilism, and the illusion that spares people from falling into neuroses. The Deist God was no longer even needed to set up the drives and telos of human life, because the dark longings and cravings of human existence became the forces that guide and move our lives - the ground of life. This too is beyond the ethical, and has its own view of human perfection: to see through the illusion of one's need for God. Kierkegaard lived just prior to, and during, the period in which the masters of suspicion wrote. He was also suspicious of Christendom, and sensed

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humanity's need to be roused from its slumber. He did not believe, however, that religious consciousness or Christianity were the causes of spiritlessness, but the self-sufficiency which was reigning within Christendom. Existentially speaking, God was dead in Christendom, because self-sufficiency became the criterion for perfection. Thus, self-sufficiency is the illusion that needs to be exposed, and the resulting transparency will lead us, he hoped, to see more clearly our need for God, and not, as the masters of suspicion thought, our independence from the idea of God. Kierkegaard said, 'to need God is nothing to be ashamed of but is perfection itself, and that is the saddest thing of all if a human being goes through life without discovering that he needs God.' Kierkegaard does not deny that human beings are capable of accomplishing many finite, relative and contingent ends, but he is pointing out the illusion of believing that these relative ends are absolute (which is to think that one is capable of something), or that one is to relate oneself to them absolutely (which is to think that one is something). To think one is capable of something is to absolutize what is, by nature, relative, and to give infinite value to what is finite. For instance, Schopenhauer recognized the ultimate nothingness we confront when we authentically face death; not simply the nothingness of death itself, but how the nothingness of death also swallows up — in its infinite nothingness - all ourfiniteachievements: That which has been exists no more; it exists as little as that which has never been. But of everything that exists you must say, in the next moment, that it has been. Hence something of great importance now past is inferior to something of little importance now present, in that the latter is a reality, and related to the former as something to nothing. Kierkegaard knows that eternity's goal — the goal of an eternal happiness — seems like nothing in relation to what is being accomplished in this bustling world. In relation to eternity's goal, however, all this busyness and our human accomplishments within the established order come to nothing. It is not the temporal and finite goals that are capable of moving all of existence, but the eternal and infinite goals - and yet these seem to be nothing to the world. Here we discover why the deeper the movement into spirit, the more ambiguous the outward manifestations. The most outstanding Christian in the church, whose character is beyond reproach, and whose accomplishments are readily observable to all who would look may be losing himself in the world; at the same time, the most reprobate sinner, sitting at the bar, may be gaining the eternal, though there are no outward manifestations. Kierkegaard writes,


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The infinite in the guise of being nothing, purely and simply 'man' (somewhat like the lily and the bird, which indeed are not something), is in the world the point outside the world which can move all existence. . . . On the other hand, everything which wants primarily to be something in the world is not a moving power but becomes the untrue established order of things, a kind of secular dovetailing, which the established order is, which stretches itself out complacently in earthly security. A change from the ethical existence to the religious appears to be nothing, relatively and finitely speaking, and yet from the aspect of spirit, it is that which moves all existence. It is the infinite in the guise of nothing. One's entire existence is transformed, and yet relatively and finitely speaking nothing happened. As long as one is directed outwardly, seeking to be something and capable of something, one is closed off to the consciousness that God is, and to the infinite which moves and transforms one's existence. Dying To ... This moves us into an important characteristic of infinite resignation, which Kierkegaard expresses as 'dying to . . . ' With a growing awareness of being capable of nothing, and a greater dependence on God, life is no longer found in the world. Life becomes defined by one's relation to God — however undefined one's idea of God may be at this point. In other words, one thrusts away temporality's goal, and in the seeking of eternity's goal, the external becomes less and less a concern. This movement toward inwardness is what it means to be spirit. In the Postscript Climacus speaks of this 'dying to . . . ' in terms of an inward activity in which one cuts the ties to what is outward: But before God he inwardly deepens his outward activity by acknowledging that he is capable of nothing, by cutting offevery teleological relation to what is directed outward, all income from it in finitude, even though he still works to the utmost of his ability and precisely this is the enthusiasm. The ethical stage understands the inner teleology in terms of an outward direction, so that the ethicist is necessarily immersed in the external and its relative ends. The Judge's will expressed its sovereignty and self-sufficiency in terms of bringing the finite under the power of his absolute, good will, and this power was an expression of freedom. In infinite resignation, the self has come to see that this transformation is not possible by one's own power, and so its teleology is severed from what is externally and finitely directed. A new conception of freedom is arrived at: it is a decisive break with the external that is, the will is cut off from all concerns with conforming the external to the

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absolute. The emptiness of one's finite tasks consist in an existential recognition that they are worthless in fulfilling one's absolute telos. Walker writes, 'Resignation' simply means giving up all claims on any object, person, or achievement in this world. It is the exact correlative of the discovery that I can essentially do nothing. For it is the form in which this discovery is expressed in the will. To discover that I can do nothing is to detach my will from all possible results of my acts, all possible achievements. It is, among other things, to cease to be influenced in my decisions by any desire for worldly achievable goods and any fear of worldly ills. This does not entail ceasing to desire and fear. It only requires that my decisions no longer be determined by such motives. When we look at the finite and contingent, we are unable to become conscious that God is, because his ways and thoughts are infinitely higher than ours; this is why dying to the world is so important for an understanding and consciousness of God: in order to know God, to know ourselves, and to comprehend our own relationship to God and his to us, we must cease viewing our existence from the aspect of the relative and comparative. Religiousness A is this initial, negative step toward God. It is a renunciation of the finite, and as such, a merely negative choice. As we will see, the vacuum or openness created by resignation does not get filled, at least not within Religiousness A. While 'dying to . . . ' includes a death to being nourished by the finite and the worldly, as well as a death to every earthly human hope, the most important thing one is dying to is one's own self-centered existence in the world. As Kierkegaard says, Therefore, death first; you must die to every merely human hope, to every merely human confidence; you must die to your selfishness, or to the world, because it is only through your selfishness that the world has power over you. . . . But naturally there is nothing a human being hangs on to so firmly - indeed, with his whole self! - as to his selfishness! Ah, the separa tion of soul and body in the hour of death is not as painful as being forced to be separated from one's soul when one is alive. And a human being does not hang on to physical life as firmly as one's selfishness hangs onto its selfishness.'19 Human existence and perfection are not about being the centre of the universe, about getting one's due, or about being the master of one's domain. In Religiousness A one sets oneself into a different universe, and one's existence is thereby transformed. The aesthetic existence is completely self-centred, knowing nothing other than its own pleasure, in which the universe and other people exist for its own

The Final Movement Toward Defiance 111 enjoyment. This is a very small self. The ethical existence understands that the self exists for more than enjoyment, and that there is a higher ideal for which it must strive. Though this self has been enlarged by the ideal, it is still the centre of its own existence, even when dutifully helping others. In religious existence, one discovers that one is a bit player in the universe, if you will. While it is true one is still concerned about oneself— indeed, one's concern is infinitely more concentrated on oneself — this self is no longer the self-centred self. A new understanding of the self arises, and this understanding leads to a transformation in one's existence. The self recognizes that all its earthly goals were attempts to be something, and yet this 'something' comes to nothing in the end; all its striving was for merely finite and contingent gains, though they were taken as the ultimate and absolute. Religiousness A realizes that the selfish energy expended by the ethical individual in the attempt to defend the perception of his or her 'right' relation to the Good is ultimately selfish energy; it is an energy filled with self-justifying posturing, criticalness toward those who threaten this self-perception and a drive to dominate anyone who questions its correctness. The religious existence has, to put it succinctly, seen through the illusion that governs most human existence. At this point it has not only died to the world, but it has died to its selfishness. What is left after this death of the self? The nothingness of freedom. In dying to oneself, the individual is enlarged into the infinite form of the self, as it floats over an abyss of nothingness. Unlike inclosing reserve, where the self is filled with dread and anxiety in the face of this nothingness, the religious self senses it has become more transparent to itself. It senses a clarity, arising through the death of its illusions of self-sufficiency. It does not have anything positive to hold onto at this point, and so has nothing (no-thing) by which to define itself. Still, this is a deeper understanding of itself than it has ever had before, and existence is purified through this transparency. We will gain a deeper understanding of this nothingness of the self by examining the absolute telos of human beings. An Absolute Relation to the Absolute Telos In infinite resignation and 'dying to . . . ' , the self is seeking to develop an absolute relation to its absolute telos. The absolute telos can be put in many ways: an eternal happiness, the highest human good, a right relation to oneself and God. All of these remain ambiguous to the person in infinite resignation, though they point to some meaning beyond the finite and relative. The absolute and unconditional task of gaining oneself remains, though it has become a purely negative task in Religiousness A — a purification. In infinite resignation, one begins to understand that the earthly must be surrendered in order to relate absolutely to one's absolute telos. Climacus

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argues that there can be no mediation of the absolute telos. All mediation is relative, serving as a conditioning element, and making the end relative to the mediation. Climacus writes, 'All relative willing is distinguished by willing something for something else, but this highest TE\OS must be willed for its own sake. And this highest ri\o^ is not a something, because then it relatively corresponds to something else and is finite.'2 In the ethical stage, the absoluteness of the goal of self-becoming is also asserted, though it remains tied to the finite and relative; however, the use of relative ends — one's career, marriage, civic responsibilities, and so forth — is no longer to be absolutely related to an absolute telos, but only to relative ends. Success, victory and one's highest good become measured by social standards and values, which are governed by the established order. The paradigmatic human turns out to be a socially con structed identity. Given this, infinite resignation believes the only way to relate to the finite is to die to it. As long as one holds onto anything finite, one does not relate absolutely to the absolute. A temptation arises at this point, which will allow us to see how radical the renunciation is. The temptation is that even the renunciation of all finite and temporal things may simply be a means to an eternal happiness. If this is the case, then it is not an absolute and infinite act, but relative to one's renunciation. When one uses this renunciation as a means to become something, then one is, even in this renunciation, willing the finite — willing the finite as renounced for the sake of an eternal happiness (eternal happiness as perfect self-identity). This was the mistake of the Middle Ages. According to Climacus, in its renunciation of the world, it sought to use this act as an outward expression of its relation to the absolute telos - for example, in a vow of poverty, celibacy, flagellation and so forth. The Middle Ages sought to relate to the absolute through the relative and finite, and to this extent had more to do with ethical existence than religious. Climacus says that whenever the infinite and absolute seeks to express itself outwardly in the finite and relative, the former ends up losing itself to the latter as a source of identity. 21 If one seeks to use the resignation of the finite in order to gain one's highest goal, then one will eventually crave the finite, if for nothing else than to renounce it. This renunciation then becomes an ethical act (one's duty), rather than a religious one. Thus, the task is to keep the distinction between the finite and the infinite and the external and internal — firmly in mind. One continues to live in the finite, looks like everyone else, and yet is dead to the world. Climacus writes, In immediacy, the individual is firmly rooted in the finite; when resignation is convinced that the individual has an absolute orientation toward the absolute rl\oq, everything is changed, the roots are cut. He lives in the finite, but he does not have his life in it. ... He is a stranger in the world of finitude, but he does not define his difference from worldliness by foreign dress (this is a

The Final Movement Toward Defiance 113 contradiction, since with that he defines himself in a worldly way); he is

incognito, but his incognito consists in looking just like everyone else. One performs one's tasks in the world, but none of them hold any allure, and they are empty of any reward. One transcends them while in their midst. The alienation this transcendence creates is so complete that it can feel as if one is merely watching some other self in its daily tasks. Through the focus on an absolute telos, existence is gathered and consolidated in a new way. Eternity entered time in the moment of resolution, in which one gathered oneself in an infinite and absolute choice to relate to one's absolute telos. A moment came that emptied the finite of significance, and the meaning of existence needs to be defined anew. One ventures everything upon the discovery of the absolute good. One's life is focused and gathered around the realization that, before God, one is nothing, and that the highest human perfection is to need him. There is no sense of victory carried with this in-gathering, at least not the kind of victory found in the Judge's explication of the ethical life. One confronts emptiness everywhere, is unable to be at home in the finite, and life becomes a longing for the infinite — which, of course, is emptied of content. As we will see when we look at the pathos of suffering, this is a very painful existence. One is alienated in every external situation. The finite goals and objectives that unite people are not available. The excitement and uproar others are making is often unappealing, holding no fulfilment, meaning or significance. One must still perform the finite and external responsibilities, but not in such a way that one's life is found in these activities. Rather, life is found in the internal struggle of repetition. In infinite resignation the roots to the finite are cut, and so there is no way even to communicate the struggle going on inside, since those caught up in the finite could not understand this absolute relation — so foreign to them is the life of the infinite. In infinite resignation, one remains alone before God and the struggle of the infinite. The finite world would become a mere shadow, if not for the finite aspect of the self, which demands to be taken into account. One remains continually confronted by the finite and its goals, feels the pain of loneliness, and perhaps at times longs to be able simply to enjoy the finite again. From time to time the finite comes to one as a temptation, because there is no concrete identity to be found within the pure infinite, and so the dream of victory and success in relative ends remains a seductive whisper in one's ear. The prophet Jeremiah proclaimed that new mercy is offered every morning, and while this is good news, it implies that new temptations and failures are also being confronted daily. Every day brings with it a new set of finite tasks to become lost in. Repetition is the only thing that brings coherence in this situation.

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Thus, the task of Religiousness A is repetition: one must repeat, throughout one's temporal life, the movement of resignation. At times the repetition comes easily and naturally, for the finite is bitter and empty; at other times the repetition is difficult, and one must again leap into the infinite. We will never be finished with this task: 'let us not forget that it was the case at least in school that the mediocre pupil was recognized by his running up with his paper ten minutes after the task was assigned and saying: I have finished.'23 The positive effect of this repetition is not that we find a calmness within the infinite, but that we bring more freedom to the struggle against the world and ourselves. The finite no longer has the hold it once did on us, though it continually demands to be taken account of. And so we must repeat our resignation as long as we exist.24 This continual repetition, taking place as it does in ever new circumstances and trials, allows one to gain a deeper consciousness of oneself.

The Essential Expression of an Existential Pathos: Suffering This tension between the finite and infinite becomes the basis of the second dimension of the existential pathos of religious existence: suffering. The purified desire for the infinite and absolute is continually defiled by a renewed desire for finite fulfilment. Although the finite's illusions have been seen through, the silence and emptiness of the infinite can be so painful that the finite tempts with its enchanting tangibility, and at times we fall into it again. It is this continual foundering that is at the heart of the suffering of Religiousness A. By 'essential' Kierkegaard means that without this expression — without this particular type of suffering — the person is not in the religious stage of existence. The suffering is essential because it flows out of infinite resignation as a matter of course. It is due to the longing of the dark depths, which continually seeks to find fulfilment and satisfaction through attaching its longing to the tangible world, in an attempt to gain self-identity - that is, self-revelation. However, since the finite has become drained of meaning, the self has lost its taste for the finite, and often has difficulty even stomaching it. One must continue to work, deal with other people, and fulfil the responsibilities of the finite, all with the intense awareness of the emptiness of these activities, their worthlessness in fulfilling the task of the self, and with the gnawing hunger of the dark depths still intact. One lives within the finite, and yet does so as if floating over an abyss. Climacus writes, Whereas esthetic existence is essentially enjoyment and ethical existence is essentially struggle and victory, religious existence is suffering, and not as a

The Final Movement Toward Defiance 115 transient element but as a continual accompaniment. Suffering is, to recall Prater Traciturnus' words, the 70,000 fathoms of water upon whose depths the religious person is continually. The abyss is the infinite which has completely devalued the finite. This abyss becomes that out of which one's existence flows — that is, out of which one's freedom and self-consciousness find their source. As a deeper movement toward becoming oneself, this is a move in the right direction, but the darkness of this source of self-conscious freedom means there is nothing positive on which to hang one's hope. Thus, while the emptiness and darkness is the source of one's freedom, it is also the source of one's suffering. To surrender the latter, would be to forfeit the former. This can be seen in Gerald May's analysis of addiction and withdrawal. He speaks of the infinite in terms of'spaciousness', which seems to have no bounds, no qualities, no form. It is unconditioned and unconditional. It has no objective attributes that we can grasp and relate to other systems. Since we can neither make an adequate cellular representation of it nor incorporate it into our preexisting systems, we cannot adapt to it. 27 He then points out that this spaciousness is really freedom, and it is this freedom that the addicted person is struggling with. Now obviously the addicted person is struggling to be free from the addictive behaviour, but May rightly regards the struggle to be with freedom itself — that is, not simply overcoming one addiction by filling the empty spaciousness with something else (as when one quits smoking, and ends up gaining weight because one exchanges cigarettes for food), but staying in the spaciousness or emptiness of freedom itself. May writes, In addition to minimizing withdrawal symptoms, the substitution of one normality for another allows us to avoid the open, empty feeling that comes when an addictive behavior is curtailed. Although this emptiness is really freedom, it is so unconditioned that it feels strange, sometimes even horrible. If we were willing for a deeper transformation of desire, we would have to try to make friends with the spaciousness; we would need to appreciate it as an openness to God.28 As spaciousness and openness, there is nothing to which the self can attach itself in order to gain a sense of identity. Infinite resignation's suffering is due to this continual struggle of being unable to define oneself in relation to anything finite. It would actually be quite easy to express this struggle if one were to become something through it. However, in the religious stage one comes to

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oneself as nothing, and so one's identity of oneself dissolves into this nothingness. Of course, one is not to be consoled by this nothingness, in the thought that this becoming nothing is becoming 'something'. Indeed, the attempt to become a little 'more nothing' is the constant temptation of infinite resignation. Climacus says, 'the ultimate spiritual trial by tried and tested religious persons is always that the utmost effort wants to delude one with the notion of self-importance, that it is something.' And so one would be willing to suffer in order to become a martyr, if only in one's own eyes. This, however, is not the suffering of infinite resignation. The particular kind of suffering characteristic of infinite resignation is to undergo the struggle, and gain nothing from it. Although the self in its self-centredness yearns to be something, cries out to be affirmed as essential in existence, and to reveal itself as unique and significant, infinite resignation continually comes behind it in order to give its devastating blow: 'You are nothing, and all your supposed self-importance is an illusion.' Simone Weil's description of this death emphasizes selfishness' relation to longing and desire: The extinction of desire (Buddhism) - or detachment - or amor fati or desire for the absolute good - these all amount to the same: the empty desire, finality of all content, to desire in the void, to desire without any wishes. To detach our desire from all good things is to wait. Experience proves that this waiting is satisfied. It is then we touch the absolute good.30 Elsewhere she writes, We possess nothing in the world — a mere chance can strip us of everything — except the power to say 'I.' That is what we have to give to God — in other words, to destroy. There is absolutely no other free act which it is given to accomplish — only the destruction of the T.' These two quotes speak to the same task. It is desire and longing that empowers the T', and is its ground and drive. Combined with attachment to material and finite things, the T finds a multiplicity to desire, and disperses itself selfishly around its hunger for more. The only free act, and the absolute good to which Weil points, is infinite resignation. Weil also speaks of waiting, and this indeed has its place in infinite resignation. But it is closer to Kierkegaard's thinking to see this waiting as preparation. Meister Eckhart wrote, God does not work in all hearts alike but according to the preparation and sensitivity he finds in each. In a given heart, containing this or that, there

The Final Movement Toward Defiance 117 may be an item which prevents God's highest activity. Therefore if a heart is to be ready for him, it must be emptied out to nothingness, the condition of its maximum capacity. So, too, a disinterested heart, reduced to nothingness, is the optimum, the condition of maximum sensitivity. To speak of venturing everything in infinite resignation is to point to this emptying out to nothingness. What is emptied is self-assertion and the finite, and what is left is the nothingness of the infinite. The only consolation is that there is an opening created for the appearance of God, if he desires to appear. This emptying of the self before God is both an absolutely free act, as Weil puts it, and a removal of all the pockets of obscurity that desire and longing create when they put their sights on anything other than God. There is no repose in this, but a continual repetition, and so a continual struggle in which one gains an ever deeper transparency. Not only is transparency deepened in terms of the nature of the finite and the self, but one comes to understand the source of human freedom. When one looks out into the world in infinite resignation, and one's desires are no longer tied to the finite, freedom is seen as coming from the infinite. One experiences freedom as something arising out of a transcendence of all one knows and can be known, for its source is beyond the concrete and even idealized contents of our existence - that is, beyond the contents of the aesthetic and ethical stages. The landscape of one's existence changes with infinite resignation, and this change of landscape deconstructs, and then reconstructs, the view of one's ultimate source of freedom: freedom does not consist in choosing between a multiplicity of finite goals and desires (aestheticism), nor does it consist in a self-sufficiency out of which the autonomy of the self reigns (the ethical), but is a source beyond all finite values and all self-sufficiency. As beyond self-sufficiency, infinite resignation comes to understand freedom as something that is offered to one, a gift, if you will. It is not created by oneself, but chosen, and as chosen its source lies outside of oneself. Still, freedom is one's task, and in this sense it is one's own freedom, though always as something to be chosen or accepted. If it can be accepted, then it can also be rejected - given up for the sake of security, self-assertion and the pleasures of the world. Dostoevsky's Grand Inquisitor saw this clearly. The Inquisitor recalls for Jesus the temptation with which the 'wise and dread spirit' confronted Him: ' " 'Thou wouldst go into the world, and art going with empty hands, with some promise of freedom which men in their simplicity and their natural unruliness cannot even understand, which they fear and dread - for nothing has ever been more insupportable for a man and a human society than freedom. But seest Thou these stones in the parched and barren wilderness? Turn them into bread, and mankind will run after Thee like a flock of

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sheep, grateful and obedient, though for ever trembling, lest Thou withdraw Thy hand and deny them Thy bread.' But Thou wouldst not deprive man of freedom and didst reject the offer, thinking what is that freedom worth, if obedience is bought with bread? Thou didst reply that man lives not for bread alone." '~,33 The Inquisitor applies this to humanity several pages later when he says, ' "Thou didst reject the one infallible banner which was offered Thee to make all men bow down to Thee alone - the banner of earthly bread. And Thou has rejected it for the sake of freedom and the bread of heaven. "Behold what though didst further. And again in the name of freedom! I tell Thee that man is tormented by no greater anxiety than to find someone quickly to whom he can hand over that gift of freedom with which he is born. But only one who can appease his conscience can take over his freedom. In bread there was offered Thee an invincible banner; give bread, and man will worship Thee, for nothing is more certain than bread." ' In Religiousness A one gains the painful understanding that the acceptance of freedom means the rejection of that with which humans normally comfort themselves. The certainty and comfort of the finite can be so peaceful, and although one knows it is empty, at least it is tangible; the emptiness of freedom does not give anything one can put one's hands or mind around, but remains simply the discovery of the infinite as the spaciousness within which God may be approached. The task of self-becoming brings a consciousness of the nature of freedom: it is a barren wilderness, an openness that offers no tangible comfort. The person in Religiousness A comes to realize that this suffering of freedom is the continual lot of human existence, and is placed upon the individual by existence itself - by the structure of the self. The suffering was always there (as the Buddha's First Noble Truth states), though as we have seen, spiritlessness has found many ways to evade it - or better, to reject it. The everydayness in which spiritlessness has its life is, for the most part, nothing more than the attempt to cover up the suffering of existence. It covers up the emptiness of the self by gaining identity through comparison. In this it hands over its freedom for the comfort and security of earthly bread. Those in infinite resignation have become too conscious for this. They have seen the nature of human existence and it is too late to go back. Climacus says, from the religious point of view all human beings are suffering, and the point is to enter into the suffering (not by plunging into it but by discovering that one is in it) and not escape the misfortune. Viewed religiously, the fortunate


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person, whom the whole world favors, is just as much a suffering person, if he is religious, as the person to whom the misfortune comes from outside. Fortune or misfortune define neither the self, nor its sense of victory or failure. As transparency rises, the understanding of existence as suffering becomes more explicit to the individual; as the illusions used to cover up suffering are exposed, one is able to come to terms with the fact that human existence is an inherent struggle. With the growing transparency, the reality that lies underneath the illusions can no longer be denied, even though this reality is the source of suffering. What is revealed is that the finite web of means-ends relationships are without fulfilment. It remains a web of self-enclosed relationships that go nowhere, and offer only the evasion of the reality that lies underneath. The pain inherent in infinite resignation would be overcome if perfect selfidentity with the infinite and eternal could be attained, but such self-identity with the eternal is closed off by existence itself. The self is eternal and absolute, and yet it is not, and can never be this in any immediate sense of perfect identity. It holds within itself both the principle of particularity and the principle of the universal, but in a divided manner. It is itself, then, only within a process of becoming. The absolute telos of an existing human being is this process, and can never be the stasis of perfect self-identity with the eternal. This division of the self means that those in infinite resignation continually waver in existence because of their alienation from the finite aspect of the self. They can make the movement of infinity by themselves, and also relate to the unconditional (which is why Kierkegaard calls Religiousness A the religion of immanence), but they are unable to make the transformation back down into the conditional. In other words, they are unable to affect a synthesis between the infinite and the finite on their own. They remain drawn to the eternal happiness, and the eternal consciousness of God's love for them, though it is a captivation that leaves them foundering in existence when the inevitable descent into the finite becomes necessary. There is a hope of some kind of birth within infinite resignation, that the suffering of self-becoming will yield to an eternal happiness. The deep longings continue, and though one knows they must not be attached to anything tangible, the expectation is that the emptiness of freedom will open up to something wonderful. Gerald May expresses the hope that resides in the suffering of infinite resignation: The specific struggles we undergo with our addictions are reflections of a blessed pain. To be deprived of a simple object of attachment is to taste the deep, holy deprivation of our souls. To struggle to transcend any idol is to touch the sacred hunger God has given us. In such a light, what we have called asceticism is no longer a way of dealing with attachment, but an act of love. It is a willing, wanting, aching venture into the desert of our nature,

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loving the emptiness of that desert because of the sure knowledge that God's rain will fall and the certainty that we are both heirs and cocreators of the wonder that is now and of the Eden that is yet to be.36 There is the expectation that rain will fall, but one does not know what this rain is, when it will come, or even if it will come in this lifetime. One is at a standstill (one has done all one can do), and wonders if all that is left is to twist in the wind forever. The Decisive Expression of an Existential Pathos: Guilt The task of religious existence is simultaneously to relate oneself absolutely to the absolute telos and relatively to relative ends. We have seen that this turns out to be the struggle with oneself as a self-contradiction, and entails the suffering described above. One has died to immediacy and to oneself, and gained a deeper understanding of true freedom. Though great strides of self-consciousness and freedom are made in infinite resignation, Climacus regards it as 'the enormous detour'. What he means is that Religiousness A creates a situation where one is never able to get to the point where one moves on in fulfilling one's task; instead, one expends all one's energy in the beginning — resignation — and ends up suffering under the contradiction of being both finite and infinite, rather than synthesizing these poles. Upon entering the religious stage of existence, one immediately recognizes the task — to relate absolutely to the absolute and relatively to the relative — but one is unable to actualize this right away. As time moves on, this task continues to be neglected, for one remains consumed by the beginning. Climacus writes, [T]he task is given to the individual in existence, and just as he wants to plunge in straightway . . . and wants to begin, another beginning is discovered to be necessary, the beginning of the enormous detour that is dying to immediacy. And just as the beginning is about to be made here, it is discovered that, since meanwhile time has been passing, a bad beginning has been made and that the beginning must be made by becoming guilty, and from that moment the total guilt, which is decisive, practices usury with new guilt. It is no surprise that guilt is so decisive for religious existence, since the leap into this stage consisted of the thought that, in relation to God, one is always in the wrong. The whole situation is strewn with guilt, which rises up before one in each moment of infinite resignation, because in this movement one is only at the beginning of fulfilling the religious task. One is continually having to die to the world, and is never able to get beyond this. A growth in freedom and


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self-consciousness even comes to a halt, as one abides within the enormous detour. This guilt-consciousness is so decisive for the religious existence, that to be without it is to show that one is not relating oneself to one's eternal happiness. Thus, one finds the strange paradox that the decisive expression for relating to one's eternal happiness is guilt — one would think that guilt would be an expression for not relating to one's eternal happiness. Guilt, however, is the only way a human being can express a relation to the absolute telos. Thus, as it is with suffering so it is with guilt: one is guilty simply by virtue of existing. One is not only guilty of particular transgressions, but guilt is one's position in existence. While we are normally conscious of particular instances of guilt, these particular instances are grounded in (made possible by) our total guilt. To speak of the particular guilt or innocence of specific actions is to think in comparative and relative terms. However, there cannot be relative guilt in terms of one's relation to the absolute; either one is guilty in one's relation, or one is innocent. To see only particular instances of guilt is to measure guilt in degrees. This is to look at guilt in terms of the external and relative, which allows one to see oneself as guilty in some instances, but innocent in others. Kierkegaard is simply pointing out that guilt in any area is to be totally guilty of not relating to the absolute absolutely. Covering up this total guilt by focusing only on particular instances is an evasion of one's true relationship to the absolute. Climacus describes this by saying, With regard to guilt-consciousness, childishness assumes that today, for example, he is guilty in this or that, then for eight days he is guiltless, but then on the ninth day everything goes wrong again. The comparative guilt-consciousness is distinguished by having its criterion outside itself. . . . When he is in good company on Monday, it does not seem so bad to him, and in this way the external context determines an utterly different interpretation." What the 'enormous detour' and total guilt show is that Religiousness A ends in despair. The individual is doomed to a continual need of having to die to the finite, for fear that it will become absolute. At the same time, the finite aspect of the self can never be completely denied. The Despair of Religiousness A A Merely Negative Act: Nihilism Although Religiousness A ends in despair, there has been a rise in consciousness due to a recognition of the source or ground of freedom, as well as the

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self-understanding that one's significance and identity is not tied to finite ends. These are very transformative realizations, because the self gains a more integrated, purified and absolute existence around them. There has also been an intensification of a particular kind of human strength or actualization: one is more self-determined than ever before. We saw in our analysis of Kant, that freedom is connected to the notion of self-determination, which for Kant meant to act out of the internal law of practical reason. As the ground of the will, the practical law acts as that which determines the will, so that people hold the ground of their freedom within themselves. Any motive not arising from this ground is not free, but externally determined. The most free and actualized person is the one who acts out of this self-grounded action. Kant, however, could not imagine a type of evil that would act out of this ground. For Kierkegaard, freedom is connected to the infinite, which pulls one out from the relative and external ends that most often serve as motives for choice. In aesthetic existence forces, desires and cravings arise up out of the dark abyss of longing, and gain form through their connection with the world. One's deep longing becomes prey to the resplendent forms of the world. In the ethical stage an ideal is gained; this ideal acts as that which brings order to the forces of the dark abyss. Schelling wrote of this in terms of the penetration of the light of reason into the dark depths. For the Judge, the ideal was to penetrate into every aspect of the self, and bring it under the order and rule of the ideal. In the religious stage it is discovered that this dark ground is not so easily penetrated and ordered. It must remain dark in order to serve as the ground of reason, and so there always remains a raw longing. It is this relation between the dark ground and the light of reason that accounts for the continual struggle within human existence. As a longing toward revelation, the dark abyss within us seeks to be more and more revealed (we seek identity or self-revelation), though it ultimately cannot serve as the basis of our revelation. We long to gain identity and become something, and yet we do not have the power to get under this longing - to establish self-identity out of ourselves. For Kierkegaard, the ground of human freedom consists in this contradiction of being both infinite and finite, absolute and relative, light of reason and dark depths. Human actualization takes place in the working out of this selfcontradiction. The ethical individual transcends the aesthetic view of freedom, in which one is 'free' to do whatever one desires at any given moment, no matter how chaotic these desires may be. Through the ethical stage it is learned that the ground of human freedom is not simply the dark abyss. It takes the religious individual to discover that freedom is also not simply the light of reason, as Kant's ethical view claims, because the light of reason cannot get its ground under itself. The religious conception of the ground of human freedom is that it consists of both the dark longing and the light


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of reason. The negative act of freedom in infinite resignation consists of a conscious penetration of the infinite abyss of nothingness (the dark depth that grounds finite forms, and which reason can only conceive as no-thing — as the mere potential of form and order), in which one remains within the spaciousness or openness of this abyss this raw craving for form and order. The more self-conscious and free one becomes, the more one realizes that one cannot remain forever in the 'enormous detour' of infinite resignation, and that there is no middle ground in this self-actualization or self-becoming: one understands that self-conscious freedom is ultimately expressed in terms of a choice for good or evil. The struggle inherent in human existence forces one to choose whether to become oneself in defiance of the universal will (the Good), or through faith in it. All the evasive and lukewarm insipidness of spiritlessness has been shattered, and one is left with how one will confront the painful struggle of human existence: since diversion and evasion are no longer an option for those who have become spirit, they must choose whether to be themselves in despair of the Good, or in faith of the Good. It is this recognition of the ground of human freedom that allows for an understanding of a more fully actualized form of evil: defiance. As a recipient of the highest heaven (the light of reason), one has the tools to penetrate the dark depths, and create one's own particular order out of it, without thereby weakening the ground of freedom — that is, weakening human actualization. Indeed, the more one acts out of this dichotomous ground of freedom, the more actualized one has become, even if this actualization takes place by asserting one's particular will over the universal will. Thus, evil can be expressed in authentic, self-conscious and free selfhood. The despair of infinite resignation brings one to the brink of this choice, because one is finally forced to decide how to relate to God. Religiousness A is not, itself, a positive relationship with God, and just this is its despair. Although the self of Religiousness A has come to the consciousness of itself as nothing before God - has died to the world and to itself - and has come to se that its pride and worldliness get in the way of relating to God, this is only a negative act, a getting-out-of-the-way; it is an essential act for coming to know God, but it is not able to provide the positive act in which such knowledge takes place. It remains within the nothingness and emptiness of freedom, and is thus a form of nihilism. To remain in Religiousness A is to remain at the stage of preparation for an eternal happiness, and so never to walk into the relationship itself. One recognizes that the highest human perfection is to need God, is able to die to oneself, and yet goes no further than the recognition of neediness and death. The dread confronted is the infinite distance from God, and the powerlessness to do anything about it. Guilt and weakness leave one at an infinite distance from one's absolute object ofjoy.

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As a negative form of religious existence, Religiousness A is the essential form for a God-relationship: the truly positive relationship to God can take place only through the negative - through the consciousness of barriers. Elrod notes the relation to God of Religiousness A, and its importance to the task of self-becoming: The edifying element in the sphere of religiousness A is essentially that of immanence: it is the annihilation by which the individual puts himself out of the way in order to find God, since precisely the individual himself is the hindrance. Quite rightly the edifying is recognizable here also by the negative, by self-annihilation, which in itself finds the God-relationship, is based upon it, because God is the basis when every obstacle is cleared away, and first and foremost the individual himself in his finiteness, in his obstinacy against God.39 Infinite resignation is the essential form for coming to God and becoming oneself, and yet within this negative form are the positive forms of faith and defiance. One must not stop in infinite resignation, for 'the positive is continually in the negative', and so to stop is to fall into despair. To understand how faith and defiance are within this negative form, we will examine how infinite resignation relates only to one pole of the synthesis of the self, and so is not yet a complete self. The Possibility of Defiance As we saw, infinite resignation cannot find a way to relate to the finite pole of the self, but only suffers under it. While it can infinitely abstract itself from the finite, and think God and the God-relationship, it cannot think the Godrelationship together with the finite. De Silentio portrays this as a beautiful dance, but one that is alienated from the concrete world: The knights of infinity are dancers ... and they have elevation. They make the upward movement and fall down again, and this too is no unhappy pastime, nor ungracious to behold. But when they come down they cannot assume the position straightaway, they waver an instant and the wavering shows they are nevertheless strangers in the world. As the knights of infinite resignation soar in the infinite, they seem to rise above all the defilements and spiritlessness of the finite and comparative. However, they cannot remain aloft, and when they come down, they waver, and this wavering shows the despair and heaviness of this type of existence. There is no diversion, no possibility of moving away from the consuming


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recognition of the emptiness of the finite. One's existence is concentrated into the single thought of one's nothingness and the nothingness of the world in which one resides; in this, one's existence becomes condensed and heavy, and there is nothing available with which to lift the weight of the infinite from one's shoulders. It would be easy to shoulder it if one could stay aloft in the exquisite dance of the infinite, and become something in this dance. However, freedom and the infinite remain empty, and, surrounded by the emptiness, one becomes tempted by a more intense form of despair. This despair is no longer the spiritless temptation of the finite — that internal temptation with which the dread spirit initially tempted Jesus, and continually tempts humanity. No, now the temptation is that to which the dread spirit and Grand Inquisitor themselves gave into: defiance. Defiance is what tempts spirit. It is the temptation of those who have grown tired of the enormous detour - of remaining prepared for something that lies beyond their own control. When the impatience of despair arises, the temptation to defiance emerges. As the Grand Inquisitor says to Jesus, ' "Thou art proud of Thine elect, but Thou has only the elect, while we give rise to the rest. And besides, how many of those elect, those mighty ones who could become elect, have grown weary of waiting for Thee, and have transferred and will transfer the powers of their spirit and the warmth of their heart to the other camp, and end by raising their free banner against Thee." ' In this heaviness, something has to give. The self exists on the watershed of two directions of authentic selfhood: defiance and faith. We will now look at defiance, through which the essence of radical evil will be revealed.

Notes

1. SUD, p. 111. 2. It should be noted that this 'giving up' of everything is not an internal act, but an external act. As Climacus says, 'So when a man says, for example, that for the sake of his eternal happiness he has suffered hunger, cold, been in prison, in peril at sea, has been despised, persecuted, whipped, etc., these simple words are a testimony to ethical pathos inasmuch as they quite simply refer to what he, acting, has suffered. Wherever the ethical is present, all attention is called back to the individual himself and to acting' (CUP, p. 390). We will see that this is neither the resignation nor the suffering the religious individual undergoes for the sake of an eternal happiness. The difference between the two lies in the dialectic between outward and inward suffering, outward and inward acting, and the reference to oneself as one's object versus God as one's object.

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3. As we will see, this object is called an eternal happiness in 'Religiousness A', which is to say that one gains an eternal happiness in being rightly related to God. Kierkegaard uses various expressions for this same idea, such as the absolute telos, a human being's highest good, purity of the heart, and salvation. It does not necessarily entail a specifically Western religious tone - though this is the tone Kierkegaard uses - but could also fit within Hindu and Buddhist traditions. The point is that one believes that happiness is to be found outside the typical, everyday worldly concerns - whether these concerns are viewed as Maya, or an ignorance that seeks permanence in a world of interdependent arising. 4. 'Even though Christianity assumes the subjectivity . . . is the possibility of receiving this good, it nevertheless does not assume that as a matter of course the subjectivity is all set, as a matter of course has even an actual idea of the significance of this good.' (CUP, p. 130). 5. CUP, p. 391. 6. CUP, p. 574. 7. Walker, pp. 153-4. 8. Paul Ricoeur. 'Guilt, Ethics, and Religion'. Conflict of Interpretations. Ed. Don Ihde, pp. 425-39. Evanston: Northwestern UP, 1974, p. 438 (my emphasis). 9. EUD, pp. 317-18. 10. EUD, pp. 321-2. 11. Matthew 5:3, Psalm 39:6. 12. EUD, p. 307. 13. EUD, p. 322. 14. EUD, p. 303. 15. Arthur Schopenhauer. 'Studies in Pessimism'. The Works of Arthur Schopenhauer: The Wisdom of Life and Other Essays, pp. 215-305. Roslyn, NY: Walter J. Black, 1932, p. 231. 16. JRNL II, #2089. 17. CUP, p. 506 18. Walker, p. 176. 19. FS, p. 77-8. 20. CUP, p. 394. 21. CUP, pp. 407-8. 22. CUP, p. 410 (my emphasis). 23. CUP, p. 408. 24. CUP, pp. 410-11. 25. CUP, p. 288. Frater Taciturnus is another of Kierkegaard's pseudonyms, and makes this comment on page 444 in Stages on Life's Way. 26. The longings and cravings of the dark depths are nothing other than the source of all human addictions, whether to alcohol, shopping, gambling, sex, power, or pleasing others. 27. May, p. 103. 28. May, p. 147. 29. CUP, p. 464.


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30. Simone Weil. Gravity and Grace. Trans. Emma Graufurd. New York: Routledge, 1992, pp. 12-13. It should be noted that, while Religiousness A may include a Buddhist conception of existence, infinite resignation is not, for Kierkegaard, a uniquely Buddhist quality. Kierkegaard does not believe there can be a detachment from the empirical ego. While the empirical ego's desires are not to be made absolute, neither are they to be annihilated. Without the desires of the finite aspect of the self, we are not able to be our true self. The desires that arise out of the ground of who we are must find their place within a freedom that transparently wills for the absolute good. 31. Weil, p. 23. 32. Meister Eckhart. Meister Eckhart. Trans. Raymond Bernard Blakney. New York: Harper, 1941, p. 88. I read the phrase 'disinterested heart' in this quote, not in terms of how Kierkegaard uses the term 'disinterested', but as synonymous with what Weil calls 'detachment'. It is a disinterest in the external, arising from a maximum of inward earnestness. 33. Fydor Dostoevsky. The Brothers Karam.oz.ov. Trans. Constance Garnett. New York: Signet, 1980, p. 233 (my emphasis). 34. Dostoevsky, 1980, p. 234. 35. CUP, p. 436. 36. May, p. 181. 37. CUP, p. 525. 38. CUP, p. 531. 39. Elrod, p. 197. 40. CUP, p. 524. 41. FT, p. 70. 42. Dostoevsky, 1980, p. 238.

5

Defiance: The Essence of Radical Evil

Transparent Despair In infinite resignation, the self s transparency to itself has moved into an authentic understanding of the self as infinite. By infinitely abstracting from the finite, the comparative, and the relative, the self gathers itself in the infinite source of freedom, and rests transparently in the knowledge derived there. Although this is authentic selfhood or spirit, it is still despair, in that the self is unable to relate to the finite. The self is confronted with a choice: whether it wills to be itself in despair or in faith. There is the possibility of an authentic despair, which allows for an intense form of evil that is transparent to itself, and grounds its self-actualization in its rebellion against the Good. Kierkegaard does not agree with the Socratic view that if one knows the Good, then one will do it. Socrates' argument is that no one would willingly harm himself or herself, and since rebellion against the Good is harmful, once one knows the Good, one will embrace it. For Kierkegaard, however, there is the possibility that, due to pride, one may be offended by the Good. While Socrates believed that actions follow upon the understanding as a matter of course, we have come to see that there is an infinite gap between the understanding and the will, because the will maintains an independence from the understanding by serving as its basis. For Kierkegaard, both defiance and faith have a self-conscious relationship before God, but they differ on how they choose this relationship: to choose against it is to remain in despair, and in a self-consciously free rebellion against God and what is good. If spirit is offended by what a God-relationship entails, it can transparently choose to despair of this relationship, and so will to be itself in despair, rather than faith. Kierkegaard puts the distinction between knowing and choosing the Good in terms of the possibility of evil: [A] person certainly must know his soul in order to gain it, but this knowing is not the gaining, inasmuch as in knowing he ascertains that he is in the hands of an alien power and that consequently he does not possess himself or, to define it more closely, he has not gained himself. When the devil believes and yet trembles, there is a self-knowing in this believing, and the more perfect it is, the more he will tremble, precisely because he does not will to gain himself/


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The devil, whom Kierkegaard regards as a symbol of the most intense form of evil, is transparent to himself and to his relationship with God, and yet in despair, he does not will this relationship, and so he trembles before God. Defiance is authentic spirit that stands as a single individual before the alien power that established and holds the self, and it does this through the pathos of 'offense': the defiant spirit is offended by God's ways. In Kierkegaard's time the memory of God was still strong, and so the rebellion still took place in the face of God, even if this was done in the proclamation that God is dead. Times have changed since then, so the power that established the self s existence is less defined, and is hidden behind the murkiness that belies human weakness itself. Human rationality can only go so far in discovering what has become hidden, and beyond that there is nothing — a transcendence which is without content, yet nevertheless able to be related to negatively. Whatever the name or connotation given to it, there is a 'power' which human existence, in its very being, always runs up against. There remains a power standing as the limit of our existence, and, as our limit, remains something with which we must deal. We have been looking at the various inauthentic ways it is dealt with, and have seen that there are those who use various means to hide or ignore it, or those who dive into scepticism in the face of this darkness. Religiousness A, however, brings an authentic and conscious confrontation with it, by remaining with the implications of this dark boundary. As the despair of Religiousness A becomes manifest, the question becomes whether one will have faith in the goodness of this source, and expect a clarifying word, or whether one will try to create and reveal oneself out of the dark depths by standing in defiance of this power. Defiance: An Unhappy Relation to Superiority

In Christian Discourses, Kierkegaard compares defiance to envy. He says that admiration is a happy relation to superiority, though 'admiration's first feeling is one of pain . . . that if someone senses superiority but admits reluctantly, not joyfully, then he is far from being happy: on the contrary he is exceedingly unhappy, in the most distressing pain.' Kierkegaard continues by saying, God is infinitely the strongest; basically everyone believes that and to that extent, willing or not, feels God's infinite superiority and his own nothingness. But as long as he only believes that God is the stronger one - and, to mention something terrible, believe it even as the devil also believes - and trembles; as long as he only believes it in such a way that he shrinks from the admission, as long as he believes it only in such a way that he does not become joyful, the relationship is painful, unhappy, and his feeling of weakness is a tormenting sensation.

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Although the mass of spiritless people sense, at some level, that God is the strong one, they would never admit this to themselves, but seek to remain secure in their own 'strength' and abilities. They either put God in the dock — often coming to the conclusion that he does not exist — place him in some small safe, out-of-the-way corner of their lives, tame him through their doctrines and beliefs, or simply ignore him altogether. In all these reactions they stand on their own strength, and it is this illusion of strength that allows them such innocuous, indifferent, and even comical attitudes toward God. Spirit, however, is aware of its own nothingness, and is conscious of itself as weak before the power out of which its existence flows — that power over which it has no power. This consciousness becomes the torment that defines the existence of those in defiance. Kierkegaard says that the consciousness of weakness should give way to worship. Worship begins in wonder over the mystery of God, is a happy relation to the mystery of this power, and finds joy in being nothing before this awesome mystery. Defiance also senses the mystery of its source, and its distance and opaqueness; what should be wonder, however, becomes a catalyst for a transparent rebellion, and its existence becomes a 'dark saying', as Kierkegaard puts it. The Possibility of Defiance is Due to the Structure of the Self We are now in a better position to see how the movement of self-becoming which is grounded in the structure of the self— allows for defiance. Defiance begins to arise out of the failure of infinite resignation. We have seen that this infinite self is an empty self. It is this emptiness that at first gives defiance the hope that it can create itself, for the infinite self is abstract, and so can imagine a myriad of possibilities for the self. Anti-climacus writes, In order to want in despair to be oneself, there must be consciousness of an infinite self. However, this infinite self is really only the most abstract form of the self, the most abstract possibility of the self. And it is this self the despairer wants to be, severing the self from any relation to the power which has established it, or severing it from the conception that there is such a power. By means of this infinite form, the self wants in despair to rule over himself, or create himself, make this self the self he wants to be, determine what he will have and what he will not have in his concrete self. Infinite resignation is the negative form of the self in which all finite determinations have fallen away. Whether this has happened through the movement of Religiousness A (which was still a possible movement in Kierkegaard's time), or in the more modern secularized versions,8 the point is that through


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the infinite and eternal the self has escaped all finite determinations. It has died to the finite determinations of itself, which is an essential step in the movement toward a true faith in God, though its defiance arises out of an unwillingness to fully relinquish the last remaining strongholds of selfishness and pride.9 It is out of the emptiness of infinite resignation that defiance first desires to create itself ex nihilo. Perhaps ex nihilo seems too radical a self-creation, for the self of defiance is self enough to recognize the concrete contents of its self. However, as the infinite self, it desires to create a radically new self in infinite abstraction from these contents. Anti-climacus writes, His concrete self, or his concreteness, has indeed necessity and limits, is this quite definite thing, with these aptitudes, predispositions, etc, in this concrete set of circumstances, etc. But by means of the infinite form of the negative self, he wants first to undertake to refashion the whole thing in order to get out of it a self such as he wants, produced by means of the infinite form of the negative self — and it is in this way he wants to be himself. Here we have an intensification of freedom in despair. To speak of the 'infinite form, the negative self, is to point to that freedom which comes, not from the finite world, but from the self — that is, out of the self s own structure. In defiance, the self seeks to create itself (give form to itself) out of the dark abyss, combining the deepest pit and the highest heaven through its own power of creation. It is untethered from all valuations of finitude, and it has suspended all valuations of the ethical universal. It is radically free in the sense of choosing out of itself being its own ground. It seeks to create itself in such a way that its concrete contents become what they are only in this creation. So yes, it can be said that it creates out of nothing (a formless void), in that its concrete contents are determined by this creation, rather than determining this self-creation. Anti-climacus says that at this stage of defiance, we see that the defiant one wants to begin a little earlier than other people, not at and with the beginning, but 'in the beginning'; he does not want to don his own self, does not want to see his task in his given self, he wants, by virtue of being the infinite form, to construct himself. He seeks to take the light of reason, and reveal himself out of the dark abyss as his own ground. He does not ignore the concrete contents of the self, but through his infinite form, he denies that these contents will determine who and what he becomes. These contents are merely the forces that have become manifest or revealed out of the dark abyss due to forms not under his own power — for example, when his longings became attached to objects in the world, or through the valuations given to him by the established order. But

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there is infinitely more that can come out of the depths, and perhaps the concrete contents one now has — which have determined one's existence so far - will be negligible in comparison to what is created by one's own freedom. We can think of it this way. To some people, the colour of one's skin is a significant determination of whom one essentially is. This is the highest conception of selfhood that such people are capable of, and so they are unable to see beyond the colour of their own, or another person's skin. To a person who has risen above this low-level valuation of selfhood, character traits and personality become central, and the colour of one's skin becomes meaningless in the definition of who one is. The infinite self, as having resigned all finite determinations, believes that the movement of infinity can go in an infinite number of different directions. Defiance is at the point where, with the help of infinite resignation, it has died to all finite valuations - that is to say, all valuation, since valuations are determined through the comparisons and relations created in finite existence. And so, although the concrete self has its finite necessity and limitations, the freedom which flows from the infinite annihilates the significance and value of these qualities, and they become just as meaningless to a person's self as does the colour of another's skin to one who judges by character or spirit alone.

The Movement of Defiance In defiance the self has become conscious of its despair (that it has been unwilling to be itself), and that its despair does not come from outside itself, but from within. It is aware of despair as a self-induced response to its relation to itself. In the first form of defiance, the self wills to be itself out of the source of its own existence. When this fails, a deeper transparency is obtained, and defiance begins to turn nasty. We will see that in both forms of defiance — what Anticlimacus calls the active self and the self as passive — the self attempts to be itself from out of itself, rather than by transparently and contentedly resting in the power that established it. Thus, in both forms there is a misrelation with the source of its existence. It is defiant in its relation to this power, because it proclaims itself as issuing out of itself. The 'active self takes the power coming from its source, and believes this power gives it the ability to become its own source; the defiant self as passive reacts to the autonomy of this power — that it does not bend to the self s will - and in this reaction seeks to be itself. In this latter case the self seeks to draw strength from out of its own weakness.

Active Self: Creator of Its Own Self In the active self, the self tries to take within itself the power out of which it exists, and use that power as the source of its own self-creation. It is this


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source, as the combination of the dark principle and light of reason, which allows humans to be independent from God. Philosophy has sought to completely purge the dark basis through the light of reason, and yet Kierkegaard viewed this as impossible. The self continually comes to grief upon its attempts to bring these two principles together under its own power. It cannot get under the light of reason enough to penetrate the dark abyss. Its reason is always partial and insufficient to this task. Another approach, which has essentially the same effect as getting reason under one's own power, is to assert one's particular will as the universal will. Some of the most vicious, destructive and shocking acts on earth are due to the attempt of a particular will to assert itself over an area of the earth — whether it be over regions or the entire earth. The individuals who seek this dominion obviously need the spiritless to join the enterprise, but the following they garner shows the power with which they wield their vision. These defiant individuals are not weaker and more ignorant than the rest of us, as the traditional view of evil would have it, but are more free and self-conscious. While they are more actualized than others, they remain human. In other words, their particular wills can never become the universal will, just as cancer will never create a new form of'health' (order) within the body. It erupts into revelation, sometimes with 'glorifyingly' hideous results, but it will always fail in its attempts at dominion and self-revelation, because in comparison to the universal will, it is impotent, and ultimately capable of nothing at all. The eruption into revelation by the 'active self is 'constantly relating to itself only experimentally, no matter what it undertakes, however great, however amazing and with whatever perseverance'. It has resolve, to be sure, for it has gathered its existence around a particular idea, and it may actually spend its whole life in this idea. This idea is of its own creation, and is its attempt to take hold of the 'light of reason', plunging into the dark depths to create itself from out of its own power. It seeks to be something by asserting itself in existence, yet in itself it remains only a human being and not a god. In the end, its entire existence can become simply an imaginary construction. To use the term 'imaginary' immediately points to the imagination, which is the self s power to conceive or think the ideal (perfection) in an infinite distance from actuality. The self, in becoming itself, has become the infinite self. In this form of defiance, its imagination can run free, and it can create the self it wants to create, apart from any of the 'ideals' of the established order apart from the possibilities handed it from this order - and in a way in which it creates itself out of itself. The problem, however, is that there is nothing which gives this imaginary construction reality, for it is also conceived apart from any unconditioned ideal an ideal of the universal will of God. True, the person may act on this 'ideal', and his or her existence may yield sometimes devastating effects, but in the end, their significance and meaning are not

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under the defiant person's power. This is due to a lack of earnestness - or rather, to the mere appearance of earnestness or seriousness. The active self recognizes no power over itself; therefore in the final instance it lacks seriousness and can only conjure forth an appearance of seriousness, even when it bestows upon its experiments its greatest possible attention. That is a specious seriousness. As with Prometheus' theft of fire from the gods, this is stealing from God the thought - which is seriousness - that God takes notice of one, in place of which the despairing self is content with taking notice of itself, which is meant to bestow infinite interest and significance on its enterprises, and which is exactly what makes them experiments.13 The problem the active self faces is that there is nothing binding and intrinsically stable in any of its endeavours. As Anti-climacus says, in 'the whole dialectic in which it acts there is nothing firm; at no moment does what the self amounts to stand firm, that is eternally firm'. The binding power of this self and its resolve is to be found only within the individual's freedom, and yet just this is its despair: The negative form of the self exerts the loosening as much as the binding power; it can, at any moment, start quite arbitrarily all over again and, however far an idea is pursued in practice, the entire action is contained within a hypothesis. So, far from the self succeeding increasingly in being itself, it becomes increasingly obvious that it is a hypothetical self. The self no longer acts out of the arbitrariness and otherness of the established order, nor even out of the understanding in a purely rational sense; instead, the self creatively acts into the dark depths, making the self it wants to be. This creation is not irrational, because, in the creativity and spontaneity of its own freedom, it is attempting to establish its own order by the ordering power of the light of reason. Its authenticity is that it seeks to master its own existence, rather than being mastered by the established order — that is, it seeks to be itself. Its ultimate despair is that there is nothing to bind it to its choice and its ideal, except its own resolve. Although it may, theoretically at least, keep this resolve for a lifetime, the ultimate emptiness of the resolve is that, as its own master, it can change everything in an instant, and everything that has been pursued with earnest resolve can come to nothing by its own dictates. The despair of this defiance is due to the fact that the very freedom which allows the self to create itself is the same freedom that can dissolve this self-creation. Freedom is not sufficient in itself for the self to become itself, but freedom must rest transparently in the power that established it — a power that is unconditioned. As Anti-climacus puts it,


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The self is its own master, absolutely (as one says) its own master; and exactly this is the despair, but also what it regards as its pleasure and joy. But it is easy on closer examination to see that this absolute ruler is a king without a country, that really he rules over nothing; his position, his kingdom, his sovereignty, are subject to the dialectic that rebellion is legitimate at any moment. Ultimately it is arbitrarily based upon the self itself.16 Kierkegaard appears to view this despair as ultimately going no further than the individual, and since the individual alone has no power to bring his or her order into the world, it comes to nothing. As insightful as Kierkegaard is about the individual, I do not believe he was able to see how the defiant individual could become an absolute ruler - a king with a country. Because the established order is a continual levelling of individuals, he could not fathom that a single individual could usurp this established order, and thus create one of his own. He believed any relation to the established order and the finite would necessarily lead to compromise, and so a weakening of freedom. However, part of the pathos of a defiant person is a desire for domination over people - that is, self-revelation through a new established order. For the particular will to establish itself as universal will, it needs to extend its will, and gain more self-revelation. Nietzsche realized the 'great man' is not content simply to establish his own order over his particular life, but will seek to establish it over the entire world. He writes, The great man feels his power over a people, his temporary coincidence with a people or a millennium; this enlargement in his experience of himself as causa and voluntas is misunderstood as 'altruism'; it drives him to seek means of communication: all great men are inventive in such means. They want to embed themselves in great communities; they want to give a single form to the multifarious and disordered; chaos stimulates them. The society of men and women, then, become raw material out of which those in defiance seek to fulfil their self-creation. The material for self-creation no longer simply comes from the dark abyss - out of which they can create themselves but also out of the disorder and chaos residing in every established order. The more disordered and chaotic it is — the more filled with dark and undefined longings - the easier it can be re-formed by the powerful individual. Further, in a situation where this disorder and chaos exists, there is no need for the great man to compromise, since spiritless people long for nothing more than comfort and security, and will follow those who promise to deliver such things and appear to have the power to back up their promises. The masses will do almost anything for them, including the commission of horrendous acts against others. In the end, however, even this external ordering of society does not have 'staying power' for all the reasons already given.

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The active self has taken hold of itself in authenticity, sought to relate to both the infinite and finite, and yet it remains in despair, for it has willed to be itself in defiance of the power that established it - that power which binds it to itself in steadfastness. It is a strange twist, for out of the consciousness of its weakness in regards to the finite and temporal, the self, through the power of the infinite, has sought to be strong by stamping its will upon the finite. This remains despair, because it is unwilling to allow the power that established it to appropriate it. In other words, in willing to be itself, it is unwilling to be itself. The Self that is Defiantly Passive The self that is defiantly passive is the form of defiance that has come to better understand its relationship to its source. Thus, it has a deeper consciousness of itself and its relation to the power that established it than does the active self. This rise in consciousness, however, becomes its torment: in the face of the power that established it, it is a king without a country, and a god without ultimate power. When defiance comes to realize that it does not appropriate transcendence as its own — that it cannot reveal itself in its particularity as something all-consuming, stable, and unconditioned - then it develops a tormented relation to transcendence and the power that established it. Its reaction to this power is intensified as it finds itself unable to either wiggle free from, or gain control of, its own source. In the consciousness of this power over which it has no control, defiance comes to feel itself as cornered and trapped within the limitations of its own existence. With this, defiance has taken a disturbing turn: it begins to lash out at existence and its source. If we call this power the Good, we can see how this defiance becomes a radical evil, in that it is an evil whose very existence is defined by its hatred and rebellion against the Good. We will now look at the transition from the active self to the passive self, and see the nature of the latter's defiance. The active self may live in its defiance its whole life, though, because it is so transparent to itself, it will likely discover that it is not its own master after all. Perhaps it recognizes a limitation or weakness that brings down the whole imaginary construction. Or perhaps it becomes conscious of the dialectic of the active self, and thus becomes aware of its despair. Whichever way this consciousness comes, the infinite 'negative self feels itself nailed to this restriction'.20 Anti-climacus speaks of such a person becoming conscious of a specific 'thorn in the flesh', which will not allow the infinite self to continue its imaginary constructions. Whether this thorn is a specific limitation or the consciousness of the general despair of self-creation, the direction of defiance is the same:


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If he is convinced (whether it is really the case or his suffering only makes it seem to be so) that this thorn in the flesh gnaws too deeply for him to be able to abstract from it, then he wants, as it were, to take eternal possession of it. It offends him, or rather, he uses it as an excuse to take offence at all existence; he wants to be himself in spite of it, but not in spite of it in the sense of without it (for that, indeed, would be to abstract from it, which is something he cannot do, or it would be the movement towards resignation); no he wants to spite or defy all existence and be himself with it, take it along with him, almost flying in the face of his agony. The unfulfilled longings, the limitations of reason and the pain and suffering of transparency all go to prove that God is a second-rate creator, or at least not to be trusted. Despair at this stage has felt the full force of its weakness, and suffers under it. In this suffering it does not will to be itself by faith in God — a joyful relation to God - but now wills to be itself through an anguished relation to God. Through infinite resignation, it knows the suffering of freedom or spaciousness. It had hoped for an eternal happiness, a self-becoming that might break through into a true identity of freedom. It has also come to see the despair of the active self, it knows the pain of not being able to create itself by piercing the darkness with its imagination. It loses confidence in the possibility of any clarifying word, and no longer believes that 'God's rain will fall', as May put it. Indeed, defiance is at the point where it becomes offended by this possibility: these promises of rain only mock its infinite thirst. Existence becomes for it a dark saying, and it holds onto this darkness in order to nourish its growing discontent, pride and defiance. Kierkegaard describes this move in one of his Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses: [Pjerhaps you were too old to nourish childish ideas about God, too mature to think humanly about him; you perhaps wished to move him by your defiance. You probably admitted that life was a dark saying, but you were not, in keeping with the apostle's admonition, swift to hear a clarifying word; contrary to his admonition, you were swift to anger. If life is a dark saying, so be it; you would not trouble yourself about the explanation - and your heart grew hard. And the chill of despair froze your spirit, and its death brooded over your heart. The contradictoriness of existence becomes settled in one's mind, and one embraces the darkness one confronts. In this acquiescence to the darkness of existence, a strange power begins welling up within oneself. One decides to bow to the contradictoriness of existence, not out of humility for the power that established it, but one bows to the power welling up out of this

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consciousness. This is not the power of the active self, but a power which flows from torment, hatred and defiance of one's existence and its source. It is a refusal to wait for a clarifying word, and a growing desire for one's particularity to be revealed in existence through one's torment and longing. The dark ground longs for clarification, and yet the defiant one believes this longing exists simply to mock human existence. Anti-climacus says, 'he would rather be himself with all the torments of hell than ask for help'. The defiant one becomes disgusted at the desire for the Good and its clarifying word. There is no room for hope in existence, at least not the hope that existence will gain meaning and value. As Camus has written, the absurd man 'knows simply that in that alert awareness there is no further place for hope'.24 The despair of Camus' absurd man does not, however, simply acquiesce to the dark abyss, but in coming to see life as a dark saying, he asserts that it is inauthentic to seek a clarifying word in this darkness: It is a matter of living that state of the absurd. . . . I ask what is involved in the condition I recognize as mine; I know that it implies obscurity and ignorance; and I am assured that this ignorance explains everything and that this darkness is my light. . . . One must therefore turn away. Kierkegaard may shout a warning: Tf man had no eternal consciousness, if at the bottom of everything, there were merely a wild, seething force producing everything, both large and trifling, in the storm of dark passions, if the bottomless void that nothing can fill underlay all things, what would life be but despair?' This cry is not likely to stop the absurd man. Seeking what is true is not seeking what is desirable. If in order to elude the anxious question: 'What would life be?' one must, like the donkey, feed on the roses of illusion, then the absurd man, rather than resigning itself to falsehood, prefers to adopt fearlessly Kierkegaard's reply: 'despair.' Camus sees no help, no transcendent and ordered reality that undergirds existence and makes sense out of it; rather, darkness is the ground of all reality — the ultimate power against which we collide — and order, which sits as a thin veneer over all existence, only serves to mock our human yearning for meaning. Kierkegaard's analysis points out that the absurd man sees no help, not because the help cannot be found, but because he prefers not to be helped. This defiant despair refuses to relinquish itself completely, and divest itself of the last remaining seeds of pride. Defiance refuses to accept God's help because it refuses to be helped on God's terms. It wants to determine how the help will come, and since existence, as it presents itself in its darkness and emptiness, does not offer help on those terms, defiance will stand by absurdity.


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Philosophy has always sought to be 'helped' through reason. It is the existentialists' belief, however, that reason points to its own limitations — that is, it points to the boundary at which darkness brushes up against human existence. Camus speaks of this brushing up of human reason and the dark abyss as the evidence upon which the absurd man makes his stand: My reasoning wants to be faithful to the evidence that aroused it. That evidence is the absurd. It is that divorce between the mind that desires and the world that disappoints, my nostalgia for unity, this fragmented universe and the contradiction that binds them together. The evidence is in, and reason must accept what has been presented: life is a dark saying, and the hope and expectation of reason for a clarifying word will not be fulfilled - such expectations only intensify the absurdity and pain of existence. For Camus, we must accept the darkness that encompasses our existence as the ultimate reality. Kierkegaard also points to the limits of reason, though he does not come to the same conclusion as Camus. For Kierkegaard the limits of reason point out that we are not in control of how we will be helped, and that the clarification of existence is not within our own power; however, this does not mean that no clarification of existence is possible. Kierkegaard writes, You wanted God's ideas about what was best for you to coincide with your ideas, but you also wanted him to be the almighty Creator of heaven and earth so that he could properly fulfill your wish. And yet, if he were to share your ideas, he would cease to be the almighty Father. In your childish impatience, you wanted, so to speak, to distort God's eternal nature, and you were blinded enough to delude yourself, as if you would be benefited if God in heaven did not know better than you yourself what was beneficial for you, as if you would not some day discover to your horror that you had wished what no human being would be able to endure if it happened. .. . In defiance one will not relinquish the last fortress of the self: the desire to be able, at the very least, to choose the means by which one is helped in existence. There is a suspicion, given the way existence has been unfolding up until now, that the cure will be worse than the disease, and so although this is the sickness unto death, the defiant one refuses treatment for despair - that is, chooses itself in its despair. Defiance grows and intensifies to such an extent that it becomes that out of which one finds one's existence. It is an act of freedom in the highest sense, in that, as Heidegger put it, an individual 'has himself decided originally for the necessity of his essence'. It is in this sense that Anti-climacus speaks of

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defiance as the despair that wills to be itself. It chooses to exist out of its torment, thus choosing its torment as its essence: Once he would gladly have given everything to be rid of his agony, but he was kept waiting, and now all that's past; he prefers to rage against everything and be the one whom the whole world, all existence, has wronged, the one for whom it is especially important to ensure that he has his agony on hand, so that no one will take it from him — for then he would not be able to convince others and himself that he is right. Defiance has the same self-contradiction within itself as inclosing reserve. Inclosing reserve desired to be rid of its agony by getting rid of the Good, and yet it needed the Good in order not to lose the strange, prideful pleasure of its pain. In the same way, the defiant person does not want to acknowledge anything over itself, for just this is its pain; yet it is through this torment that it has gathered itself and come to be who it is. Defiance cannot take place in a vacuum; the very category carries within it the power it defies. To escape the Good is to bring an end to one's defiance; to cease being defiant is to become the wounded, broken, pitiful creature one despises. Therefore, one is careful to maintain a close relationship with the power against which one rages. As demonic rage increases, what had previously been an acquiescence to its pain and lostness, changes into a more positive power of spirit. Kierkegaard writes, He did not seek peace and tranquility in externals, and yet his heart continued to be troubled. . . . [I]t seemed to him . . . as if he were a child of wrath, and yet he could not come any closer to understanding or explaining how this could be. Then his innermost being rebelled within him, then he did what is related in an old devotional book: 'he boasted that he was lost,' and that it was God himself who had plunged him down into damnation. Then the inner being within him froze/30 He boasts about his lostness because he himself now becomes evidence against all existence. He wants to maintain his torment in order continually to accuse existence of its wretchedness. Defiance has chosen itself as lost, demanding that its existence be heard, and in this revelation, judgement is proclaimed against all existence and its source. Anti-climacus writes, It is, to describe figuratively, as if a writer were to make a slip of the pen, and the error became conscious of itself as such - perhaps it wasn't a mistake but from a much higher point of view an essential ingredient in the whole presentation - and as if the error wanted now to rebel against the author, out of


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hatred for him forbid him to correct it, and in manic defiance say to him: 'No, I will not be erased, I will stand as a witness against you, a witness to the fact that you are a second-rate author.' The self is tormented by its existence as a self-contradiction, and it believes that this contradictoriness bears witness against the author of its existence. Kierkegaard does not regard this contradictoriness as an error, but as a sign of the author's greatness: freedom and self-consciousness have been bestowed on Being through human existence. In this, the 'error' comes to be seen as an essential part of the whole production, perhaps even that around which the entire production revolves. For Kierkegaard, the 'error' is not in the author's production, but in human despair, which refuses to exist as the painful struggle it is. The contradictions of the self give rise to the 'terror of life' Schelling pointed to, which drives man out of the centre. This terror is the anxiety of being consumed by the centre, swallowed up by the universal will, and forced into forms not of one's own making. As we saw in the introduction, this terror of life is an awakening of spirit. It is not itself evil, but is the possibility of good. It provides the independent basis through which it may be conquered by the Good through faith. As we have come to see, it also provides the independent basis through which it may rise up in defiance of the Good. Defiance wants to determine the part it will play in the 'whole production'. Having become conscious of its weakness and its lack of power over being, it has chosen to determine itself out of its pain and disappointment with God. Its defiance of the Good will be its identity and integrity, as well as its self-revelation within the 'whole production': It is horrible to see a man seek comfort by hurling himself into the whirlpool of despair. But this coolness is still more horrible: that, in the anxiety of death, a man should not cry out for help, T am going under, save me'; but that he should quietly choose to be a witness to his own destruction! Oh, most extreme vanity, not to draw man's eyes to himself by beauty, by riches, by ability, by power, by honor, but to wish to get his attention by his own destruction. Defiance does not seek to stand out or be 'on top' through the comparisons afforded by finitude, but, if it draws attention to itself, it does so in its resolute defiance against the Good. This 'attention' is not necessarily perceived as evil or destructive, and can fit in quite well with the established order, externally speaking. Dostoevsky's Grand Inquisitor is a good example of this. The Inquisitor's defiance was expressed in a distorted (that is, a defiant) 'love' for humanity, which sought to close off the way of freedom and self-consciousness to the

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masses. This, the Inquisitor says (in irony, I believe), is for the good of the masses, that they may at least be happy in their miserable existences, though their happiness was (and the Grand Inquisitor is fully aware of this) the sickness unto death. Ivan asks Alyosha, what if the Inquisitor had 'wasted his whole life in the desert and yet could not shake off his incurable love for humanity? In his old age he reached the clear conviction that nothing but the advice of the great dread spirit could build up any tolerable sort of life for the feeble, unruly, "incomplete, empirical creatures created in jest." And so, convinced of this, he sees that he must follow the counsel of the wise spirit, the dread spirit of death and destruction, and accept lying and deception, and lead men consciously to death and destruction. He sees that he must deceive them all the way so that they may not notice that they are being led, that the poor blind creatures may at least on the way think themselves happy. And note, the deception is in the name of Him in Whose ideal [love] the old man had so fervently believed all his life long.'33 The Inquisitor decides that he will help the masses by blinding them to their task, and taking away their freedom — thus, taking away their suffering. He will be perceived more as a saint and saviour than a devil, though internally the act is one of self-conscious destruction: the desire of watching the masses plod comfortably and contentedly to hell. Further, his task becomes the ideal around which his life is integrated. What he calls love is actually his own disappointment with existence. He could not wait for the rain or the consoling word, and came to despise even the thought of it — so offended by it's tardiness was he. Thus, he seeks to close off the Good for all other people; he does this under the banner of love, though it is defiance against love. At this point, defiance is radically evil. As we have seen, especially in terms of infinite resignation, Kierkegaard does not deny that existence is traversed on a painful road; indeed, he spent the end of his life and most of his small fortune trying to intensify this suffering by attempting to awaken the single individual to the terror of life. Existence is confusing, sometimes empty, desperate, and exhausting, though he believed that the consciousness of existence would awaken spirit to its ultimate freedom. No doubt he knew that some who were awakened would choose defiance, though he believed, as distant as defiance is from the Good in one sense, in another it is closer to it than spiritlessness.

Conclusion: The Category of Offense We must now bring our reflections together in the context of a focused treatment of the question of evil. From the standpoint we have reached in our


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analysis, we are now able to gain a deeper understanding of the passion at work in evil. We have seen that defiance has an anguished relationship to the Good. We may now say that the passion at the heart of this unhappiness is offense of the Good. To relate to the Good out of misery, is to be offended by the Good. Just as despair grows in intensity as the self becomes more selfconscious and free, so this offense becomes more intense. As we will see, this offense is at all levels of despair, but when it becomes that passion around which one gathers one's life, evil becomes radical and aggressive. Karl Jaspers has described the aggressiveness inherent in the despair and evil that has gripped our age: What took over the rebels' [those who have given up the question of truth and falsehood] state of mind was simply the lust of being against' \_sic\, of destruction as such, of smashing traditions, orders, measures; it was aggressiveness in itself, the brazen avowal of vulgarism in word and deed. The delight of the 'we' in joint unsubstantiality caused the illiberal intolerance of a No born of nothing. Everything is to become nothing, except for this No itself.'.34 This No is not an evil that is a negation or privation of the Good in the traditional conception, but it is a Yes. It is a position (a positive stance toward Being), and not simply a privation (not simply a failure to comply with some universal standards put forth by human or divine decree). While there is no doubt that the dialectic of evil entails a No to hope and faith, it is to be understood, more primordially, as a continual invitation (a Yes) to despair and offense. Evil gathers its existence around the destructive passions. Purity of the Heart is to Will One Thing Kierkegaard's understanding that purity of the heart is to will one thing is not new. Augustine's Confessions already contains an explanation of this purity of heart, in which the will wholly wills the Good. In regard to this Augustine wrote, The mind gives the body an order, and is obeyed at once: the mind gives itself an order and is resisted. The mind commands the hand to move and there is such readiness that you can hardly distinguish the command from the execution. Yet the mind is mind, whereas the hand is body. The mind commands the mind to will, the mind is itself, but it does not do it. Why this monstrousness? And what is the root of it? The mind I say commands itself to will: it would not give the command unless it willed: yet it does not do what it commands. The trouble is that it does not totally will: therefore it does

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not totally command. It commands in so far as it wills; and it disobeys the command in so far as it does not will. The will is commanding itself to be a will commanding itself, not some other. But it does not in its fullness give the command, so that what it commands is not done. For if the will were so in its fullness, it would not command itself to will. It is therefore no monstrousness partly to will, partly not to will, but a sickness of the soul to be so weighted down by custom that it cannot wholly rise even with the support of truth. 35 While this lack of whole willing is a sickness of the soul for Augustine, it is not yet 'monstrousness'; it is merely a lack of health, a privation of a fully integrated will. With this view of the pure heart, evil becomes a lack or privation of this willing of one thing - the Good. Thus, concerning the nature of sin (evil), Augustine writes, [WJhen I now asked what is iniquity, I realized that it is not a substance, but a swerving of the will which is turned towards lower things and away from You, O God, who are the supreme substance: so that it casts away what is most inward to it and swells greedily for outward things. Kierkegaard understood this purity of the heart that wills wholly for the Good, but he also realized that there is a purity of the heart that wholly wills by turning toward the Good in defiance. Within this recognition, Kierkegaard was able to tap the tradition moving from Kant to Schelling. In originally working out his ethics Kant, like Augustine, also held the view that moral action came from the pure will — the good will — which fulfilled its duty out of respect for the law. We noted that, for Kant, reason infallibly determines the will, in that if one acts according to reason, then one's will is necessarily good. It is this purity of the origin of the will that gives moral worth to actions. When one does not will from reason, then one is acting from natural impulses or inclinations. Since this is not acting from the will, one cannot be said to be acting out of freedom. Kant came to realize, however, that if the only free actions are moral actions, and those done against duty are done merely from inclinations, then there is no place for immoral actions: all actions are either moral or amoral. In Schelling a malignant reason is indeed possible. The connection between will and reason is not a preordained, established relation for human beings. Rather, in Schelling's ontology, there is a sense of becoming in which consciousness arises out of unconsciousness through the light of the understanding's penetration into the dark depths of longing and will. The problem of good and evil plays itself out in this development from unconsciousness to consciousness (the development of freedom), which is a struggle of the particular


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will against the universal will. The connection between will (the dark depths) and reason (the light of the understanding) is not set in stone, but is fluid in its development. Evil becomes radical when one chooses to determine one's freedom on the basis of one's particularity against the universal will of reason. This is possible because the dark depths of longing and the light of reason are dissoluble in human beings, so one may use the light of reason in order to create a false unity out of the dark depths. Evil is not, then, a discord in which there is the chaos and disorder of the various desires and passions which drive the individual from one appetite to the next; rather, the light of reason has penetrated the darkness and separated the forces, creating a unity, albeit a false unity. It is not the incentives that act as the rule of the will's maxim (to put it in Kantian language), but reason itself. While Kierkegaard took much from Schelling's analysis, he did not accept that the determination of one's will (the basis of freedom) is posited in the eternal past, a dimension reaching back before one's birth. According to Schelling, we have always already chosen to determine our will according to selfishness, and have chosen from a 'place' outside time. This choice — which has already been made by the time we come into existence - is his definition of radical evil: 'Only an evil which attaches to us by our own act, but does so from birth, can therefore be designated as radical evil.'' Freedom arises out of this originality of disposition, in which the individual determines the purity of the will from out of a choice. As a system builder, Schelling could not allow freedom to remain as a loose end, and so, as philosophy has always done, he closed his system by use of the Platonic notion of recollection — that is, the eternal from the aspect of the past. Kierkegaard moves the issue into existence, and looks at it in terms of existential passion and concern; it is in the concern for one's existence that all genuine self-understanding arises. In this concern one comes up against limits reason cannot, by itself, transcend. The grasping of Being is not simply — or even primarily — directed by reason, but through existential leaps, which are driven by reaching the boundaries of a particular stage or life-view. The movement from spiritlessness to self-conscious freedom is a movement in which the self comes up against the limits of its existence-stage, and finds the nourishment in the passions by which one leaps into another stage of existence, and by which the knower is transformed. This transformation is a movement into further transparency and freedom. As the self moves from stage to stage, what keeps it moving is the expectation that the nourishment will come, and that it will be 'good'. What it means by 'the Good', however, is often a self-centred conception such as, what is good for me, my 'just desserts'. In other words, the self continues to define the Good solely within its own horizons. Still, as it grows in self-consciousness, these pockets of selfishness, which it has been evading, begin to come to light.

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The self is being transformed by some principle of nourishment that accompanies the need it continually confronts. In the end, however, we discover that at the limit of self-conscious freedom, when much of the self-centredness attached to the 'Good' has become apparent, the self may still be offended at the very nourishment the Good provides. Perhaps the nourishment did not come as one had desired and expected, or as quickly as one felt it should have. Perhaps it is offensive that one should require supplementary nourishment of this sort. Whatever the case, one despairs of such nourishment, becomes offended at existence, and moves into a defiance in which the will is unified around one's offense at existence itself. There can arise, then, at the pinnacle of freedom, an offense and despair that causes the self to recoil, in that it discovers that it can neither tame nor control the Good. When this happens it is offended at the way existence has been 'set up' by the Good, and despairs of any desire or hope for a clarifying word. Despair is, across all modes of self-consciousness and freedom, a sense of hopelessness toward existence. At some point one becomes offended by existence — its contradictions, its mysteries, its lack of definitive answers, the suffering and seeming injustice of the world, and the fact that the universe does not revolve around one's own existence - and so gives up hope and faith in the Good. We have come to see that this hopelessness may eventually turn into a defiance that despairs of receiving a clarifying word out of the infinite mystery that encompasses us. This offense arises out of the pride that believes it can somehow move God by its suffering, complaint and resounding voice. Indeed, we find that although it had admitted its weakness, it never relinquished its selfishness and pride, but thought it had been feeding itself through its weakness — that it had, through its brooding and self-effacement, moved and manipulated God to act. By admitting its need, the nourishment always came, and yet, when freedom has absolutely nothing to rest on, nothing by which to evade its utter dependence on God, and when it floats over the abyss, the selfish and insolent demand for nourishment that was always there shows itself. This pride is also within spiritlessness, but becomes most apparent when it has been actualized in spirit; from this perspective we may now look back and see that it is this offense at existence which is also at the heart of spiritlessness, though it is able to evade this despair by ignoring the limits and needs that offend it.

The Movement from Spiritless to Spiritual Offense Spiritless despair has unconsciously given up hope in the ultimate meaningfulness of existence. It evades the consciousness of this despair by seeking to ignore not only the contradictions and sufferings of existence, but also the mystery that surrounds it. We examined how the established order becomes a


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means of evasion, and that the self despairs of becoming itself by denying the need and limitations. Spiritlessness is offended by mystery, because it is outraged at almost anything beyond its control — even something as mundane as how fast the line at the supermarket is moving. Its pride and anxiety cannot allow anything to stand outside its control, and so it seeks to wrap its mind around Being through sticking to the facts, probability, or thinking sub specie aeterni. Anything that cannot be grasped under these categories is nothing - at least nothing important. It creates for itself its own safe haven by lowering any ideals beyond its capabilities, gaining its identity through aping others, and creating its own little established order — an order it feels it can control. In ignoring this nothing, the self ignores its limitations, thus evading its ultimate concern; by ignoring this concern, it closes itself off to the self-consciousness and freedom that comes out of the nothing. In Kierkegaard's terminology, it closes itself off to the eternal and absolute within itself. It is offended by the mystery that limits it, and out of which it has its being. With the death of mystery (the sacred), life becomes trivial. The tragedy is that, in its poverty, its desire is not to become richer, but to become more impoverished. This offense is the leaven of evil. It is the pride behind the assertion that we should be the judges of God's managerial effectiveness, or we should have control over existence and manage it according to our own conceptions of the meaning of Being. This prideful offense, which despairs of existence and the self, is the issue around which the problem of evil revolves. We cannot gain deep philosophical understanding of its nature until we recognize that each of us is also immersed in evasion and despair that is, in evil. A philosophical understanding of evil is approachable only through a philosophical ^//ûnderstanding, because the ground and essence of evil is found within the human heart. Evil, in its genuine and radical character, cannot be correctly understood abstractly, but is grasped only through the knower's relationship to it - only as the evil of the knower. Evil is not to be approached objectively, like a scientist studying and observing an object under a microscope in order to discover its nature. While one may find many interesting and important things about evil under the microscope, one will not discover its actual existential nature, because evil is in the heart of the one looking through the microscope. Thus, to address the problem of evil, we must confront our own offense and despair, and it is this very confrontation that begins the process of self-becoming in the individual. One must, as Judge Wilhelm said, choose despair. In this absolute choice the self is awakened to its task of becoming itself. While the ethical self awakens to its despair, it may evade its offense and pride by abiding in its own self-sufficiency. In choosing despair, one awakens to the absolute and the ideal, though selfishness and pride are barely touched, and so one begins to fulfil the ideal by one's own strength — that is, one

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maintains autonomous control over the ideal. God may have given the self existence as a gift, but it is up to us to choose to become a self through the freedom of ethical action. If the ethicist remains earnest in the task of selfbecoming, however, the offense at existence comes out: the ethicist becomes offended at his or her inability to fulfil the universal. At this point another choice is faced: one can evade this growing consciousness of the despair of the ethical existence, or one can again recognize the need, and feed on the nourishment that comes only with this recognition. This nourishment consists of the existential passions which allow one to leap into the religious stage of existence. With each awakening of the despair of self-sufficiency and pride, one takes more and more possession of oneself, and the heart becomes purified around a single, absolute telos. We have noted several problems that arise in the ethical relation to the absolute telos. First, we are not sufficient in ourselves to fulfil the ideal. Second, the whole notion of the ideal remains ambiguous, since existence has not provided us with an obvious and certain how-to instruction manual in which we may move unambiguously, step by step, into an eternal happiness. Third, the ethical seeks to fulfil itself in relative ends. Thus, the continual temptation is to 'solve' the other two problems by lowering the ideal to the socially accepted norms, and then call this the 'paradigmatic human being'. The leap into Religiousness A is the realization of just this lack of a manual for existence. In place of this non-existing manual, the religious offers mystery, infinite otherness and the darkness of the Nothing. Although these qualities sound abstract, all non-manipulative (free) personal relationships are characterized by degrees of mystery, otherness, and even darkness; when the relationship is to God, these qualities become absolute and infinite. Freedom arises out of this nothingness, and through the consciousness that one can only gain oneself by way of the spaciousness and openness provided by the Nothing. Purity of the Heart: The Passions of Offense and Faith The movement toward God is radically individual. To look to others in order to steady oneself, to look for a how-to manual, or to seek any other form of human security is, according to Kierkegaard, to move away from oneself by seeking identity from the external, rather than from out of one's absolute relationship to God. Even if one does not seek identity through the external, one may still remain offended at the darkness that remains beyond one's control. If only existence provided us with a clear path toward meaning (an instruction manual), then life would be so much easier. Philosophical understanding would consist in reading this manual with the help of reason; selfknowledge would consist of comparing oneself with this manual; freedom would consist in wholly willing the instructions provided by the manual; evil


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would consist in the lack of fulfilling these instructions, whether due to ignorance or weakness. In terms of this failure, the emphasis would be on the particular instances in which one transgressed the instructions, and so one would be good insofar as one kept its directions or rules, and evil insofar as one did not. Thus, one may be good Sunday through Thursday, and then be evil on Friday and Saturday. One may hope, then, that an eternal happiness consists in being good at least five-sevenths of the time. This is not how existence has been handed to us. Just a perusal of Western and Eastern philosophy as well as the major and minor religions of both hemispheres — will show that existence is a messy affair. A study of the best human wisdom and knowledge available does not simply boggle the mind, but leaves one numb and confused. This, however, is not such a bad thing, at least according to Kierkegaard - or to Socrates, for that matter. We are forced to admit that we do not know nearly as much as we think we do. Overcoming our offense at this mystery is not accomplished through an accumulation of knowledge a penetration of reason into the darkness — but through a particular, passionate relationship to the source of this mystery. Anti-climacus makes clear that evil is not about particular sins, but about a position of sinfulness. The more self-consciously free one becomes, the more this evil is intensified - that is, the more it becomes the principle out of which one lives, and the origin of one's disposition. At its highest potency, offense and despair are chosen in a self-conscious freedom that has lost faith and hope in the grace and goodness of God. This is why Anti-climacus has correctly stated that the opposite of sin is not virtue, but faith. 39 When the darkness of the storm overwhelms one's life, the question is not whether one can continue to fulfil the universal, because the storm brings the universal itself into question; the question is whether one will curse God and despair, or continue to humble oneself and worship. Kierkegaard gives no rational arguments for God's goodness, because it does no good to add to the plethora of'answers' given throughout human history (though he may relish the irony of adding to the confusion by giving more answers). He does not possess or control the clarifying word the defiant person needs. The only message he gives to defiance is that it must humble itself under its suffering, have faith in the goodness of God, and hold onto the hope that is against hope - the Paradox of the Incarnation. Perhaps the biggest reason Kierkegaard did not say much concerning how to overcome defiance is because he is not really writing to those in defiance, who have, after all, made their choice. He is writing to the spiritless, hoping to awaken them from their spiritual slumber. He understood the individual needs to be awakened to the seeds of pride, offense and despair. He sought to awaken the individual to earnestness, in hopes that the spiritual journey may at least begin. He knew full well the journey could end in defiance, but at least defiance is earnest, and so it might someday move from offense to faith,

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whereas spiritlessness does not even have the capacity for faith. Kierkegaard's authorship is an attempt to confront the single individual with the limitations of existence, and the weakness of the self in overcoming these limitations, in hopes of awakening the need for God. All pursuit and love of wisdom must remain within this existential neediness. Socrates was thoroughly aware of the limitations within existence, and the place these limitations played in the philosophical pursuit. This is perhaps most clearly seen in his recounting of the myth told to him by Diotima concerning the birth of Eros. Eros was born from Resource and Need, and so It has been his fate to always be needy; nor is he delicate and lovely as most of us believe, but harsh and arid, barefoot and homeless, sleeping on the naked earth, in doorways, or in the very streets beneath the stars of heaven, and always partaking of his mother's poverty. But, secondly, he brings his father's resourcefulness to his designs upon the beautiful and the good, for he is gallant, impetuous, and energetic, a mighty hunter, and a master of device and artifice - at once desirous and full of wisdom, a lifelong seeker after truth, an adept in sorcery, enchantment, and seduction. 40 For Socrates, Eros is the passion that drives the pursuit of wisdom, and which longs for the Good to give birth in oneself and others. He recognized the frailty and neediness in this pursuit, and continually expressed this in the ignorance that drove his questioning. It did not take long, however, for Resource to become the focus of the philosophical pursuit (it took place in Plato himself), and to leave the consciousness of our neediness behind as a nuisance, or at least that which is to be overcome. By focusing on Resource — by being offended by our neediness — we look to our own self-sufficiency, and put too much stock in our own power. By losing the need, we tend to put all value on what we have thought, on what we know with certainty, and on the order we have created. In this, we move from setting our designs upon the beautiful and the Good, and put our eyes only on what we have done, and on those aspects of existence we can control. There is no doubt that we have shown ourselves to be masters of device and artifice, but we have given up the greater part of our Being in doing so. What is tragic is that we have come to use our resourcefulness against ourselves: we have so enchanted and seduced ourselves by our own resources, that we are unable to see that we are barefoot and homeless. Notes 1. SeeSUD, pp. 120-8. 2.

Defiance is defined as that despair which, in willing to be itself, wills not to be itself (SUD,p.98).

Defiance: The Essence of Radical Evil 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.

9.

10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17.

18.

19.

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EUD, pp. 173-4 (my emphasis). CD, p. 131. CD, p. 131. CD, pp. 131-2. SUD, p. 99. Camus is a good example of this type of infinite resignation. In his book, The Myth of Sisyphus, one finds an instance of a secularized infinite resignation: 'it happens that the stage sets collapse. Rising, streetcar, four hours in the office or the factory, meal, streetcar, four hours at work, meal sleep, and Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday and Saturday according to the same rhythm - this path is easily followed most of the time. But one day the "why" arises and everything begins in the weariness tinged with amazement. "Begins" - this is important. Weariness comes at the end of the acts of a mechanical life, but at the same time it inaugurates the impulse of consciousness. It awakens consciousness and provokes what follows. What follows is the gradual return to the chain or it is the definitive awakening' (Albert Camus. The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays. Trans. Justin O'Brien. New York: Random, 1955, p. 10). 'But just because it is despair by means of the eternal, it is in one sense very close to the truth. And just because it is very close to the truth, it is infinitely far away. The despair which is the corridor to faith is also due to the help of the eternal; through the eternal the self has the courage to lose itself in order to win itself. But here it will not begin by losing itself; it wants, on the contrary, to be itself (SUD, 98). SUD, p. 99. SUD, p. 99. SUD, p. 100. SUD, p. 100. SUD, p. 100. SUD, p. 100. SUD, p. 100. Friedrich Nietzsche. The Will to Power. Trans. Walter Kaufman and R. J. Hollingdale. New York: Random, 1968, p. 506 (my emphasis). It should be noted that simply because this defiance has outward effects does not mean that it is more evil than the defiance that does not manifest itself. Evil is independent of its effects, because it is an ontological issue. It has to do with freedom and self-consciousness, and not with the external. No doubt, the external effects display the power inherent in this evil; however, the manifestation is not the power of the evil, but the power of evil is what grounds such manifestations. In the Postscript Climacus speaks of the need for the self to appropriate the truth, and in this sense truth becomes subjective. It is because of statements like this that Kierkegaard is often pegged as a subjectivist and relativist of the most radical type. In reality, Kierkegaard knew that we do not appropriate the truth, creating it according to our own will, for he recognizes the despair of such a project. Rather, the truth is what appropriates us. To say that truth is subjectivity, then, is not to say that we control or create our own truth, but that we have allowed the truth to control us. In the same way, the freedom of the self does not mean that we

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Kierkegaard's Analysis of Radical Evil control the source of our existence - that we are self-sufficient - but freedom is the means by which we open ourselves to being controlled by the source of our existence. Human existence is such that it must serve something - must worship something, even if this worship takes the form of envy and resentment.

20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27.

SUD, p. 101. SUD, pp. 101-2. EUD,pp.37-8. SUD, p. 102. Camus, p. 28. Camus, pp. 30-1. Camus, p. 37.

EUD, p. 37. The same idea is expressed by Anti-climacus in The Sickness Unto Death: 'someone suffering has usually one or more ways in which he could wish to be helped. If then someone helps him, well yes, he is glad to be helped. But as soon as the question of being helped begins . . . to be serious, especially when the help is to come from a superior, or the most exalted of all - then comes this humiliation of having to receive unconditional help, in whatever form, of becoming like a nothing in the hands of the "helper" for whom everything is possible ...' (SUD, pp. 102-3). 28. Heidegger, 1985, p. 155. 29. SUD, p. 103. 30. EUD, pp. 97-8 (my emphasis). 31. SUD, p. 105. 32. PH, p. 65 (my emphasis). 33. Dostoevsky, 1980, p. 241 (my emphasis). 34. Karl Jaspers. Philosophical Faith and Revelation. Trans. E. B. Ashton. New York: Harper & Row, 1967, p. 295. 35. Augustine. Confessions. Trans. F.J. Sheed. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1992, pp. 141-2 (my emphasis). 36. Augustine, p. 121. 37. Schelling,p.67. 38. See SUD, pp. 138-41. 39. SUD, pp. 114-15. 40. Plato. Symposium. The Collected Dialogues of Plato. Ed. Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns, pp. 526-74. Trans. Michael Joyce. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1961, pp. 555-6.

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Lewis, C. S. God in the Dock: Essays on Theology and Ethics. Ed. Walter Hooper. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1970. — Mere Christianity. New York: Macmillan, 1952. Lowrie, Walter. A Short Life of Kierkegaard. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1970. Machiavelli, Niccolo. The Prince. Trans, Daniel Donno. New York: Bantam, 1985. Mackey, Louis. Kierkegaard: A Kind of Poet. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1971. Magurshak, Dan. 'Despair and Everydayness: Kierkegaard's Corrective Contribution to Heidegger's Notion of Fallen Everydayness'. International Kierkegaard Commentary: The Sickness Unto Death. Ed. Robert L. Perkins, pp. 207-37. Macon, GA: Mercer UP, 1987. Marcel, Gabriel. Man Against Mass Society. Trans. G. S. Fraser. Chicago: Gateway, 1962. May, Gerald. Addiction and Grace. San Francisco: Harper/Collins, 1988. Meister Eckhart. Meister Eckhart. Trans. Raymond Bernard Blakney. New York: Harper, 1941. Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Gay Science. The Portable Nietzsche. Ed. and trans. Walter Kaufmann, pp. 93-102. New York: Penguin, 1976. — The Genealogy of Morals. The Birth of Tragedy and The Genealogy of Morals. Trans. Francis Golffing, pp. 146-299. New York: Doubleday, 1956. — Will to Power. Trans. Walter Kaufman and R. J. Hollingdale. New York: Random, 1968. Pascal. Pensees. Trans. A. J. Krailsheimer. New York: Penguin, 1984. Plato. Apology. The Trial and Death of Socrates. Trans. G. M. A. Grube, pp. 21-42. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 1975. — Parmenides. The Collected Dialogues of Plato. Ed. Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns, pp. 920-56. Trans. F. M. Cornford. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1980. — Republic. Trans. G. M. A. Grube. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1992. — Symposium. The Collected Dialogues of Plato. Ed. Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns, pp. 526-74. Trans. Michael Joyce. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1961. Pojman, Louis P. Classics of Philosophy. New York: Oxford UP, 1998. Rahner, Karl. The Hearer of the Word. Trans. Joseph Donceel. New York: Continuum, 1994. — Theological Investigations: Volume II (Man in the Church). Trans. Karl-H. Kruger. Baltimore: Helicon Press, 1967. Ricoeur, Paul. 'Guilt, Ethics, and Religion'. Conflict of Interpretations. Ed Don Ihde, pp. 425-39. Evanston: Northwestern UP, 1974. Roberts, Robert C. 'The Grammar of Sin and the Conceptual Unity of The Sickness Unto Death\ International Kierkegaard Commentary: The Sickness Unto Death. Ed. Robert L. Perkins pp. 135-60. Macon, GA: Mercer UP, 1987. Schelling, F. W. J. Of Human Freedom. Trans. James Gutmann. Chicago: Open Court, 1936. Schopenhauer, Arthur. 'Studies in Pessimism'. The Works of Arthur Schopenhauer: The Wisdom of Life and Other Essays, pp. 215-305. Roslyn, NY: Walter J. Black, 1932.

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Silber, John R. 'The Ethical Significance of Kant's Religion". Introduction. Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone. By Immanuel Kant. New York: Harper, 1960. Lxxix-cxxxiv. The Bible. The New American Standard Version. Tolstoy, Leo. The Death of Ivan Illych and Other Stories. Trans. Aylmer Maude, pp. 95-156. New York: Signet, 1960. Walker, Jeremy. Kierkegaard: The Descent Into God. Montreal: McGill-Queen's UP, 1985. Weil, Simone. Gravity and Grace. Trans Emma Craufurd. New York: Routledge, 1992. Westphal, Merold. Becoming A Self: A Reading of Kierkegaard's Concluding Unscientific Postscript. West Lafayette, IN: Purdue UP, 1996. — 'Kierkegaard's Psychology of Unconscious Despair'. International Kierkegaard Commentary: The Sickness Unto Death. Ed. Robert L. Perkins, pp. 39~66. Macon, GA: Mercer UP, 1987. Wyschogrod, Michael. Kierkegaard and Heidegger: The Ontology of Existence. London: Routledge, 1954.

Index

absolute, the 74-6, 88, 95-8, 102, 104, 110-14, 116, 119-21, 147 choice 67-8,74-5,78,97,104,113, 147 aesthete, aestheticism 25, 30, 39, 54, 58-70, 72, 74, 76, 78, 82, 85-6, 91, 102-3, 110, 117, 122, absurd man, the 138-9 abyss 11, 111, 114, 115, 122, 123, 131, 133, 135, 138, 139, 146 addiction 84-5,115,119 Ahab 9 amoral 2, 5, 144 anxiety 17, 40, 82, 89-90, 92-3, 95, 111, 118, 141, 147 Aristotle 24 Augustine 8,83,143-4 authentic, authenticity 70, 82, 108, 123, 125, 128-9, 134, 136 autonomous, autonomy 2-4, 92, 105, 117, 132, 148 awaken, awakening 17-18,20,27,41, 50-1,85-6, 141-2, 147-50 being 10-13, 15, 18-19, 23-4, 31, 34, 41, 50, 54, 75-6, 80, 102, 105, 129, 140-1, 143, 145, 147, 150 Berdyaev, Nicolas 38, 85 bored, boredom 61,64,67,69 Buddhism 116 Buechner, Frederick 29-30 Camus, Albert 138-9 categorical imperative 2~3 chaos 11,13,16,135,145 Christendom 52, 107-8 clarifying word 129,137-9,146,149 comfort 43-4,49-50,53-4,58-9,61, 81, 105, 118, 135, 141 comparison 8,53,118,132-3,141

conditional, conditioned 9, 50, 52, 81, 97, 119 consciousness 16,27,31,36,38,52, 58-9, 61, 63-4, 67, 70-1, 76-7, 81, 86, 89-91, 94-5, 102, 104-10, 114, 118-19, 121, 123-4, 130, 136, 136, 142, 144, 146, 148, 150 ethical 81,93,105 contingent, contingency 8, 26, 38, 53, 79,85,97-8,108, 110-11 continuity 29-32,81 control 14, 17,26,60-61,72,81,88,96, 125, 136, 139, 146-50 corruption 5-6,9 craving(s) 12-13, 84-6, 107, 122~3, 126n.26 criteria, criterion 52-4, 102, 106, 108, 121 crowd, the 43, 49-53 cruelty 35 dark see also abyss, ground

depths 12-13,16,76,114,122-3, 129, 133-4, 144-5 longing 107, 122, 135 principle 13,16,20,133 saying 130,137-9 darkness 12-13, 16, 18, 67, 85, 89, 115, 129,137-9, 145, 148, 150 death 8, 30, 44-5, 52-3, 67, 94, 108, 110-11, 116, 123, 137, 139, 141-2, 147 decision(s) 6, 17, 29-30, 32, 37, 45, 79, 91,96-7, 106,110 defiance 9,15,18, 48-50, 58-9, 82, 92, 102, 123-5, 128-44, 146, 149 demonic, the 92-3, 140 dependence 107-9, 128, 146 depths 11-17,20,65, 104, 106, 115, 132 of longing 12, 16 depravity 42

158

Index

depression 67,69,71 desire(s) 3-6, 26, 35, 38-9, 59, 63-5, 67,72, 77,80,85-6,94,97, 110, 114-17, 122,131, 135,138-40,142, 145-7 devil, devilish 9-10, 58, 129-30, 142 disconsolate, disconsolateness 48-50, 92 disinterested 32, 38, 41, 103, 117 disorder 12, 15-16, 135, 145 disposition 7, 18, 29, 31-2, 131, 145, 149 dissoluble, dissolubility 13-14, 17, 76, 145 diversion(s) 41, 62, 67-8, 123-4 Dostoevsky, Fydor 93-4 doubt 48, 68-9, 96 dread 69,89,95,111,117,123,125 duty 2,8,79-81,83-7,91,98,102-7, 112,144 dying to 109-11 earnestness 29-32, 34, 38, 40, 49-50, 72, 127n. 32, 134, 149 earthly 43,63,70,106,109-11,118 in toto 70, 72 emptiness 48,65, 110, 113-15, 118-20, 123, 125, 130-1, 134, 138 energeia 23-4 enjoy, enjoyment 31, 39, 60-9, 78,111, 113-14 enormous detour 120-1, 123, 125 envy 18, 26, 129, 152n. 19 established order, the 42-3, 47, 49-54, 108-9, 111, 131, 133-5, 141, 146-7 eternal, the 24-5, 27, 30-3, 44, 48, 63, 67,70-1,75-6,98, 103-4,108,119, 131, 145, 147 happiness 98, 102-4, 108, 111-12, 119, 121,123, 137, 148-9 recurrence 75 validity 44, 62, 67, 69-70, 72,75,91, 97-8 eternity 19-20,30,51-2,70-1,75, 94-5,98, 108-9, 113 ethical 8, 41,51, 59-60, 64, 67, 75-93, 96-8, 102-5, 107, 109, 111-14, 117, 122, 131, \W-% see also stages requirement 83, 87-8, 92, 96

system 91 task 78,80,82-3,103 ethics 42, 80, 82-4, 86-8, 91, 103-4, 106, 144 evasion 23, 27-8, 32, 34, 36, 38-40, 42, 51,54,76,82,84,93, 105, 119, 121, 123, 147 evil 4-20, 27-9, 32-3, 42, 46-9, 54, 58-9, 75, 88, 92, 94, 104-6, 122-3, 128-9, 133, 141-5, 147-9 good and 1,7,10-13,16-20, 45-6, 58,123,144 as negation 15,143 problem of 1,10-11,23,75,147 propensity to 7-8, 10, 20 radical 1,5-6,8,13,20,40,76,125, 136, 142, 145 as weakness 7-10,149 existence 19, 23, 30-4, 36, 38-41, 43, 45-7, 59, 61-2, 64-8, 74, 76-7, 80, 84, 96, 98, 102-5, 107-9, 111,113, 117, 119, 125, 130,132-3, 136-42, 145-50 aesthetic 65, 69, 74, 110, 114, 122 ethical 41,81,89-90,97, 104-5, 109, 111-12, 114 human 29,41,61,66,84,106-7, 110-11, 118-19, 122-3, 138-9 religious 41,102,104-7,111,114, 120-1, 124 self's 23,28,122,129 task of 27,53,60,78 facticity 53, 76-7 faith 18, 29, 50, 56n. 47, 60, 67, 69, 87, 94, 123-5, 128-9, 131, 137, 139, 141, 143, 146, 148-50 fanatic, fanaticism 45—7 feeling 15,18-19,67,81,115,129 infinitized 25, 34-6, 42 moral 6-7 finitude, the finite 16, 24-5, 28, 32-6, 42-7, 50, 54,64, 66-7, 70-1, 74-5, 78,83,97-8,108-16, 128, 130-6, 141 forces 1, 12, 14, 52, 61, 85-6, 89, 107, 122-3, 131, 137-8, 145 nexus of 15-16,18 freedom 1-4, 6-7, 9-10, 14, 16-20, 23-5, 28-9, 31-3, 58-9, 69, 71,

Index 74-7, 79-81, 84-6, 88-93, 97-8, 105-6, 109, 111, 114-15, 117-23, 125, 128, 131-2, 134-5, 137, 139, 141-2, 144-9 Freud, Sigmund 107 God

10-14,17-18,26-7,30,41-2, 44-53, 62-3, 75, 83-4, 87, 92, 95-8, 102-11, 113, 115-20, 123-4, 128-31, 133-4, 137-41, 144, 146-50 death of 49-50 Good, the 10-12,15-17,20,27,29, 39-42, 47-9, 58-60, 72, 76, 83, 90, 92-7, 103-4, 107, 111, 123, 128, 136, 138, 140-6, 150 Grand Inquisitor 117-18,125,141-2 ground 4-6, 12, 15-16, 18-19, 61, 85, 92, 102-3, 107, 116, 121, 131, 138, 147 of God 11 of the will 2-3,7-8,13,122-3 guilt 19-20, 85-6, 88, 90, 92, 105, 123 consciousness of 89,95,121 total 95-8, 103, 120-1 happiness 4, 98, 142 see also eternal health 15,61,133,144 Heidegger, Martin 12,139 heart 8, 10, 17,40,77,81,85,96, 105, 116-17, 125, 137, 140, 147, 148 purityof 126n. 3,143-4,148 Hitler, Adolf 9 hope 44, 54, 91, 94, 110, 115, 119, 130, 138-9, 143, 146, 149 hopeless, hopelessness 15, 60, 62, 70, 94, 146 humble, humility 18, 27, 61, 80, 92, 95, 104-5, 137, 149 ideal, ideality 25, 27, 33-4, 36~8, 40-1, 43-7, 49-50, 52-3, 61, 66, 68, 78-9, 82-3, 85-7, 90, 98, 105-7, 111, 122, 133-4, 142,147-8 illusion 15-16, 18, 35, 46, 51-2, 74, 105, 107-8, 111, 114, 116, 119, 130, 138 Ilych, Ivan 52 imagination 25, 33-6, 38, 64, 70, 133, 137

159

immediacy 14,60-1,67,70,112,120 pure 62-5,67 reflective 64-5 immoral, immorality 1, 5-6, 49, 144 inclosing reserve 91—6, 106—7, 111, 140 indifference 29,46 infinitude, the infinite 24-5, 27~8, 33-8, 42-51, 53, 63-4, 72, 83,85, 88, 95,97, 109, 111-15, 117-20, 122-3, 125, 128, 130-3, 136, 148 passion 30~2, 70-1 integrity 55n. 26,81,141 intoxicated, intoxication 39-40, 43, 46 James, William 46 Jaspers, Karl 143 Jesus 117,125 joy 30,39,80,98,123,130,135 Kant, Immanuel 1-10, 13-14, 16-17, 19,23,28,31,76, 122, 144-5 knowledge 8, 19, 30, 39-40, 65, 75, 86, 92,96, 120, 123, 128 infinitized 25, 34, 38-40, 42 objective 41-2 self- 34, 38-9, 41-2, 58, 69-71, 104-5, 148-9 law moral 2-10,14,19,32,81-2,86, 104-5, 122, 144 levelheadedness 43-4 leap 67-9, 86-7, 91-2, 95, 97-8, 103-4, 114, 120, 145, 148 qualitative 31-2 levelling 42-3,51,54,135 Lewis, C. S. 47 longing 26,62,113,137 as basis 11-12 depths of 12-13,16,84-6,107,114, 116-17, 119, 122, 131, 135, 138, 144-5 lost, lostness 24-7, 32, 44, 46, 49-51, 62,71-2,82,86,89,92, 102, 113,140 love 7, 9, 14-15, 18, 20, 35, 65-7, 79, 81,84,86,90,94,96, 104, 119, 141-2, 150 lukewarm 49,67,123

160

Index

Machiavelli, Niccolo 26 Marx, Karl 107 masses, the 135, 142 maxim 2-3,6-10,28,145 May, Gerald 84,115,119,137 meaning of life 29-30,60-1,66-7,80,106-7, 111, 113-14, 138, 146-8 meaningless, meaninglessness 43, 62, 65-6,69-70, 132 Meister Eckart 116 moderation 43-5, 47, 49 moral action 1-2,10,49 multiplicity 28, 60, 68, 80, 104, 116-17 mundane 36—7, 147 Napoleon 9 narrowing reductionism 43 neediness 83, 123, 150 Nietzsche, Friedrich 36, 48-9, 75, 105, 107, 135 nihilism 107,121,123 norms 8,42, 148 nothingness 75,97, 108, 111, 116-17, 123, 125, 129-30, 148 offense, offended 18, 48, 50, 128-9, 137, 142-3, 146-50 openness 47,69,71,92, 110, 115, 118, 123,148 order 8-9, 11-15,42,47, 75,91, 122-3, 133-5, 138, 143, 147, \50seealso established order pain

30, 42, 48, 62, 67-8, 93-5, 113, 119, 129, 137, 139-41 Pascal, Blaise 62 passion 17, 32, 35, 39, 66, 77, 79, 83, 138, 143, 145, 148, \50seealso infinite ethical 79,87 idealizing 30-1,33,45 moment of 29—31, 36 object of 102 personality 7, 9-10, 13, 16, 18, 28, 41, 67-9,76-7,80-1,85,96,132 Plato 7, 145, 150

potential, potentiality 3, 36, 46, 79, 123 for evil 28,33,47-8 self 28-9,32,44 power 9-10, 12-16, 18, 27-8, 35-6, 38, 43, 46, 70-2, 75, 83-6, 88-90,

104-7, 109-10, 116, 122, 128-41, 150 predisposition 7, 18, 131 pride 27, 47, 91-5, 104, 123, 128, 131, 137-8,146-9 primitivity 53 privation 15-16, 75, 119, 143-4 probability 43,45-7,147 purification 104-5,111 Rahner, Karl 28 reason 4, 6-7, 11-14, 28, 133, 137, 139, 144-5, 148-9 light of 13-14, 16,76,86, 122-3, 131, 133-4, 145 limits of 139,145 malignant 8-9, 144 practical 2-3,5-6,8,122 rebellion 10, 15, 40, 42, 45, 47-9, 58-60, 75-6, 128-30, 135-6 redemption 92,94 reflection 36, 45, 60, 62~5, 67, 70, 119 relative ends 108-9, 112-13, 120, 122, 148 religion 54, 66, 95, 107, 119, 149 Religiousness A 95, 98, 99n. 30, 103, 110-11, 114, 118-21, 123-4, 129-30, 148 repentance 79,81,87-90,94 repetition 29-31, 36, 51, 113-14, 117 resignation finite 66-7 infinite 73n. 22, 97, 105-6, 109-20, 123-4, 128, 130-32, 137, 142 resolution 35-8, 69, 85-8, 94, 113 responsibility 29, 31, 33, 42, 51-2, 58, 60,68,75,78-9,88,98, 103 revelation 11-12, 18-20, 122, 133, 140 Ricoeur, Paul 104 risk, risky 44, 46, 66, 68 Schelling, F. W. J. 1, 9-20, 23-4, 31, 47,61,75-6, 122, 141, 144-5 Schopenhauer, Arthur 108 secular mentality, the 43-5, 47-8, 51

Index self, the 5,7, 11, 14-15, 17-19,24-9, 32-9, 42-7, 49-51, 54, 58-65, 69-72, 74-89, 91, 93-5, 97, 102, 111, 113, 117-19, 122, 125, 128-32, 139, 141, 145-8 active 132-8 defiantly passive 132,136-41 empirical 4 misrelation of 24, 42 as negative unity 25, 28 noumenal 4, 19 phenomenal see empirical self poles of 24-5, 34, 36, 42, 85, 124 as a relation 23-4, 32, 70, 83 structure of 23,26-8,47,58,76, 130 syntheses of 25,33,124 as task 78 task of 23,28,44,68,71,78,82,85, 114 self-actualization 80, 123, 128 self-becoming 23-5, 28, 31-3, 37, 42, 67, 69, 79, 83, 85, 102, 112, 118-19, 123-4, 130, 137, 147-8 self-centered 35,49,79, 110-11, 116, 145-6 self-consciousness 25, 28, 36, 58, 69, 81-2,88,94,98, 105, 115, 120-1, 141, 145-7 self-contradiction 24, 83, 88, 120, 122, 140-1 self-deception 28, 32, 34, 37-8, 42-3, 54 self-determined, determination 1, 76, 80-1,91, 122 self-knowledge see knowledge self-legislation 2-4 self-love 7-9, 104 self-possession 29, 75, 77, 81 self-revelation 11, 14-16, 18, 114, 122, 133, 135, 141 self-sufficient, sufficiency 80-3, 92, 96-7, 102, 104-5, 107-9, 111, 117, 147-8, 150 self-will 13-14,17,48 selfhood 14, 17-18,20,28,32,87, 123, 125, 128, 132 selfish, selfishness 16, 18, 20, 43-4, 110-11, 116, 131, 145-7 Shakespeare 59

161

single individual, the 50-4, 92, 103, 125, 129, 135, 142, 150 Socrates 58, 128, 149-50 sovereign, sovereignty 81,109,135 spaciousness 115,118,123,137,148 spirit 7-8, 13-18, 20, 24, 29, 32-4, 36, 38, 43, 48-50, 52, 54, 58-9, 61, 70, 75-7,84-5,91,93,95, 105-6, 108-9, 117, 123, 125, 128-30, 132, 137, 140-2, 146 spiritless, spiritlessness 18, 25-9, 31, 34, 36, 40, 42-5, 47-52, 54, 58-61, 63-4, 67, 70, 85, 88, 92, 105, 107-8, 118, 123-5, 130, 133, 135, 142, 145-7, 149-50 sin 18,29,42,90-91,94,104,144, 149 consciousness of 29, 86 state of 85-9 stages of existence 25,59, 102-3, 145 aesthetic 39, 54, 59-62, 65, 67-9, 72, 81,85,91 ethical 59,67-8,76,81-8,91-2,96, 102-5, 107, 109, 112, 117, 122 religious 59,83,87,91-2,95,97-8, 102-5,114-15, 120, 122-3, 148 strength 9, 16, 26, 43, 65, 84-5, 92, 95, 106, 122, 130, 132, 147 struggle 18,20,24-5,27,42,63,68, 80, 113-17, 119-20, 122-3, 141, 144 suffering 89-90, 105, 113-16, 118-21, 137, 142, 146, 149 surrender 1 2 , 2 6 , 8 1 , 1 0 2 , 1 1 1 , 1 1 5 synthesis see self talent(s) 60-1, 77-8 telos 23,84,102,107 absolute 98,110-13,119-21,148 temporal, temporality 23-6, 31,33, 43-4, 62-4, 70-1, 95, 98, 108-9, 112, 114, 136 tension(s) 12, 34, 38, 42, 46, 85-7, 89-90,98, 114 terror 69, 71 of life 17-18,141-2 tranquil, tranquillity 42, 44, 50, 140 transform, transformation 20, 32, 53, 77-9,85-8, 102-5, 107, 109-11, 115, 119, 145-6

162

Index

transparent, transparency 36, 58, 60-1, 71, 75, 82-3, 86-7, 104, 108, 111, 117, 119, 128-30, 132, 134, 136-7, 145 trivial, triviality 29, 49-50, 66, 68, 72, 147 unconditional, unconditioned 46-8, 52-4,82,95, 111,115, 119, 133-4, 136 Underground Man 93—4 unfreedom 92~3 unruliness 11-12, 117 unwillingness 36-7, 39, 47, 62-4, 68-9, 92,95, 131 venture, venturing 13, 40, 44-7, 64, 89, 113, 117, 119 victory 71, 80-3, 89-90, 93, 98, 112-14, 119 vision 78, 133 weakness 42, 49, 60, 64, 70, 87-8, 90-7, 107, 123, 129-30, 132, 136-7, 141,146, 150

Weil, Simone 116—17 wickedness 8—9 will, the 2-14, 17-18, 25, 28, 34, 37, 49, 67, 72, 84, 88, 102-3, 109-10, 122, 128, 136, 143-6 autonomy of 2~3 corruption of 5-6 freedom of 28 infinitized 36-8 origin of 2, 4, 144 particular 13-15, 17-18, 24-5, 47, 52,85,97, 123, 133, 135, 145 universal 13-18, 24-5, 47-50, 52, 76, 84,97,123,133,135, 141,145 Wille 6-8, 10, 13-14 Willkiir 6-8, 10, 13-14 world, the 11,13, 23-8, 30, 34, 37, 39, 43-4,46, 51, 58, 62-5, 67-72, 75, 77, 81-2, 93, 98, 102-4, 106, 108-14, 116-17, 119-20, 122-5, 131, 135, 139-40, 146 intelligible 4-5, 19 sensible 4-5 worldliness 26-7, 42-4, 49, 112, 123 worship 18,97,118,130,149

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