So I'm trying to read The Sickness Unto Death and I just can't do it. No, not because it's hard (it's remarkably easy, really); because it's so dated. The premise is Augustinian: that the individual soul without full awareness of God is in despair, and only via the right theology of Christianity can this despair be remedied.
Kierkegaard would kick at that reductio description, but I'm sticking with it. And I'm just so through with this metaphysic and the soteriology built on it that I just can't wade through S.K.'s argument. To begin with, S.K. is Augustine read through Luther (who was an Augustinian monk) filtered through early Romanticism (i.e., the 19th century). The link to S.K. is through Luther, because S.K. was a seminary student all but ordained into the Danish Lutheran church. This family tree yields the fruit of an excessive (to my mind now) emphasis on the individual and individual salvation (the hallmark of Romanticism and, later, of American fundamentalism). S.K.'s emphasis is on the internal nature of the individual and the self which is a relation of the self to the self. Yeah, I get what he's getting at, but I can't but see it as all persiflage and handwaving.
You will say I am rejecting Xianity, but I'm not. I'm embracing what I understand are the true teachings of the gospels, and I don't see anything in the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth (even from John's gospel) that dwells hard on the metaphsyics of the soul and the internal necessity of soteriology leading that soul to a relation that relates the self to itself grounded in the Power that posited it. Mostly I see Jesus telling us to live a full life, we must live for others; put them first and ourselves last. And while I see the humility Kierkegaard is trying to enforce on the soul before the Power that posited it, I don't see that as the same humility as the first being last, and the last first. Because that humility only works within a society. Kierkegaard's meditation might work for a lost soul on a desert island, but in a society I think the emphasis needs to be less on "the individual" (S.K.'s favorite subject) and more on the individual's relation, not to the relation of the self to the self, but to one's brothers and sisters. Who are, after all, the Christ. "Whatever you did for the least of these, you did for me."
Not a lot of concern there for your inner angst, or lack thereof.
So what is my concern with the state of my self that wants to eliminate despair by "relating itself to its own self and by willing to be itself the self is ground transparently in the Power which posited it"? Maybe cloistered monks seek that goal, but I know even the anchorites didn't, because this seems to posit some very powerful navel-gazing. And do I really need to "Get right with God!" (the fundies are ever with me) before I can offer help to someone who needs it? Jesus said don't bring your offering to the temple until you've squared things with those you have wronged, or who have wronged you. Isn't that the direction? Isn't worrying about the internal state of my eternal soul (the self is, but is not, the soul. Don't worry about his metaphysics too much here.), a peculiarly Lutheran preoccupation, I might add, rather like ignoring the needs of my brothers and sisters (who are everyone who is not me) while I ponder too long over an attractive floor covering?
The large rooms of which you are so proud are in fact your shame. They are big enough to hold crowds--and also big enough to shut out the voices of the poor....There is your sister or brother, naked, crying! And you stand confused over the choice of an attractive floor covering.
Ambrose, 4th Century
Or, you know, the state of my despair. Yeah, I just think the parable of the sheep and the goats is a better lesson on how I should then live. There's just too much Luther (the person) and 19th century Romanticism here for me.
Which would put me out of sorts with Fear and Trembling, too. If it weren't for the panegyric on Abraham, and the description of the perfectly quotidian and middle-class Knight of Faith which caused me to write in the margins, in the early '70s, that he was describing my father. And the general discussion of the nature of faith (rather than the metaphysical nature of the soul) which Derrida picked up in The Gift of Death. Yeah, I owe too much to Fear, misunderstood as it so often is (that whole "leap of faith" thing is not the idea so many people think it is). Besides, it gave Hunter Thompson the title of the greatest piece of reportage on a political campaign ever written: Fear and Loathing On the Campaign Trail '68. Come to think of it I need to look for a copy of that....
Except for some of the Edifying Discourses (and even then!), I fear I'm leaving S.K. further and further behind. The 19th century was an age ago, wasn't it?*
*I should expound on this, or defend my thesis; but more and more I don't have the energy. Or maybe it's the interest. I grow more and more comfortable with what I think, and less and less interested in imagining objections to it which I must answer. Old age that is tied to me as to a dog's tail, I guess. Or maybe it's an old man's contentment. It would be unwise to call it an old man's wisdom.
(Let me put it this way: what is important to me as a Christian is my relationship to others (and I don't mean "friendly" or even "kindly," but simply my connection, my actions toward, others), not my relationship to myself (back to the question of talking to myself, and who is talking to whom?). Christianity teaches me to be in relationship, and the state of my self is the least important element in that relationship. Which is not the same as advocating self-abnegation (too far to the other extreme), but this intense focus on the state of the self (and its nature) is just too much Romanticism for me, and the worst part of it (from Wordsworth to Byron, and back again. If, as I do, you see them as the two poles of that preoccupation with the "individual."). I just think the question of "how am I doing with God?" is answered with the parable of the sheep and the goats, or indeed most of the teachings of Jesus' ministry: "How are you doing with your brothers and sisters who need food right now? Or a visit? Or a coat? What's your relationship with 'the least of these'?" Because the law and the prophets are all about how we treat each other; not about how we align ourselves metaphysically with "the Power" that posited the relationship so we can shake off feelings of discomfort and disquietude. I mean, even the heathen can do as much!)
I of course started to respond to this until I realized that, despite various attempts, and occasional skims, I haven't read The Sickness unto Death.
ReplyDeleteYou will recall I last tackled Kierkegaard a few years ago (The Concept of Anxiety) and did a blog post and you had a few comments. I'm not sure that Kierkegaard is quite as (Protestantly) orthodox on soteriology--there he seemed to conclude that Adam brought sin in the world, not uniquely, but as each of us does. In my skims of TSUD I haven't seen so much of atonement as another excruciatingly painful bout of self-examination.
I can't fault your overall read of the gospels. If I had to put a label on it I would call it Christian humanism, and I share it. But for all my enthusiasm for what might also be called Erasmian Christianity I have also a growing appreciation of what, in modern times, has been a mostly Protestant venture in juxtaposing human beings with God--ala Kierkegaard or Barth or even Tillich. We come up radically short. And of course the result of that isn't, for the vast majority, a depth of Kierkegaardian anxiety and despair, or Barth's sense of the fearful otherness of God. But for those of us nuts enough to think theology valuable, these kinds of deep dives help keep us from the complacency that sometimes passes for Christian comfort.
Give me a year or two and I'll give you a response that's actually informative!