Learning Along With Søren Kierkegaard:

A Personal Reflection

In his 1977 book, Kierkegaard as Educator, Ronald J. Manheimer does an excellent job

of analyzing the way in which Søren Kierkegaard viewed the educative process and his implicit

educational theory, as demonstrated by his various pseudonymous writings and verified by

comments in his papers and journals. He shows how this implicit educational theory is built

upon the three developmental stages (aesthetic, ethical, religious), indirect communication, and

the use of dialectic, and is integrated with subjectivity, faith, and the other aspects of

Kierkegaard‘s total philosophy. Manheimer also describes Kierkegaard‘s literary dependence

upon Socrates, a relationship that was first fully manifest in his dissertation at the University of

Copenhagen. One aspect of this relationship, as noted by Manheimer1 and described by

Kierkegaard himself in his Point of View2, is that, like Socrates, Kierkegaard considered that a

teacher must also be a learner. He extended this belief to his work as an author, which he felt

was essentially a process of self-education.3

This paper picks up on this belief and will attempt to look at the educational process from

the standpoint of the learner who is reading Kierkegaard‘s works and learning from Kierkegaard

as he does so. More specifically, I will attempt to analyze how learning is facilitated by

Kierkegaard‘s writings, based on concrete experiences from my own learning and from my 46

years as a professional educator. In this analysis I will use examples from the ways in which I

have learned, the ways in which my students have learned, and descriptions of the learning

process found in other places. From these foundations, I will attempt to show how Kierkegaard

artfully enhances the learning of the reader by bringing the reader actively into the learning

1 Manheimer, Kierkegaard as Educator, 5.

2 Kierkegaard, The Point of View, 47-47.

3 Kierkegaard, The Point of View, 90.

2

process. While I have become well acquainted with most learning theories that have been

promoted at universities and in schools over the past 50 years and have found many of them

useful, I have found that most of them are only partial in the learning they address. This paper

will focus on one particular type of learning: that which involves understanding the meaning that

exists in complex contexts. This type of learning may be the most significant type there is.

Kierkegaard continually involves himself and his reader in this kind of learning. A recent article

in the Atlantic4 describes the increasing interest among the developed nations of the world in the

Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). This instrument, which assesses

critical thinking rather than the retention of isolated facts or mastery of routine procedures,

promises to measure readiness for ―knowledge worker‖ jobs and the ability to solve real-world

problems. In developing these abilities, the teacher must also be a learner.

In this paper I will first describe what I learned about this type of learning in my years as

a student and during my career as an educator. Following this section, I will introduce the reader

to several of Kierkegaard‘s pseudonyms and explore various topics that Kierkegaard and his

pseudonyms explored and with which they struggled. Finally, I will present a synthesis that

brings the various topics we have explored into a single message. Most important, I will try to

get the reader to struggle along with Kierkegaard in approaching some crucial issues of human

existence. The learning that takes place will be shared by the reader, by the author of this article,

and vicariously with Kierkegaard as he struggled with the same issues.

Teaching and Learning over a Lifetime

Between kindergarten and graduation from high school I can‘t remember a single

instance when I was asked a question or presented with a problem that was not satisfactorily

addressed either by listening in class, reading assigned material, applying a concrete formula, or

4 Ripley, The World‘s Schoolmaster, Atlantic 308, 1, 109-110.

3

locating the proper repository of information. The answer existed somewhere in concrete form,

and all I had to do was find it. The notion of solving a problem that was unique or for which

there was no clear answer was completely foreign to my educational experience.

The first two years of college were really no different. Although I went to a four year

liberal arts college that was well recognized for its academic excellence, I found, for these first

two years, that it was more of the same as high school, only at a more intense level (i.e., longer

reading assignments, longer papers to write, more facts to memorize, etc.). I simply had to learn

what was taught in order to do well on the tests and write papers in clear prose that were mainly

based on the facts that I could obtain from secondary sources. With this effort I could easily

attain the course grades I desired. I wanted to get good grades in the courses I was taking, but

good grades at my college were also tied to another motivator. A student who could maintain a

2.2 average (based on a 3 point scale) for a particular semester was allowed unlimited ―cuts‖

from classes in the semester that followed. (Without this privilege a student was allowed only 2

or 3 unexcused classes per course.) This was a great motivator for me. If I wanted to use the

time to ―sleep in,‖ to prepare for a test in another class, to write a paper, to engage in some social

activity, or, for some courses, simply to avoid another boring class, I felt free to do so. The

system seemed to be working well for me.

Then, in my junior year, after I had declared a major in political science, my major

professor, who was not only an accomplished scholar but also a skilled teacher, turned my

academic life around. In my junior and senior years I took four courses from him: United States

Constitutional History, Political Philosophy, American Diplomatic History, and a senior seminar.

Overall, my grades in these four courses were no better than what my grades had been in

4

previous courses: two A‘s, one B, and one C. But the difference was that I really didn‘t care

about grades: I was too excited about what I was learning.

The instruction and discussion in class was much more centered on exploring questions

and subjects that were not entirely clear, topics upon which experts in the discipline disagreed.

The research papers required original student investigation into original sources and independent

conclusions from them. If secondary sources were used, they were compared with the student‘s

gleanings from the original sources and other secondary sources. I found myself taking the train

into Chicago to get at the original documents in the Newberry Library. I also found myself

continuing to take advantage of the unlimited cuts I had earned, only now my purpose in taking

them was different. Now I was using them primarily to spend whole days in the Newberry

Library to do the exciting research in which I was engaged.

What is perhaps surprising was that my new attitude toward learning now spilled over

into my other courses. I was no longer satisfied to get an A. I wanted to find out answers to

many questions that were raised but not answered in class. Learning had become a whole new

experience for me. I have never lost the love for learning that I gained during my last two years

in college.

I had planned to go to law school after college, and though I was accepted into the law

school which I had chosen, I did not receive the fellowship I needed to attend. With the draft

board breathing down my neck (though I didn‘t know exactly when I would be called), I enlisted

in the Marine Corps. By the time I had completed my tour in the Marine Corps, I was married

and had two children and could no longer afford to go to law school. After looking at several

opportunities I stumbled into teaching, even though I was only eligible for a provisional

certificate. But there was something of a teacher shortage at the time, and I found a job teaching

5

language arts and social studies in a suburban Chicago junior high school. Unfortunately, what I

had learned about learning in my undergraduate work did not immediately transfer over into my

classroom teaching. I pretty much taught my classes the way that I had been taught when I was

in junior high and high school.

However, sometime in the spring semester of my second year as a teacher, the principal

of the school invited me into his office to discuss a possible teaching assignment for me for the

following year. In that junior high school we used ability grouping of all students and ordinarily

had a student population that was divided into six groups at both the seventh and eighth grade

levels. Each teacher would teach a two-hour block of studies (either Language Arts/Social

Studies or Mathematics/Science) to two of the six groups. However, the incoming students from

the two elementary schools that year presented a scheduling problem for two reasons. First, it

was a very small group, and only five seventh grade classes, rather than the customary six, could

be justified. Second, by the report of the elementary school teachers and principals, there were

an inordinate number of ―problem‖ students in the group. The principal asked if I would take

this group of students and teach them all four of the core subjects. He said I was his choice for

this assignment because I was highly organized in my work (and could handle four preparations)

and because I had no trouble in maintaining discipline in my classes. It appears that my time in

the United States Marine Corps had made a significant contribution to my teaching career.

I was probably too ignorant at the time to ask what was meant by ―problem students,‖ but

it didn‘t take me long to find out when the fall semester began. Some of the students were

wonderful, well behaved students who were just very weak academically. Some of the students

were totally undisciplined and real threats to the safety of their classmates. And then there were

one or two of those students whose only problem I could determine from my post hoc analysis

6

was that they were too inquisitive (and perhaps too smart) for some of their previous teachers.

These were the students who, when the teacher presented something in class, had the audacity to

ask the teacher ―Why?‖ or to tell the teacher that there was an alternative explanation for

something that the teacher had explained in class. I loved these kids and realized soon that I

could use them as my co-teachers. At least one of these kids was a true independent thinker and

an independent researcher. Several times during the school year, he pointed out flaws in what I

had said or the way I had said it. That was wonderful! He had created a classroom learning

atmosphere for his fellow students.

One thing I had to do in preparing to teach that class during the preceding summer was to

strengthen myself in the disciplines of mathematics and science. My greatest concern was with

teaching them mathematics because this was one of the two areas (the other was in language arts)

where these students had shown themselves to be notably weak, as evidenced by their scores on

the Iowa Test of Basic Skills. One of my fellow teachers at the junior high school was using the

materials from the School Mathematics Study Group (SMSG), one of the curricula known as

―modern mathematics‖ or ―new mathematics,‖ that had been created in the aftermath of the

successful launching of Sputnik into space by the Soviet Union. As my colleague explained

SMSG, I saw that what it involved was an entirely different way of looking at mathematics.

Examining my own educational background I realized that I had never really learned

mathematics. I had learned arithmetic, algebra, and geometry; but these, for the most part, had

been treated as separate subjects that could be mastered by learning the rules associated with

each and carefully applying them. I had always considered the various shades of mathematics

with which I was acquainted as extremely dull. Now, as I began to look at mathematics more

like a true mathematician would, I began to become excited, and I began to envision ways in

7

which I could make learning for students exciting. In addition to borrowing ideas from my

colleague, I obtained a number of little booklets from a series identified as ―Exploring

Mathematics on Your Own.‖

At about the same time I came across Jerome S. Bruner‘s The Process of Education,5

which was published in 1960 and was built on the work of thirty-five scientists, scholars, and

educators who had come together at the Woods Hole Conference in 1959 to discuss how

education in science might be improved in the nation‘s primary and secondary schools.

Although the chief emphasis was on education in mathematics and the sciences, their work had

implications for effective, continuing learning in every field. A first principle articulated by

Bruner was that learning must be based upon a thorough understanding of the structure of the

subject being studied. In the years immediately following the Woods Hole Conference and

Sputnik, including the period while I was beginning to teach my class of ―problem students,‖ the

main applications were in science and mathematics. But I saw this as a principle that could be

extended to the language arts and social sciences as well. By the mid-1960s various national

―new English‖ and ―new social studies‖ materials had come into existence. A second principle

emphasized by Bruner was that ―any subject can be taught effectively in some intellectually

honest form to any child at any stage of development.‖6 Together, these two principles became

active working hypotheses as I eagerly took on my new teaching assignment.

That academic year exceeded my highest expectations. Learning in our classroom

became a joint teacher/student project. I had the students actively experiment with different

strategies for reading in order to determine what was best for them, both in terms of time it took

to read a piece of writing and their comprehension of what they had read. I used what I had

5 Bruner, The Process of Education.

6 Bruner, The Process of Education p. 23.

8

learned about linguistics from a course I was taking toward my Master‘s degree to help them

understand the relationship between sentence structure and intended meaning. We used these

same skills to systematically examine mathematics word problems to determine what steps

should be taken to solve those problems. I asked the students to create experiments that they

thought would confirm or invalidate principles they had learned in science. The students loved

the experience, and I enjoyed them and the opportunity to work with them. Of my 46 years of

teaching at the junior high school, senior high school, and university levels, I consider that this

was my most successful year of teaching.

I think the principal and the central administration would have been happy if I had merely

kept the lid on in the classroom and the students had made some progress on the Iowa Test of

Basic Skills. As it happened, we exceeded everyone‘s expectations. On the Iowa Test of Basic

Skills in the spring semester, the students as a group showed two years of growth across the

board, except in spelling. In spelling our group score showed a gain of eight-tenths of a year.

No student showed an average gain of less than a year across the categories. One student (the

one who most frequently refused to take my word for something and constantly asked ―Why?‖)

gained so much in every category that for the following year he was assigned to the top ability

group in the eighth grade.

What did I learn about learning? I rediscovered what I had learned in my last two years

of college: that the student (at any grade level) must be integrally involved in his own learning

and that learning is enhanced when the student and teacher are jointly working together to

uncover something that they hadn‘t previously known. Further, learning is most effective and

efficient when the student is involved in devising the methodology by which he or she best

learns. Only then can the student become an independent learner. It was probably fortunate that

9

I hadn‘t yet learned more about existing learning theories and research findings. If I had, I‘m

afraid that I may have tried to apply that knowledge to the students‘ learning without getting

their help in shaping the learning process. I may know a lot about the learning process, but there

is always a lot that I don‘t know about how any individual student learns. I need that student‘s

help. Since I realized that my own teachers in school didn‘t fully understand how I best learned,

what would make me so arrogant as to think that these ―problem students‖ didn‘t know things

about how they best learned that I, as an outsider, didn‘t know and which I could use in helping

them improve their own learning processes? We learned best when both the student and I were

faced with a problem to which neither of us had the sure answer. That group of ―problem

students‖ stands out in my experience because of the particular nature of the students and

because I was given carte blanche to teach them in whatever way that worked. Nevertheless, in

every subsequent class that I taught, whether in secondary schools or in university graduate

courses, I have attempted to incorporate the same principles of learning into the classroom.

In 1963, while I was teaching Language Arts and Social Studies in a junior high school in

Champaign, Illinois, I was invited to join a team of teachers/researchers at the University of

Illinois who were developing a ―new‖ English curriculum for junior high and high school

students. I split my days between the campus of University High School in Urbana and my

junior high school in Champaign. In the mornings I would be at ―Uni High,‖ teaching a course

and working with the team to develop curriculum materials, and in the afternoons I was back in

Champaign teaching Champaign junior high school students, using the materials we were

developing. I learned a lot about teaching and learning that year; but probably the most

important thing I gained was a reinforcement of what my problem students had taught me: that

students must be in charge of their own learning. I also had my understandings extended into the

10

study of literature. A central strategy in fostering understanding of any good piece of literature

(whether sonnet, novel, epic poem, or short story) was to get the student to ask the question:

―What‘s the real story here?‖ Students learned to use varieties of clues from the text itself to

understand the essential meaning of a piece of literature— a meaning that would have been lost

if the author had tried to express it directly in prosaic words and phrases. I began to more fully

understand the dynamic relationship between the text of the work and the student‘s active

involvement with that text, an understanding that could be extended to other areas of the

curriculum (e.g., grammar) and presumably to all fields of significant study. Instructive in

developing my understanding was the experience of Samuel Scudder, who relates his own

learning under the great scientist, Louis Agassiz, in the article, ―Look at Your Fish.‖7 Scudder

describes in detail how his instruction began with a three day exercise of observing a dead fish,

an exercise which required him to observe, draw out meaning, form hypotheses, test those

hypotheses, and draw the various parts of his learning into a comprehensive account of what he

derived from the experience. I would recommend Scudder‘s story to anyone who wants to

obtain a renewed insight of what is involved in the learning process.

The following year I took a position for a year as an instructor of English at the campus

school of the State University of New York College of Buffalo. I was hired for the specific

purpose of introducing the materials and methods of the University of Illinois English

Curriculum Project into the school‘s curriculum. During that year the campus school decided to

bring Junior Great Books into the school‘s curriculum and sent two of us to receive training as

leaders. A major part of the training was to learn how to ask various questions of a group of

students whom we were leading. What we were taught reinforced what I had learned as part of

the University of Illinois English Curriculum Project; but there was one key additional element

7 McCrimmon, Look at Your Fish, in McCrimmon, From Source to Statement.

11

that I found very practical in my future teaching. Each discussion with students should be

initiated by asking a question (called a ―basic question‖) about the piece of literature being

discussed, to which the leader himself did not have a clear answer. This question would be

followed by supplementary questions that sought to clarify the group‘s grasp of factual material

or were aimed at restating comments that had previously been made by group members. But the

basic question still remained as the guide for the discussion until the leader felt that he had it

satisfactorily answered. At this point it ceased to be a useful basic question and the leader would

ask another basic question. This was essentially the strategy I had learned in the English

Curriculum Project, but it provided a concrete technique that I found extremely useful in future

years—both with public school students and with graduate students, not only in examining works

of literature, but also in other fields, where the answers to important questions were not entirely

clear.

Also during that year I took some courses at the University of Buffalo that would

enhance my teaching skills and also could be used to support my doctoral work at the University

of Illinois. During one of my trips to class, I happened to wander past one of the campus

bookstores and saw a display in one of the windows advertising the works of Kierkegaard. I was

intrigued by a sign in the display window that asked the question: ―Was Kierkegaard a

Christian?‖ This aroused my curiosity. Why was this question even being asked? I had learned

a little about Kierkegaard in my undergraduate days, but had never read any of his works. Since

I considered myself a Christian, I was intrigued by the question and went into the bookstore and

bought an anthology of selected writings from Kierkegaard.

Reading Kierkegaard was a whole new experience for me. His pseudonymous works

raised some questions that I hadn‘t really considered in depth before. Furthermore, I learned that

12

the pseudonyms typically raised these really important questions, but often answered them

obliquely. Also, the questions they raised and the answers they provided raised all sorts of other

intriguing questions. For instance, if the paradox of the Incarnation is true (which I believe it is),

does this really make the gospel story a contemporaneous experience for me? And if it indeed

does, what does this imply for my other Christian beliefs and the way I live my life. Reading

portions of Fear and Trembling, Philosophical Fragments, A Concluding Unscientific

Postscript, and Practice in Christianity made me rethink many things about what I believed and

to consider their extensions into my whole life. As I graduated from the selections in the

anthology to the larger works from which they were extracted, I found myself on an intellectual

journey that was not too different (though much more extensive) from the experience of Samuel

Scudder, the student of Louis Agassiz. But the journey was not only intellectual; it was also

spiritual. My beliefs were being challenged, shaped, and extended in ways that they never had

been prior to that time. I was engaged in a personal, private learning experience that raised my

learning to a whole new level.

When I returned to Champaign the following year, I found myself involved in the state

sponsored gifted program, first as a classroom teacher and later as the director of the school

district‘s gifted program and the state supported demonstration center that operated in the

district. The gifted program in Champaign focused on fostering the learning process in students,

using the work of J.P. Guilford, as presented in his 1959 Structure of Intellect8 model, to give

direction to its efforts. This model emphasizes how the individual recognizes relevant data,

stores it in memory, and applies that stored data to solve problems through productive thinking.

Productive thinking is of two types: divergent and convergent. Most individuals attempt to go to

8 Guilford, “Three Faces of Intellect.”

13

convergent thinking as rapidly as possible in order to arrive at a satisfactory solution to a

problem in the minimum amount of time. The danger is that the satisfactory solution chosen is

often not the optimal solution. To avoid this danger, divergent thinking is necessary to generate

alternatives that enable the individual to carefully evaluate the merits of each and select the best

solution or combination of solutions from among them. My job was to help teachers within the

Champaign district, as well as visitors who came to the demonstration center from other school

districts, to incorporate methodology that would help their students establish habits of truly

productive problem solving. We experienced considerable success; but when I took time to

analyze what was happening, I realized that this process was essentially the process that I had

implemented with my ―problem students‖ some years earlier. This, in turn, made me realize that

this process was not only good for ―gifted‖ students, but was beneficial for all students. I was

reminded of what I had learned earlier from Jerome Bruner: ―Any subject can be taught

effectively in some intellectually honest form to any child at any stage of development.‖ This

apparently also applied to ways of thinking.

From that point on in my career, for every complex learning experience in which I was

involved, whether it had to do with my own learning or that of my students, I was guided by a

few basic principles that I learned in those first years as a teacher. These principles may be

summarized: (1) seek to understand the entire context of the situation that is trying to be

understood, (2) ask, and keep re-asking, a few basic questions (e.g., ―What‘s happening here?‖)

until they cease to extract further information from the context being studied, (3) form

hypotheses, (4) test and modify these hypotheses, (5) check new understandings against credible

outside sources, (6) tentatively adopt and apply a solution but continue to test it and make

modifications as necessary.

14

In 1971 I left the public schools and spent the next 35 years as a professor of educational

administration, first at Queens College of the City university of New York for six years and then

for another 29 years at Texas A&M university. During those years as a professor I spent a major

portion of my time working with principals and other school administrators in their schools,

helping them deal effectively with the problems they encountered. I found that most of the

available research on schools, and on school leadership particularly, was not very useful for

them—at least not for dealing with those complex problems that were keeping them awake at

night. I began working with them on strategies to solve these complex, usually interpersonal,

problems that were, in many cases, tearing them apart emotionally and, in a few cases, causing

them health problems. To my basic strategy of problem solving I added strategies from other

sources, particularly those that I gleaned from the models proposed by Argyris & Schön.9 From

their work I learned that tough interpersonal problems, like those faced continually by school

leaders, were best addressed by creating an environment that encouraged the flow of valid

information among the persons involved in the problem situation, encouraging the active

involvement of all persons involved in the problem situation, and openly testing hypotheses for

addressing the problem. Unlike most of the theory that I encountered and tried to use, I found

that the strategies proposed by Argyris and Schön worked in practical situations—and more

important, principals and superintendents also found them useful.

During my career I was the major advisor for 66 doctoral dissertations. In approaching

the formation of a topic for their dissertations and in their dissertation investigations, I proposed

the same problem solving approach to understanding difficult problems that I had begun to use

with my ―problem students.‖ Each of them was presented with a copy of Scudder‘s Look at Your

Fish and encouraged to use it as a model for approaching their dissertation topic. In 1993, with

9 Argyris & Schön, Theory in Practice, Increasing Professional Effectiveness.

15

the aid of three of my former doctoral students, I published a book, Doing Naturalistic Inquiry,10

which describes how this basic problem solving strategy could be used in writing a dissertation.

Kierkegaard’s and His Pseudonyms: The Art and Craft of Teaching

Are good teachers born or are they made? Throughout my career as a teacher, at both the

public school and university levels, I have heard the question addressed vigorously on both sides

of the matter, and I think most serious observers would conclude that both sides make a

contribution. Closely related to this is the question or whether teaching is an art or a science.

My own take on the matter is that art and science are so integrally interwoven in the teaching act

that the two cannot really be separated.

Most good teachers develop their skills over a lifetime. Teaching is an exhilarating

experience for the good teacher, and the good teacher wants to extend and enlarge the experience

by improving his teaching skills. I think that for most teachers this personal professional

development is most robust when they have meaningful, continued access to the best research on

teaching and learning, have, at the same time, access to a group of students whom they can use to

experimentally apply their knowledge to their teaching practice, and, through the achievement of

these students, receive feedback on their knowledge and practice.

Kierkegaard‘s chief external impetus for developing his teaching style was Socrates. But

it was not simply an adoption of the Socratic Method, but an adaptation based upon his

university studies that culminated in his dissertation: The Concept of Irony, With Continual

Reference to Socrates. Although he continued to make reference to Socrates and the Socratic

Method throughout his writings, he made significant adaptations and extensions that built a style

that was uniquely his own. Perhaps the Socratic strategy that he incorporated most completely

into his own work was getting his reader actively involved in the learning process. One of the

10

Erlandson, Harris, Skipper, and Allen, Doing Naturalistic Inquiry.

16

chief ways for getting his reader involved in his or her own learning was through the

personalities that he created to author his chief philosophical works.

Although Kierkegaard addressed a large number of Christian topics directly under his

own name (e.g., Works of Love and his many Christian discourses), his most creative, thought

provoking, and reader engaging writings were delivered indirectly through various pseudonyms.

At the end of Concluding Unscientific Postscript Kierkegaard formally declares himself the

author behind his various pseudonyms:

My pseudonymity or polyonymity has not had an accidental basis in my person…but an

essential basis in the production itself, which, for the sake of the lines and of the

psychologically varied differences of the individualities, poetically required an

indiscriminateness with regard to good and evil, brokenheartedness and gaiety, despair

and overconfidence, suffering and elation, etc., which no factually actual person dares to

allow himself or can want to allow himself in the moral limitations of actuality. What

has been written, then, is mine, but only insofar as I, by means of audible lines, have

placed the life-view of the creating, poetically actual individuality in his mouth, for my

relation is even more remote than that of a poet, who poetizes characters and yet in the

preface is himself the author.11

He goes on to emphasize his distance from his pseudonyms:

Thus in the pseudonymous books there is not a single word by me. I have no opinion

about them except as a third party, no knowledge of their meaning except as a reader, not

the remotest private relation to them, since it is impossible to have a doubly reflected

communication.12

Then he further distances himself from his pseudonyms with a request for those who

would quote his works:

Therefore, if it should occur to anyone to want to quote a particular passage from the

books, it is my wish, my prayer, that he will do me the kindness of citing the respective

pseudonymous author‘s name, not mine….13

Over the scope of his writings Kierkegaard presents a number of key themes and

relationships that are interrelated in his understanding, but often not in obvious ways. Further,

11

Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, 625. 12

Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, 626. 13

Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, 627.

17

although Kierkegaard always intended for his writings to affect both the thought and behavior of

his reader, the practical implications of these writings are often difficult for the reader to fully

assimilate or apply. This is because his most significant writings are purposely indirect and are

presented by pseudonymous authors, who, as we noted, are to be considered the true authors of

various works, rather than Kierkegaard himself.

The concepts these pseudonymous authors present are often difficult to understand, and

Kierkegaard believes that unless the reader accepts this difficulty and is willing to become both

intellectually and emotionally involved in solving the problems he presents, he or she will gain

only an emaciated objective understanding that will amount to no real understanding at all. In

other words, Kierkegaard invites his readers to join him, through the authorship of his

pseudonyms, in the problem solving experience. As I read the works of Kierkegaard‘s, I feel

as though I‘m like one of those ―problem students‖ I had in my seventh grade class half a

century ago. As his pseudonyms search for answers to the paradigms and puzzles they

propose, they bring the reader through the problem solving process. At each step of the

process the reader is compelled to challenge both his own presuppositions and those of the

pseudonymous writer.

Among the primary themes the pseudonyms explore are the relationship between infinity

and the finite (including their fusion in the Incarnation), the objectivity/subjectivity relationship,

hereditary sin, anxiety, despair, and faith. We will examine each of these briefly and also show

how, in Kierkegaard‘s thinking, they are interrelated. As we proceed on this venture, the

pseudonymous authors will be both our teachers and our fellow learners. I will be one of the

students in their classrooms, and I invite the reader to join me as a fellow classmate. To illustrate

what I‘m talking about I will be drawing upon the works of five of Kierkegaard‘s pseudonyms:

18

Johannes Climacus, Johannes de Silentio, Constantin Constantius, Vigilius Haufniensis, and

Anti-Climacus.

Johannes Climacus, the pseudonymous author of both Philosophical Fragments

and the much longer Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments, is

a humble, honest, earnest young man, though not a Christian himself, who sets out on a

quest to determine exactly what Christianity is. His style brings his reader along as a

confidant and partner in the inquiry. The unique combination of his personal religious

status and his excellent investigative skills enables him to make an ostensibly unbiased

examination of the implications of Christianity for a Christian‘s belief system and

lifestyle. This, in turn, enables him to point out the inadequacies of arguments used

against Christianity as well as the hypocrisies of many who claim to be Christians.

We also have a third person description of how Climacus‘ thought processes were

developed. In Johannes Climacus, or De omnibus dubitandem est, Kierkegaard gives a

detailed account of how Johannes Climacus developed his patterns of thinking and the

epistemological assumptions that provided the basis for his later works. This description of

Johannes‘ thought processes, written before Philosophical Fragments but not published, is

included along with Philosophical Fragments in the Hong and Hong edition. The following

passage from this account illustrates something of the nature of Kierkegaard‘s creation:

As Johannes began his deliberation on this question (i.e. What must the nature of

existence be in order for doubt to be possible), he of course perceived that if he

demanded an empirical answer to it, life would offer a multifariousness that

would only hide a perplexing diffusion over the whole range of extremes. In

other words, not only could that which evokes doubt in the single individual be

extremely different, but it could also be the opposite, for if someone were to

discourse on doubt in order to arouse doubt in another, he could precisely

thereby evoke faith, just as faith, conversely, could evoke doubt. Because of this

paradoxical dialectic, which, as he had realized earlier, had no analogy in any

sphere of knowledge since all knowledge stands in a direct and immanent

19

relation to its object and the knower, not in an inverse and transcendent relation

to a third, he easily perceived that at this point any empirical observation would

lead to nothing. He had to take another route if he sought to find an answer to

that question. He had to search out doubt’s ideal possibility in consciousness.14

The thought process and problematical considerations of Johannes Climacus are also

evident throughout Philosophical Fragments and Concluding Unscientific Postcript, but are

presented more indirectly in thought provoking language that challenges the reader to search

for meaning and context and to consider implications for his own comprehensive belief system.

Consider, for example, the following excerpts from his writings:

… the something in which this occurs (for it does not occur through the understanding,

which is discharged, or through the paradox, which gives itself – consequently in

something), is that happy passion to which we shall now give a name, although for us it

is not a matter of the name. We shall call it faith. This passion, then, must be that

above-mentioned condition that the paradox provides…. Consequently, it is easy for the

contemporary learner to become a historical eyewitness, but the trouble is that knowing

a historical fact – indeed, knowing all the historical facts with the trustworthiness of an

eye-witness – by no means makes the eyewitness a follower, which is understandable,

because such knowledge means nothing more to him than the historical. It is at once

apparent here that the historical in the most concrete sense is inconsequential; we can

let ignorance step in here, let ignorance, so to speak, destroy one fact after the other, let

it historically demolish the historical—if only the moment still remains as the point of

departure for the eternal, the paradox is still present.15

Several questions jump out at me when I read this passage: What does Johannes

Climacus mean by saying that the historical is inconsequential? What is the paradox? What is

the passion that the paradox provides? If Johannes Climacus is not talking nonsense, what is it

that he is trying to communicate? Or consider this statement:

Everything that becomes historical is contingent, inasmuch as precisely by coming into

existence, by becoming historical, it has its element of contingency, inasmuch as

contingency is precisely the one factor in all coming into existence. —And therein lies

again the incommensurability between a historical truth and an eternal decision.16

14

Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, 166.wh 15

Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, 59. 16

Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, 98.

20

What does it mean for a historical truth and an eternal decision to be incommensurable?

And why are they incommensurable? Or consider this statement:

It is, however, the perfection of the eternal to have no history, and of all that is, only the

eternal has absolutely no history.17

Why is it the perfection of the eternal to have no history? And what about the following

excerpt?

As soon as I make the understanding of the paradox commensurate with the difference

between being more or less intellectually endowed (a difference that still does not

transcend being human, unless someone were to become so brilliant that he became not

only a human being but also God), my discussion of understanding eo ipso demonstrates

that what I have understood is not the absolute paradox but a relative paradox, because

the only possible understanding of the absolute paradox is that it cannot be

understood….Perhaps this is so because objectively there is no truth for existing beings,

but only approximations, whereas subjectively truth for them is in inwardness, because

the decision of truth is in subjectivity.18

Why is there no truth for existing beings? What does it mean to say truth is inwardness?

What does it mean that the only possible understanding of the absolute paradox is that it cannot

be understood?

The individual‘s eternal happiness is decided in time through a relation to something

historical that furthermore is historical in such a way that its composition includes that

which according to its nature cannot become historical and consequently must become

that by virtue of the absurd. 19

How does something become historical by virtue of the absurd? What are the

implications of this for me as an individual? For the person unfamiliar with Kierkegaard‘s

writing, these passages may be rather bewildering. Just what is it that Johannes is trying to say?

Statements like these produce all sorts of possibilities in my thinking. They produce in me the

type of expectancy and uncertainty that I grew to treasure in my last two years in college and in

my graduate work and the type of expectancy and uncertainty that I sought to foster, first in my

17

Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments,76. 18

Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, 218. 19

Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, 385.

21

early class of ―problem students‖ and then with all my students who followed them, especially

the doctoral candidates with whom I worked. Most of Kierkegaard‘s other pseudonyms had a

similar effect on my thinking and learning.

Johannes de Silentio, the man of silence, is a self-effacing author who has genuine

questions about where philosophic thought is going in his day but, though he has some doubts

about its certainties, does not attack it directly. Instead he poses some of the questions he

personally has about how God‘s infallible rule is revealed to us through faith. It seems to him

that everyone else must have faith since no one else has the same questions he has:

In our age, everyone is unwilling to stop with faith but goes further. It perhaps would be

rash to ask where they are going, whereas it is a sign of urbanity and culture for me to

assume that everyone has faith, since otherwise it certainly would be odd to speak of

going further.20

Johannes de Silentio goes on to admit that he is not a philosopher and is in no position to

challenge the philosophers:

The present author is by no means a philosopher. He has not understood the system,

whether there is one, whether it is completed; it is already enough for his weak head to

ponder what a prodigious head everyone must have these days when everyone has such a

prodigious idea.21

He notes that in earlier days ―faith was then a task for a whole lifetime because it was

assumed that proficiency in believing is not acquired in days or weeks.‖ 22

He realizes that what

he writes will not receive wide acclaim, but chooses to go ahead anyway since such approval is

not what he‘s really seeking.

The present author….writes because to him it is a luxury that is all the more pleasant and

apparent the fewer there are who buy and read what he writes. He easily envisions his

fate in an age that has crossed out passion in order to serve science.23

20

Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling/Repetition, 7. 21

Kierkegaard, Repetition/Fear and Trembling, 7. 22

Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling/Repetition, 7. 23

Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling/Repetition 7.

22

Perhaps Johannes de Silentio is a man of silence because he knows that the faith that

bridges the gap between the infinite and the finite cannot be expressed in objective language,

which is what most people seem to want. What, for instance, can we do with a statement such as

―the Word was made flesh‖ (John 1:14)? How do we logically reconcile the acts of God except

through the humble, silent acceptance of the fact that God is not bound by our logic? Like

Johannes Climacus, Johannes de Silentio produces statements that draw the reader into the web

of concepts and paradoxes that drives his writings and that stimulates the reader‘s own curiosity

and thought. Consider for example:

Abraham had faith, and therefore he was young, for he who always hopes for the best

grows old and is deceived by life, and he who is always prepared for the worst grows old

prematurely, but he who has faith—he preserves an eternal youth.24

The reader must wonder, ―Exactly how does having faith produce eternal youth?‖ Or

what does the reader do with the following statement:

The absurd does not belong to the differences within the proper domain of the

understanding. The moment the knight executed the act of resignation, he was convinced

of the impossibility, humanly speaking: that was the conclusion of the understanding, and

he had sufficient energy to think it. But in the infinite sense it was possible, that is by

relinquishing it [resignere derpaa], but this having, after all, is also a giving up.

Nevertheless, to the understanding this having is no absurdity, for the understanding

continues to be right in maintaining that in the finite world where it dominates this having

was and continues to be an impossibility. The knight of faith realizes this just as clearly;

consequently, he can be saved only by the absurd, and this he grasps by faith.25

What exactly is the ―absurd‖? What does it mean for a person to be saved ―only by the

absurd‖?

Constantin Constantius, whose book, Repetition, came out at the same time as Fear and

Trembling, is a very different sort of person from either the quiet, self-doubting Johannes de

Silentio or the careful scholar, Johannes Climacus. Neither humble nor silent nor a careful

24

Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling/Repetition, 18. 25

Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling/Repetition, 46-47.

23

scholar, Constantin is a self-confident man of the world, well organized and assured of his own

worth and not hesitant to speak of his superiority. The subtitle of his book is ―A Venture in

Experimenting Psychology,‖ and he starts the book with a proposal for an investigation:

…I was occupied for some time, at least on occasion, with the question of repetition—

whether or not it is possible, what importance it has, whether something gains or loses in

being repeated….Say what you will, this question will play a very important role in

modern philosophy, for repetition is a crucial expression for what ―recollection‖ was to

the Greeks. Just as they taught that all knowing is a recollecting, modern philosophy will

teach that all life is a repetition.26

During the course of his experiments he encounters a young man who wants to break off his

relationship with a young woman, even though he is still in love with her. He is afraid that in doing so

he will bring irreparable emotional and psychological harm to the young woman, and he cares for her

too much to allow this to happen. The young man agonizes over the situation and shares his

increasingly intense ordeal with Constantin in a series of letters. Constantin confidently offers

practical advice (like making the girl think the young man is having an affair with another woman so

that she breaks off the relationship), which to his great annoyance, the young man rejects. Although he

later admits that he has invented the young man for literary purposes, he confidently believes that his

created exchange with the young man clearly demonstrates the superiority of his own position on the

question of repetition. However, Kierkegaard‘s message about faith as the link between the temporal

and the eternal is really delivered by the young man as he reads the book of Job and takes on Job as his

champion in his present ordeal. Constantin‘s arrogance puts us on the young man‘s side. In his

journal, Kierkegaard also recognized that the young man‘s position was stronger than Constantin‘s. He

commented:

―Repetition‖ is and remains a religious category. So Constantin can get no further….The first

form of the interesting is to love change; the second is to want repetition, but…with no

26

Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling/Repetition, 131.

24

suffering—therefore Constantin runs aground on what he himself has discovered, and the

young man advances further.27

Given this scenario it is not surprising that the most fertile and thought provoking passages in

Repetition are those attributed to the young man rather than those attributed to Constantin. For

example:

The category, ordeal, is not esthetic, ethical, or dogmatic—it is altogether transcendent. Only

as knowledge about an ordeal, that it is an ordeal, would it be included in a dogmatics. But as

soon as the knowledge enters, the resilience of the ordeal is impaired, and the category is

actually another category. This category is absolutely transcendent and places a person in a

purely personal relationship of opposition to God, in a relationship such that he cannot allow

himself to be satisfied with any explanation at second hand.28

Several questions come to mind as I read this statement by the young man: Why is ―ordeal‖ as a

category ―altogether transcendent‖? What is meant by this? What are its implications?

Vigilius Haufniensis, the author of The Concept of Anxiety, somewhat like Johannes Climacus

and Johannes de Silentio, is a humble, self-effacing scholar who sets out to explore the relationship

between anxiety, sin, and faith in confronting the finite/infinite disjunction. We get a picture of his

humility in the Preface to his book:

Concerning my own humble person, I frankly confess that as an author I am a king without a

country and also, in fear and trembling, an author without any claims. If to a noble envy or

jealous criticism it seems too much that I bear a Latin name, I shall gladly assume the name

Christen Madsen.29

He also provides many passages that provoke reader interest and involvement. For example:

The eternal, on the contrary, is the present. For thought, the eternal is the present in terms of an

annulled succession (time is the succession that passes by). For representation, it is a going

forth that nevertheless does not get off the spot, because the eternal is for representation the

infinitely contentful present. So also in the eternal there is no division into the past and the

future, because the present is posited as the annulled succession.30

What is meant by the phrase: ―The present is posited as the annulled succession‖?

27

Kierkegaard, Papers and Journals: A Selection. 44 IV A 169, 162. 28

Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling/Repetition, 210. 29

Kierkegaard, Concept of Anxiety, 8. 30

Kierkegaard, Concept of Anxiety, 86.

25

The fifth pseudonym for our consideration in this paper is Anti-Climacus. Johannes

Climacus was a student of Christianity but not yet a Christian; Anti-Climacus, the final

pseudonym used by Kierkegaard in his writings, was a Christian to an extraordinary degree. In

his journal Kierkegaard explains why be created this pseudonym. He writes the following about

his creation of Anti-Climacus:

If I have portrayed someone so low that he even denied being a Christian, then the

opposite ought also to be portrayed. And Christendom is indeed in sore need of hearing

the voice of such a judge—yet I will not pass myself off as that judge and therefore he

judges me too, which is plain enough and just as it should be, since anyone who cannot

present ideality in such ideal terms that he himself must be judged by it has a poor grasp

of ideality.31

In regard to his own position as a Christian in comparison to the positions of his two

pseudonyms, he notes: ―I placed myself higher than Joh. Climacus, lower than Anti-Climacus.‖32

In Practice in Christianity, published in 1850, Anti-Climacus describes in detail the

requirements that are placed upon a Christian. He believes that, by reducing Christianity to a

cognitive understanding of its central doctrines, Christendom has robbed Christianity of its

essential faith based reality. In The Sickness Unto Death, published about a year before Practice

in Christianity, Anti-Climacus describes how the finite/infinite disjuncture in a person leads to

despair, which leads to sin, which may also be a wake-up call that leads to redemption through

Christ.

The two books by Anti-Climacus are extensions of two earlier pseudonymous works of

Kierkegaard, both published in 1844: Philosophical Fragments and Concept of Anxiety. The

Sickness Unto Death, like Vigilius Haufniensis‘ Concept of Anxiety, builds upon the fact that

man is a synthesis of the finite and the infinite. Both consider the psychological impact that this

31

Kierkegaard, Papers and Journals: A Selection. 49 X I A 536, 396. 32

Kierkegaard, Papers and Journals: A Selection. 49 X I A 517, 394.

26

finite/infinite disjuncture has upon him. In Anti-Climacus‘ work the anxiety identified by

Vigilius Haufniensis leads to the greater depth of despair which in turn leads to death. In a

somewhat parallel manner, Practice in Christianity builds upon the work of Johannes Climacus

in Philosophical Fragments. As Johannes Climacus, who claims not to be a Christian, explains

what Christianity is, Anti-Climacus examines what Christianity requires for the life and conduct

of a person who claims to be a Christian. Concept of Anxiety and Philosophical Fragments were

published within a few months of each other in 1844. Sickness Unto Death was published in

1849, Practice in Christianity in 1850.

Anti-Climacus also provides us with numerous passages that evoke our curiosity and

propose a challenge that leads us to pursue meaning to a greater depth. For example, he notes in

Sickness Unto Death:

Insofar, then, as the self does not become itself, it is not itself; but not to be itself is

precisely despair.

…Consequently, every human existence that presumably has become or simply wants

to be infinite, in fact, every moment in which a human existence has become or simply

wants to be infinite, is despair….Infinitude‘s despair, therefore, is the fantastic, the

unlimited, for the self is healthy and free from despair only when, precisely by having

despaired, it rests transparently in God.33

As I read this passage, I ask myself: ‖What is meant by ‗wanting to be infinite‘‖?

―Exactly how does this lead to despair?‖

Or consider this passage from Practice in Christianity:

But faith as the authority makes an even more extreme charge against any attempt to

approach Jesus Christ by means of what is known about him from history, which has

preserved the results of Christ‘s life. Faith‘s claim is that this whole attempt is--

blasphemy. Faith‘s claim is that the only demonstration that unbelief allowed to stand

when it dispatched all the other demonstrations of the truth of Christianity, the

demonstration that unbelief invented—yes, it is curiously complicated!—and invented in

order to demonstrate the truth of Christianity!--excellent, unbelief invents demonstrations

in order to defend Christianity—the demonstration that is then much paraded in

33

Kierkegaard, Sickness Unto Death, 30.

27

Christendom, the demonstration of eighteen hundred years—faith‘s claim is that it is—

blasphemy.34

The reader might like to ask Anti-Climacus: ―Why is it blasphemy to defend Christianity by

demonstrations of truth?‖ ―Does this mean that faith can‘t be supported by demonstrations?‖

―Does this mean that evidences supporting the truth of his life, death, and resurrection are

useless?‖ If so, after Christ‘s resurrection, why does the apostle John say the following?

Jesus did many other miraculous signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not

recorded in this book. But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ,

the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name. (John20:30-31)

Or might we say, with regard to these questions or to those that we‘ve previously proposed

regarding the writings of other pseudonyms, that Kierkegaard and his pseudonyms are simply

wrong? Do we really fully understand what Kierkegaard is saying? Perhaps, but it might be

useful to investigate further. I have taken the position that such deeper investigation is extremely

valuable, and I would encourage the reader to get engaged in such an investigation.

Now that we‘ve looked briefly at these five pseudonymous authors and samples from

their writings, we shall in the next section examine how their separate messages provide context

for each other in Søren Kierkegaard‘s overall teaching strategy. We shall see how their various

writings are tied together by a single overarching theme.

The Message of the Pseudonyms: Kierkegaard’s Web of Thought

In this final section of the paper, I will attempt to show how, through careful reading,

extensive reflection over a considerable period of time, and tentative consideration of linkages

between the various questions raised by these five Kierkegaard‘s pseudonyms, I have

reconstructed Kierkegaard‘s multi-faceted message concerning the relation of finite man to

34

Kierkegaard, Practice in Christianity, 29.

28

God‘s infinity. I invite the reader to follow my thoughts, challenge them, and consider their

validity and/or need for modification.

Kierkegaard, speaking through Johannes Climacus, examined the limits of finite,

objective knowledge in his critique of the Hegelian system. He wrote:

A system of existence cannot be given. Is there, then, not such a system? That is not at

all the case. Neither is this implied in what has been said. Existence itself is a system —

for God, but it cannot be a system for any existing spirit. System and conclusiveness

correspond to each other, but existence is the very opposite. Abstractly viewed, system

and existence cannot be thought conjointly, because in order to think existence,

systematic thought must think it as annulled and consequently not as existing. Existence

is the spacing that holds apart; the systematic is the conclusiveness that combines.35

The meaning of Christianity is founded upon the Incarnation, the fusion of the infinite

and the finite. Jesus Christ, a gendered Jew, walked the earth in a mortal body. Yet Jesus Christ,

as the Son of God, was the Deity Himself, the Creator of the universe (John 1:1-14). In Him,

infinity is contained within the finite. This presents us with what Johannes Climacus called the

absolute paradox of thought: ―to want to discover something that thought itself cannot think.‖36

That the infinite God can be contained in a finite body in time cannot be logically constructed

and almost beyond imagination. It can be apprehended only by faith. As Kierkegaard makes

clear through Anticlimacus in Practice in Christianity: ―Can One Come to Know Something

about Christ from History? No. Why not? Because one cannot know anything at all about

Christ; he is the paradox, the object of faith, exists only for faith.‖37

If the infinite cannot be known objectively by human beings, how can they grasp what

infinity implies for them and govern their behavior accordingly? Since man is part of God‘s

creation, he cannot assess any part of creation in a truly objective manner. Furthermore, human

language, a wonderful gift from God, is an abstracting, stabilizing, simplifying system that

35

Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, 118. 36

Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, 37. 37

Kierkegaard, Practice in Christianity, 25

29

enables people to communicate, but at the same time it throws away meaning so that it can never

say everything about anything. It is a finite system designed for finite beings, who cannot fully

comprehend infinity.

Because man cannot truly grasp infinity in any existential manner, his objective

understanding is further diminished to the degree that what he is trying to understand interacts

with the infinite. As he attempts to obtain understanding about first causes of life or to generate

a universal code of ethics, he must become increasingly subjective in his quest for truth.

Johannes Climacus maintains that God‘s truth can be known only subjectively:

Subjectivity is truth. The paradox came into existence through the relating of the eternal,

essential truth to the existing person. Let us now go further; let us assume that the

eternal, essential truth is itself the paradox. How does the paradox emerge? By placing

the eternal, essential truth together with existing. Consequently, if we place it together in

the truth itself, the truth becomes a paradox. The eternal truth has come into existence in

time. That is the paradox. If the subject just mentioned was prevented by sin from taking

himself back into eternity, now he is not to concern himself with this, because now the

eternal, essential truth is not behind him but has come in front of him by existing itself or

by having existed, so that if the individual, existing, does not lay hold of the truth in

existence, he will never have it.38

Christ himself, the incarnate word, was the Truth, and, his encounter with Pilate, just

prior to his crucifixion, provides an excellent example of what Kierkegaard meant about the

inadequacy of finite objective knowledge. Anti-Climacus makes this analysis:

For what is truth, and in what sense was Christ the truth? The first question, as is well

known, was asked by Pilate….That it can occur to Pilate at that moment to question

Christ in this way demonstrates precisely that he has no eye at all for truth. Christ‘s life

was in fact the truth, and therefore Christ himself says (when he explains more explicitly

the words: My kingdom is not of this world; if my kingdom were of this world, my

servants would have fought for it so I would not be handed over to the Jews): For this I

was born, and for this I have come into the world, that I shall witness to the truth.

Christ‘s life upon earth, every moment of this life, was truth. What, then, is the

fundamental confusion in Pilate‘s question? It consists in this, that it can occur to him to

question Christ in this way; for in questioning Christ in this way he actually informs

38

Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, 209.

30

against himself, he makes the self-disclosure that Christ‘s life has not explained to him

what truth is—but how then could Christ with words enlighten Pilate about this when that

which is truth, Christ‘s life, has not opened Pilate‘s eyes to what truth is! It seems as if

Pilate has an inquiring mind, is teachable, but surely his question is as foolish as possible,

not that he asks, ―What is truth?‖, but that he questions Christ about it, him whose life is

expressly the truth and who therefore at every moment by his life demonstrates more

powerfully what truth is than all the most prolix lectures of the sharpest thinkers….39

Pilate, locked into an objective, finite view of truth, missed completely the meaning of

the moment. Truth was standing before him in the person of the bloodied Jesus Christ, the

paradoxical unity of the finite and the infinite. As asked in the above quotation: What could

objective knowledge contained in words possibly do when Pilate was blind to the living Truth in

front of him? Seventeen years earlier Johannes Climacus had made a similar observation:

If Pilate had not asked objectively what truth is, he never would have let Christ be

crucified. If he had asked the question subjectively, then the passion of inwardness

regarding what he had to do about the decision facing him would have prevented him

from doing an injustice.40

But, if God‘s truth can only be apprehended subjectively by faith, how can a person move

with confidence through his finite life in a finite world? Johannes Climacus‘ answer is: ―by faith

and with objective uncertainty‖:

When subjectivity is truth, the definition of truth must also contain in itself an expression

of the antithesis to objectivity, a memento of that fork in the road, and this expression

will at the same time indicate the resilience of the inwardness. Here is such a definition

of truth: An objective uncertainty, held fast through appropriation with the most

passionate inwardness, is the truth, the highest truth there is for an existing person. At

the point where the road swings off (and where that is cannot be stated objectively, since

it is precisely subjectivity), objective knowledge is suspended. Objectively he then has

only uncertainty, but this is precisely what intensifies the infinite passion of inwardness,

and truth is precisely the daring venture of choosing the objective uncertainty with the

passion of the infinite. I observe nature in order to find God, and I do indeed see

omnipotence and wisdom, but I also see much that troubles and disturbs. The summa

summarum of this is an objective uncertainty, but the inwardness is so very great,

precisely because it grasps this objective uncertainty with all the passion of the infinite.

39

Kierkegaard, Practice in Christianity, 203-204. 40

Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, 229-230.

31

In a mathematical proposition, for example, the objectivity is given, but therefore its truth

is also an indifferent truth.41

Once apprehended by faith, the Incarnation leads to other understandings, most notably

that, because of the Incarnation, the Christian is contemporary with Christ. Speaking through

Anti-Climacus in Practice in Christianity, Kierkegaard notes:

And so it will always prove to be if becoming a Christian truly comes to mean becoming

contemporary with Christ. And if becoming a Christian does not come to mean this, then

all talk about becoming a Christian is futility and fancy and vanity, and in part blasphemy

and sin against the Second Commandment of the Law and sin against the Holy

Spirit….In relation to the absolute, there is only one time, the present; for the person who

is not contemporary with the absolute, it does not exist at all. And since Christ is the

absolute it is easy to see that in relation to him there is only one situation, the situation of

contemporaneity…. Thus every human being is able to become contemporary only with

the time in which he is living—and then with one more, with Christ‘s life upon earth, for

Christ‘s life upon earth, the sacred history, stands alone by itself, outside history.42

The disjuncture between infinity and the finite (or the eternal and the temporal) affects

every person by virtue of being a human being. This led both Vigilius Haufniensis and Anti-

Climacus to consider the impact of this disjuncture on the individual. Vigilius Haufniensis, in

The Concept of Anxiety, sets as his task ―the psychological treatment of the concept of ‗anxiety,‘

but in such a way that it constantly keeps in mente [in mind] and before its eye the dogma of

hereditary sin.‖43

In so doing he notes that a key factor underlying man‘s anxiety is that man is a

―synthesis of psyche and body, but he is also a synthesis of the temporal and the eternal.‖44

This

tension is not found in animals, ―precisely because by nature the beast is not qualified as

spirit.‖45

He goes on to talk about the effect of anxiety:

Anxiety may be compared with dizziness. He whose eye happens to look down into the

yawning abyss becomes dizzy. But what is the reason for this? It is just as much in his

own eye as in the abyss, for suppose he had not looked down. Hence anxiety is the

41

Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, 203-204. 42

Kierkegaard, Practice in Christianity, 63-64. 43

Kierkegaard, Concept of Anxiety, 14. 44

Kierkegaard, Concept of Anxiety, 85. 45

Kierkegaard, Concept of Anxiety, 42.

32

dizziness of freedom, which emerges when the spirit wants to posit the synthesis and

freedom looks down into its own possibility, laying hold of finiteness to support itself.

Freedom succumbs in this dizziness. Further than this, psychology cannot and will not

go. In that very moment everything is changed, and freedom, when it again rises, sees

that it is guilty. Between these two moments lies the leap, which no science has

explained and which no science can explain.46

Vigilius Haufniensis tells us more about the ―leap‖:

By a qualitative leap sin entered into the world, and it continually enters into the world in

that way. As soon as the leap is posited, one would think that anxiety would be canceled,

because anxiety is defined as freedom‘s disclosure to itself in possibility. The qualitative

leap is clearly actuality, and so it would seem that possibility is annulled along with

anxiety. However, this is not the case. First of all, actuality is not one factor; second, the

actuality posited is an unwarranted actuality. So anxiety again comes into relation with

what is posited as well as with the future. Yet this time the object of anxiety is a

determinate something and its nothing is an actual something, because the distinction

between good and evil is posited in concreto—and anxiety therefore loses its dialectical

ambiguity. This is true of Adam as well as of every subsequent individual, for in the

qualitative leap they are completely alike.47

And the sin that has entered the world continues to extend its borders. Virgil Haufniensis

continues:

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….The individual may repent of his wrath,

and the more profound he is, the more profound is his repentance. But repentance cannot

make him free; in that he is mistaken.48

But, while repentance alone is not enough, it need not be alone. Vigilius Haufniensis

tells us that while sin has conquered and cannot be overcome by human effort, there is a way out

through faith in God:

The only thing that is truly able to disarm the sophistry of sin is faith, courage to believe

that the state itself is a new sin, courage to renounce anxiety without anxiety, which only

faith can do; faith does not thereby annihilate anxiety, but, itself eternally young, it

46

Kierkegaard, Concept of Anxiety, 61. 47

Kierkegaard, Concept of Anxiety, 111-112. 48

Kierkegaard, Concept of Anxiety, 115-116.

33

extricates itself from anxiety‘s moment of death. Only faith is able to do this, for only in

faith is the synthesis eternal and at every moment possible.49

In The Sickness Unto Death Anti-Climacus begins with the same premise about the dual

nature of man with which Vigilius Haufniensis began: ―A human being is a synthesis of the

infinite and finite, of the temporal and the eternal, of freedom and necessity, in short a synthesis.

A synthesis is a relation between two.‖50

Because man is a synthesis of temporal and eternal,

there is a disjuncture between the two, caused by his being bound by the finite and drawn by the

infinite. Anti-Climacus explores the impact of this disjuncture in regard to the universal

presence of despair in humans:

Is despair an excellence or a defect? Purely dialectically, it is both. If only the abstract

idea of despair is considered, without any thought of someone in despair, it must be

regarded as a surpassing excellence. The possibility of this sickness is man‘s superiority

over the animal, and this superiority distinguishes him in quite another way than does his

erect walk, for it indicates erectness or sublimity, that he is spirit. The possibility of this

sickness is man‘s superiority over the animal; to be aware of this sickness is the

Christian‘s superiority over the natural man; to be cured of this sickness is the Christian‘s

blessedness.

Consequently, to be able to despair is an infinite advantage, and yet to be in despair is not

only the worst misfortune and misery—no, it is ruination.51

Even if a person doesn‘t feel like he‘s in despair, he has not truly escaped it. To not be in

despair is actually to be in despair even though it avoids the awareness of despair. As Anti-

Climacus goes on to state:

Not to be in despair can in fact signify precisely to be in despair, and it can signify having

been rescued from being in despair. A sense of security and tranquility can signify being

in despair; precisely this sense of security and tranquility can be the despair, and yet it

can signify having conquered despair and having won peace….Here again this

indisposition is dialectical. Never to have sensed this indisposition is precisely to be in

despair.52

49

Kierkegaard, Concept of Anxiety, 117. 50

Kierkegaard, The Sickness Unto Death, 13. 51

Kierkegaard, The Sickness Unto Death, 14-15. 52

Kierkegaard, The Sickness Unto Death, 24-25.

34

A person can avoid the awareness of despair by filling every moment with some activity

to keep himself busy and unaware of the finite/infinite disjuncture. But in so doing he denies

himself of being cured from his despair. Despair is the sickness unto death:

This concept, the sickness unto death, must, however, be understood in a particular way.

Literally it means a sickness of which the end and the result are death….Christianly

understood, death itself is a passing into life. Thus, from a Christian point of view, no

earthly, physical sickness is the sickness unto death, for death is indeed the end of the

sickness, but death is not the end. If there is to be any question of a sickness unto death in

the strictest sense, it must be a sickness of which the end is death and death is the end.

This is precisely what despair is.53

But the awareness of despair can also lead the individual to the cure:

At this point, then, salvation is humanly speaking, utterly impossible; but for God

everything is possible! This is the battle of faith, battling, madly, if you will, for

possibility, because possibility is the only salvation. When someone faints, we call for

water, eau de Cologne, smelling salts; but when someone wants to despair, then the word

is: Get possibility, get possibility, possibility is the only salvation. A possibility—then

the person in despair breathes again, he revives again, for without possibility a person

seems unable to breathe. At times the ingeniousness of the human imagination can

extend to the point of creating possibility, but at last—that is, when it depends upon

faith—then only this helps: that for God everything is possible.54

As the reader may have noted in reading thus far in this section of the paper, the central

concept that unites the other concepts in Kierkegaard‘s intellectual odyssey is faith. Faith unites

the finite and the infinite. The Incarnation can be apprehended by faith. The cure for anxiety

and despair is faith. In understanding these other concepts, faith plays a vital role. Faith itself,

however, is explored most extensively in the two books published on the same date in 1843:

Fear and Trembling and Repetition. As noted earlier, the former was attributed to the

pseudonym, Johannes de Silentio, and the latter to Constantin Constantius.

Johannes de Silentio, the somewhat mysterious man of silence, builds his treatise around

the Old Testament story of Abraham‘s obedience to God‘s command to kill his own son as a

53

Kierkegaard, The Sickness Unto Death, 17. 54

Kierkegaard, The Sickness Unto Death, 38-39.

35

sacrifice to God, even though this requirement ran directly against both common sense and

universal ethics. But Abraham moved forward by faith on the basis that God‘s will was the

supreme good that trumped both common sense and ethics. At the last moment an angel of the

Lord intervened to stop Abraham from killing his son. The story presented in Genesis 22 is

summarized in the New Testament in Hebrews 11:17-19

By faith Abraham, when God tested him, offered Isaac as a sacrifice. He who had

received the promises was about to sacrifice his one and only son, even though God had

said to him, ―It is through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned.‖ Abraham reasoned

that God could raise the dead, and figuratively speaking, he did receive Isaac back from

death.

Abraham‘s faith is legendary throughout the Bible. The apostle Paul refers to Abraham

as the ―man of faith.‖ (Galatians 3:9) Johannes de Silentio summarizes Abraham‘s behavior:

Abraham had faith. He did not have faith that he would be blessed in a future life but that

he would be blessed here in the world. God could give him a new Isaac, could restore to

life the one sacrificed. He had faith by virtue of the absurd, for all human calculation

ceased long ago.55

This quotation presents succinctly what Kierkegaard meant by faith. Faith is a trust in

God that is beyond all human calculation. It is built on strength of the absurd—that which

contradicts both ethics and common sense. It is not merely a willingness to suffer in return for

an eternal blessing in the life hereafter: it is the expectation of joy and blessed happiness in the

present life in this world.

Johannes de Silentio distinguishes between a knight of faith and a knight of infinite

resignation. Abraham was a true knight of faith, a gift given by God. By contrast is the knight

of infinite resignation, who by sheer will power can give up everything for God, but not by the

power of faith. Johannes de Silentio makes this observation regarding the knight of infinite

resignation:

55

Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling/Repetition, 36.

36

In infinite resignation there is peace and rest; every person who wills it, who has not

debased himself by self-disdain— what is still more dreadful than being too proud— can

discipline himself to make this movement, which in its pain reconciles one to existence.56

However, infinite resignation cannot be disregarded. As Johannes de Silentio says:

―Infinite resignation is the last stage before faith, so that anyone who has not made this

movement does not have faith.‖57

He notes this in the case of Abraham: ―Abraham makes two

movements. He makes the infinite movement of resignation and gives up Isaac, which no one

can understand because it is a private venture; but next, at every moment, he makes the

movement of faith.‘58

He further describes this transition:

If Abraham in resignation had merely relinquished Isaac and done no more, he would

have spoken an untruth, for he does indeed know that God demands Isaac as a sacrifice,

and he knows that he himself in this very moment is willing to sacrifice him. After

having made this movement, he has at every moment made the next movement, has made

the movement of faith by virtue of the absurd. Thus he is not speaking an untruth,

because by virtue of the absurd it is indeed possible that God could do something entirely

different59

The true knight of faith is a very humble person, not readily recognized by the outside

observer. By contrast, the knight of infinite resignation is more obvious:

The knights of infinite resignation are readily recognizable— their walk is light and bold.

But they who carry the treasure of faith can are likely to disappoint, for externally they

have a striking resemblance to bourgeois philistinism, which infinite resignation, like

faith, deeply disdains.60

How difficult is it to recognize a knight of faith? Johannes de Silentio admits that he has

never met one, though he believes he knows what the external appearance and demeanor of that

person would be:

But if I knew where a knight of faith lived I would journey on foot to him; for this marvel

occupies me absolutely….As I said before, I have not found anyone like that; meanwhile,

56

Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling/Repetition, 45. 57

Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling/Repetition, 46. 58

Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling/Repetition, 115. 59

Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling/Repetition, 119. 60

Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling/Repetition, 38.

37

I may very well imagine him….He enjoys everything he sees, the swarms of people, the

new omnibuses, the Sound. Encountering him on Strandveien, one would take him for a

mercantile soul enjoying himself. He finds pleasure in this way, for he is not a poet, and

I have tried in vain to lure the poetic incommensurability out of him. ...It so happens that

he does not have four shillings to his name, and yet he firmly believes that his wife has

this delectable meal waiting for him. If she has, to see him eat would be the envy of the

elite and an inspiration to the common man, for his appetite is keener than Esau‘s. His

wife does not have it—curiously enough, he is just the same…. And yet, yet the whole

earthly figure he presents is a new creation by virtue of the absurd. He resigned

everything infinitely, and then he grasped everything again by virtue of the absurd….to

express the sublime in the pedestrian — only that knight can do it, and this is the one and

only marvel.61

Perhaps the greatest difference between the knight of faith and the knight of infinite

resignation is the focus of their devotion. Johannes de Silentio comments that ―he who loves

God without faith reflects upon himself; he who loves God in faith reflects upon God.‖62

This

simple but profound statement about faith may be the single most powerful statement about faith

in the life of a Christian in all of Kierkegaard‘s writings. If I feel good about myself because of

what I‘ve done or what has happened to me, I‘m probably not living by faith. If I have faith

(regardless of what happens, whether good or bad by human calculations), I will feel good about

God and give praise and glory to him.

Becoming a knight of faith is not something that can be done by finite means. It cannot

be bestowed on an individual, nor can a person attain that status simply by willing it. Anyone

can attain it; but it can only be done as an individual seeks it through faith, which itself is a gift

of God‘s grace. Johannes de Silentio comments: ―The one knight of faith simply cannot help the

other at all. Either the single individual himself becomes a knight of faith by accepting the

paradox, or he never becomes one.‖63

61

Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling/Repetition, 38-41. 62

Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling/Repetition, 37. 63

Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling/Repetition, 71.

38

As we noted earlier in summarizing Repetition, the self-assured Constantin Constantius, much

to his annoyance, continues to receive letters from the young man to whom he has tried to give counsel

but who has rejected his advice. Over the course of nine months the young man‘s letters describe his

ordeal in agonizing detail. As he continues through this difficult period, he begins reading the book of

Job and sees, in Job‘s suffering at God‘s hand, a situation parallel to his own. Like Job, he accepts that

God is the source of his suffering and increasingly sees Job as his example and inspiration in that

suffering as he progresses through it. Four months into his suffering, in a letter to Constantin, he

writes:

Job‘s greatness, then, is not even that he said: The Lord gave, and the Lord took

away–something he in fact said at the beginning and did not repeat later. Rather,

Job‘s significance is that the disputes at the boundaries of faith are fought out in

him, that the colossal revolt of the wild and aggressive powers of passion is

presented here.64

The significance of this position is that he recognizes through Job that his own God-

imposed painful ordeal may be providing the opportunity to approach God through faith

at a more intimate level than he had ever imagined. Job, the young man‘s hero, had met

God at the ―boundaries of faith.‖

At the boundaries of faith Job realized that, by considering his own

righteousness as a reason that God should explain why he is suffering, he had

completely overlooked the fact that everything God does in the universe is good, and it

is only human myopia, based on a lack of faith, that causes one not to recognize God‘s

grace and goodness in suffering. Did he have a legitimate case against God? The young

man evaluates Job‘s experience:

64

Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling/Repetition, 209-210.

39

Was Job proved to be in the wrong? Yes, eternally, for there is no higher court

than the one that judged him. Was Job proved to be in the right? Yes, eternally,

by being proved to be in the wrong before God.65

The theme is the same one first introduced by Kierkegaard in a letter written by a

Jutland priest at the end of Either/Or.66

Neither Job, nor the young man, nor Abraham,

not anyone else has any legitimate standing before God, except through the atoning

work of Jesus Christ. Recognition of the goodness and grace of God‘s will and a

humble willingness to rejoice in it can be attained only by faith. The story of Job, who

met God at the boundaries of faith, is the model for all who would seek the fullest

possible relationship with God. As the writer to the Hebrews says in the sixth verse of

the eleventh chapter: ―And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone

who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly

seek him.‖

Summary and Prologue

In this paper I have attempted so far to briefly make a case for the value of learning that

is driven by the need to solve problems and to understand things that are not readily apparent,

and I have summarized how my own desire for this type of learning grew while I was a student

and over my career as a teacher. I have also tried to describe how Søren Kierkegaard, working

through his pseudonyms, involves himself and his readers in this type of learning. From a

personal standpoint I have tried to show why, both because of the topics Kierkegaard selected to

address and because of his art in involving me in active learning, I have been drawn to his

writings. Finally, I have attempted to present, by focusing on the works of five of Kierkegaard‘s

pseudonyms, a cohesive picture of God‘s plan of redemption as Kierkegaard envisioned it.

65

Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling/Repetition, 212. 66

Kierkegaard, Either/Or, 595-609.

40

However, an equally important goal of mine has been to encourage the reader to become

engaged as a student with Kierkegaard. What I have presented in this paper about Kierkegaard‘s

work barely touches the surface of a limited aspect of his literary and philosophical legacy.

There are more pseudonyms and more topics. Furthermore, my analysis in this paper may not

only be sketchy, but it probably also contains error. I would encourage readers to go well

beyond this brief presentation and to make their own analyses, as well as identify flaws and

shortcomings in mine. I welcome the reader to challenge my interpretations and to go beyond

them. It will be a worthwhile adventure.

References

Argyris, Chris and Donald Schön. Theory in Practice: Increasing Professional Effectiveness. San

Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers, 1975.

Bruner, Jerome. The Process of Education. New York: Vintage Books, 1960.

Erlandson, David, Edward Harris, Barbara Skipper, and Steve Allen. Doing Naturalistic Inquiry: A

Guide to Methods. Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications, 1993.

Guilford, J.P. Three Faces of Intellect. Columbus, OH: Merrill Publishing Company, 1959.

Kierkegaard, Soren. The Concept of Anxiety: A Simple Psychologically Orienting Deliberation on the

Dogmatic Issue of Hereditary Sin, edited and translated by Reidar Thornte in collaboration with

Albert B. Anderson. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1980.

________. Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments, edited and translated by

Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992.

________. Either/Or: A Fragment of Life, translated by Alistair Hannay. London: Penguin Books,

1992.

________. Fear and Trembling/Repetition, edited and translated by Howard V. Hong and Edna H.

Hong. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1983.

________. Papers and Journals: A Selection, translated by Alistair Hannay. London: Penguin Books,

1996.

41

________. Philosophical Fragments, edited and translated by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong.

Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1985.

________. The Point of View, edited and translated by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong. Princeton,

NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998.

________. Practice in Christianity, edited and translated by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong.

Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991.

________. The Sickness unto Death, edited and translated by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong.

Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1983.

Manheimer, Ronald. Kierkegaard As Educator. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1977.

McCrimmon, James. From Source to Statement. Boston: Houghton-Mifflin, 1968.

Ripley, Amanda. The World‘s Schoolmaster, Atlantic 308, 1 (July/August, 2011); 109-110. ما