Thread by @ZoharAtkins

I'm excited to bring you a @threadapalooza on Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855), one of the greatest religious thinkers of modern times, a brilliant literary stylist and psychologist whose influence reaches everywhere, from Dr. Martin Luther King to the films of Terrence Malick.

Alfred North Whitehead famously wrote that the history of philosophy could be written as footnotes to Plato and Aristotle. But we could just as well say that all of modern thought is a footnote to the debate between Hegel and Kierkegaard. 2

That debate concerns many things. Can all opposites be resolved harmoniously in a higher synthesis as Hegel thought, or is life a matter of deciding between irreconcilable, competing truths, an either/or. 3

Is it possible to realize universal values at the social level or is the individual fundamentally lonely, fundamentally singular and untranslatable? 3

Are philosophy and rationalism a path to truth? Or is the greatest need to throw away the illusion of reason and embrace passion and the absurd? 4

Is religion about shared values or is it a private affair, a leap of faith? 5

Kierkegaard's rejection of Hegel has found him many admirers and thought-cousins. 6

From Nazi jurist Carl Schmitt, who blames liberalism for the fantasy of synthesis to Abraham Joshua Heschel who believed Kierkegaard to be a kind of non-Jewish friend of Hasidic thought. (His book, the passion of truth, compares SK to The Kotzker Rebbe). 7

Kierkegaard wrote in Danish, but found massive international recognition a century later through his translation into German. Especially during WW1 when his celebration of the individual and analysis of anxiety was embraced by soldiers on the front lines. 8

Heidegger explicitly cites Kierkegaard as a major influence for Being and Time. 9

But what's great about Kierkegaard and important to remember in his great quarrel with Hegel is not just what he says but how he says it. SK is an anti-systematic thinker who wrote in pseudonyms and created enigma around the relationship between himself and his works. 10

Where Hegel built a science of logic, SK built a funhouse of convex mirrors. Yes, he is a faith writer, a pietist concerned with sincerity and bucking conformist boozhie religion; yet he was a master ironist who wrote his dissertation on Socratic irony. 11

It’s funny because we tend to think of irony as a hipster posture, a cool form or skepticism —the clove smokers in tight black pants aren’t exactly religious 12

And yet their forbear, or one of them, used irony as a core strategy for engaging readers and possibly eliciting in them a sense of faith and dread 13

Because SK is an amazing mind and a cunning writer , we can never totally take him at his word. The result is an ambiguity —is he an individualist for whom faith is but one authentic option or is he a religious thinker for whom existentialism is a religious imperative ? 14

Is SK’s goal really to get us to be more faithful or is it instead to get us to be more authentic (with religious faith being more incidental to us, if idiosyncratically important to him)? 15

SK is most famous for Fear and Trembling, a book that argues for a view of faith as incompatible with socialized ethics. 16

This view has inspired many from Rav Soloveitchik to Yeshiyahu Leibowitz-who reject reducing Judaism to ethics (as Hermann Cohen sought to do when he called Judaism a religion of reason). 17

And yet the book was published under the pseudonym-Johannes de Silentio. We can’t assume the book’s conclusion represents the view of SK. 18

We also can’t assume SK has a stable view—perhaps all the writing is just an experiment, a relishing of masks and costumes. 19

One way to translate Hegel’s work is in Phenomenology of Spirit is that he gives us “shapes of consciousness”; yet in Hegel the shapes move towards a goal. There is developmental progress. 20

What happens when you keep the concept of shapes of consciousness but reject the teleology? You get perspectivalism without Absolute Truth. You get postmodernism. 21

You get films like Rashomon and A Separation. 22

Nietzsche was the other great perspectivalist of the 19th century—but Nietzsche sought to cast truth as something I must make for myself. For SK the goal is not to make truth but to be a self. Ideally, to be a self that overcomes resignation and embraces a singular faith. 23

SK thinks Philosophy misses the self in its mortal and anxious subjectivity as the basis of everything. 24

But SK even if he isn’t a philosopher is very gifted as a reader of philosophy. 25

A case for religious fundamentalism made by an ironist with a literary vertigo is different than that made by a typical evangelist. 26

SK wants us to convert but he doesn’t hit us over the head with arguments. He’s more Socratic than the missionary who sits at the desk of a college campus with a prepared spiel. 27

This is one of his most interesting traits—he’s a radical skeptic who is also a believer. He doesn’t think reason can lead to true faith. Much like his predecessor, Martin Luther, in whose Church he was raised. 28

SK is kind of like Leo Strauss in reverse; a proponent of Jerusalem or Revelation who speaks the language or Athens or Reason. 29

But here’s the main and subversive rub—SK doesn’t much care about institutional religion; Orthodoxy means a personalized view of everything, not submission to any officially prescribed views—certainly not because they are prescribed. 30

His conception of faith cuts out the middle man; it’s DTC. Although SK might have had “conservative” positions on social mores (like patriarchy), he anticipates “Sheilaism” and DIY religion; trends that the mainstay of “nones” and “spiritual but not religious” crowd. 31

Another worthwhile foil for SK is Plato, who wrote dialogues…interpreters are divided as to whether he should be thought of first as an artist or first as a thinker. 32

Is SK, likewise, first a critic of aestheticism or first an aesthete!? How does his love of style relate to his sense that aesthetics are a form of socialization rather than faith which transcends the category of beauty (just as it does goodness)? 33

One answer is that SK is a practitioner of paradox. 34

Another possibility is that aesthetics is a necessary but insufficient part of faith. All faithful people need to be artists but not all artists are people of faith. Art can also be an idol 35

In many ways the ambivalent and ambiguous relation SK has to style matches Socrates’s/Plato’s complex relationship to rhetoric, which is depicted as a kind of necessary evil. 36

The rhetorician is superficial bc being persuasive and being right are not the same thing. 37

But the rhetorician is also indispensable because truth must be persuasive, too! And those who are right but appear as crackpots have failed on the axis of communication. 38

But as an individualist who thinks socialization can’t get one to faith communication is also a distraction. True faith isn’t persuasive and can’t be communicated. 39

This is an ironic position coming from someone who wrote dozens of books. 40

But it’s a recognizable sentiment. Agamben says that all his books are prelude to the one book he cannot write, the book that appears only as the negative space of his published work. 41

Walter Benjamin, drawing on Kabbalah, also expresses this idea--the notion that the true art is the "white space" which is concealed by the "black space"--the Kabbalistic phrase is "white fire on black fire." 42

Heidegger also describes this idea as the "unthought." Every great thinker gives us something that they uniquely miss, an unconscious truth they approximate and miss all at once. 43

So SK may be showing us that faith is always unthought and unthinkable; it can't be captured by art or philosophy, but these modes, in their failure, can come close; like a kid at the tip of the diving board contemplating diving in. 44

Despite that Heraclitus says you can't step in the same river twice, SK, being paradoxical, hoped precisely to do that, in a way. Heraclitus thread here
45:

https://twitter.com/ZoharAtkins/status/1405555292587401222

In his book Repetition, SK continuously repeats himself but also says that the hardest thing is to repeat oneself; to repeat oneself existentially, not just verbally, to travel a unique path despite routine, to make the boring interesting, to make the historical alive. 46

SK sought to find faith not as someone taking the word of other people, but as an inventor or founder himself. The paradox reminds me of Borges's Pierre Menard seeking to author Don Quixote. To be the first Christian in 19th c. Europe is ridiculous. 47

But to be a mere inheritor of tradition is to miss the point. 48

SK thought the story of Adam and Eve repeated in every single person, thus it's not just that history repeats itself but that the Bible is a map of trans-historical truths. On the 1 hand, original sin is not inevitable b/c each of us is Adam as if sinning for the first time. 49

At the same time, each of is a kind of reincarnation or recapitulation of Adam such that we cannot escape the Adamic condition. Original sin is just a synonym for the human condition. 50

Speaking of reincarnation, the reason SK loves Christianity is because he interprets it as fundamentally paradoxical. God becoming man, the tragic-comedy of crucifixion followed by resurrection. The notion that God says "Why have you for saken me!" 51

But is Christianity true b/c it is paradoxical or is true only when it is paradoxical? The stinging critique of SK is that too often religion presents itself as having answers instead of conundra. When it does this it sets itself up to lose, to be a poor man's science. 52

Despite SK's veneration of paradox, SK is not a proponent of absurdity for its own sake. That would be aestheticism. 53

SK thinks we are capable of self-delusion and self-transcendence. But an ethos of absurdity guarantees nothing. We won't find resolution on this earth either in the embrace of Hegelian dialectic--or a rejection of it. 54

One of the criticisms of SK and his followers is on this point--is life really agony or did SK just project his own pathology onto us? Making a heroism out of his unsettledness? 55

Like who says the point of life is to be like Woody Allen? Or some protagonist in an Ingmar Bergman film? 56

A lot of people point out (most recently, Aaron Koller) that SK's veneration of Abraham leaves Isaac on the altar; it's one thing to celebrate paradox when you're wielding the knife, another when you're the sacrifice. 57

SK famously cuts off his engagement to live as a celibate. It's too speculative to reduce SK to a single 'why' but note that whatever his reasoning or feeling, there was another person, Regina, on the other side of it; his own paradoxical faith is not without 'externalities.' 58

The problem of how to reconcile"individuation" with basic ethics is not unique to SK. It appears in the challenge to Nietzsche and Heidegger, in the Hasidic and Pauline challenges to Jewish law. 59

I'm reminded of a meme that expresses this paradoxically.

Low IQ: Ethics doesn't matter; individuation matters.
Middle IQ: Ethics is all that matters; cancel existentialism.
High IQ: Ethics doesn't matter; individuation matters.

60

You could do it in reverse, too.

Low IQ: Ethics matters; faith is no excuse for barbarism.
Middle IQ: To be authentic one must suspend ethics in the name of teleology.
High IQ: Ethics matters; faith is no excuse for barbarism.

61

I think SK is best read in this Zen mode; if you think you know what SK is saying you're gonna get slapped. And if you think SK knows entirely what he's doing, you're gonna get slapped. The moment is happening now. 62

You'd think from this presentation that SK is a "presentist" a la yoga teachers, but SK believes in the eternal--it's just that he thought you can only get to the eternal by way of the singular. He called himself "the singular universal" (another paradox). 63

By his own lights, SK can't really persuade with argument, all he can do is destabilize with rhetoric; he can use literary techniques to speak to your feelings and make you feel that you should be living differently. Almost like a sermon. 64

But you're not gonna get from SK a list of the 10 habits successful people follow (ha!). Because 1) "success" is a dubious category 2) Because the most important things in life can't be codified. 3) The authentic-faithful person makes a new list. 65

If you're a rationalist religious person (as Maimonideans are), SK is super frustrating b/c he basically concedes that there are no good reasons to be faithful. There's no good rational rejoinder to the challenge to religion from science or from history. 66

Another PSA that the guy who popularized the concept of "authenticity" that now dominates corporate workshops (or did) was an ironist who spent his whole life discontented with any single work or conclusion. Being authentic is not a thing you learn how to do on the weekend. 67

It's funny that SK's magnum opus, both in terms of size and influence is called "Concluding Unscientific Postscript" and is over 500 pages. And you think my mega tweets are long! 68

Kierkegaard's P.S. was longer than the original text to which it was appended. But that's actually the point. The individual is the P.S. to the universal, but despite being demoted philosophically is of the utmost importance existentially and phenomenologically. 69

It's not what you think, but who you are, that matters, your subjective standpoint. 70

I see the SK's position taken to an extreme in today's culture wars in all for whom winning is important than fact. Kierkegaard was also not a big fan of facts and factuality. His anti-rationalism finds analogues today in the war on truth declared by activists of all stripes. 71

Why should truth matter if I'm feeling marginalized? So the celebration of "interiority" is a dangerous game as it allows any individual to claim superiority to what experts say. There is a boldness in it, but if I were Surgeon General I'd put a disclaimer sticker on it. 72

The disclaimer would be that one should not reject expertise in others simply on the basis of interiority. Interiority is a compass, but if it is the only thing one becomes mad and solipsistic. 73

But context matters. We are already very individualistic and so perhaps need more of a push to the conventional. SK lived in a time of convention and was amongst the pioneers of asserting the incommensurability of the individual. 74

B/c SK was anti-Hegelian, he was less concerned with macro historical trends and more concerned with the tremors and disruptions of an individual life. If Hegel is like Philip Seymour Hoffman's character in New York, SK is his wife (Samantha Morton), the miniature artist. 75

You find this in Kafka, too. Macro historical events like WWI are just background to ordinary life. I found this idea also in the film The White Ribbon and in Wes Anderson's Grand Hotel. 76

SK would be less interested in politics than in the individual seeking to do politics faithfully. Much like a therapist-the interesting part of someone's politics is how it connects to their personal story, what the symbolic order means practically for daily life. 77

A few critiques of SK and then to why I love him. 78

SK's thought or anti-thought doesn't scale. And it doesn't try to or want to. There's no church of existentialism. That's a contradiction. SK is a manual in how to live a pious life no matter what, whether secular or religious, Lutheran or Muslim, Jewish or Sikh. 79

Yes he wants us to be Christian; yes he cares a lot about Jesus and believes in the Incarnation theology, but what he most believes in is the personal relationship with God, the discovery of selfhood through decision and pain. 80

SK is not into first principles, obviously. But this can lead to a sense of arbitrariness or caprice when trying to apply or build as a Kierkegaardian. Yep. There's no solution here. Just be self critical and find hope and salvation on the other side, maybe. 81

SK is pretty harsh on bourgeois culture, while being somewhat boogie himself (a familiar pattern). The people who read SK tend to be academics these days, college students, grad students, etc. hardly exemplars of "radicalism." 82

You could argue that SK is both too harsh and that he is mere virtue signaler. It's fun and fashionable to be into Kierekaard. There's a certain allure and status that comes from saying you're non-conformist (all while flashing your conformist credentials). 83

Yep, I'm guilty as charged. 84

SK should arguably have more appreciation for simpletons and the average folk and conventional religion. The existentialist sermon can be destructive if not properly scaffolded. 85

In other words, SK may be right about faith, but religion was never about faith, says Dostoevsky's Grand Inquisitor. Jesus isn't Lindy, but the Church is. 86

Granted! But well, OK, isn't SK right that Hegel was wrong? We don't actually live at the end of history. We're mired in endless wars and all kinds of challenges to the liberal democratic order from left and right. (and many of those criticisms are Kierkegaardian). 87

SK would loathe Identity politics because it turns the individual into a subordinate of the group, but he'd appreciate the notion that identity should matter, that personal feelings should animate discourse and not just or primarily sound arguments. 88

SK would like the confessional turn in our discourse, at least at first. Though he'd probably be skeptical that it is anything but manipulative. 89

I appreciate that SK doesn’t think he can refute the modern critics of religion so doubles down on what they miss—the first person pov. 90

This is why I like Heidegger too and why I’m never going to be a “neuroscience says” kind of guy, as if I needed a brainscan to prove that I should Walk or meditate or pray. 91

I think SK was one of the first to grasp religious life as also deeply psychological, with great ramification. 92

1-he shows how religious structures like doubt and belief govern everyone no matter what.

2-he shows that you can have a Freudian account of one’s origins that is spiritually meaningful and not reductively anti-religious. 93

SK in my view is right to criticize systematic thought on multiple grounds—1) it emphasizes the standard over the non standard. 2) it is hubristic 3) it is overly optimistic without making room for the experience of tragedy. Hegel’s Absolute doesn’t care about us. 94

In SK, there is happiness and joy, but it’s not guaranteed—in Hegel, enlightenment is destiny. In SK it is a miracle. 95

We live in a culture in which it is customary to describe the world as having a way or nature that is predictable. SK located in the individual life a place for that which is unscripted. Every miracle is subtle, even hidden. 96

SK is very much a modern in this because miracles are not spectacles and one cannot bring proof from or for them. (In this he bucks the medievals). 97

But SK also preserves the category of the miraculous by locating God in the human heart, and making the Bible a story about the seeking self. 98

While being a self may not be the only thing that matters, and, in extreme, can also become an imbalanced ideal—I love that SK describes the problem of faith, authenticity, and selfhood, as one and the same. 99

No matter how we arrive at or how we pursue authenticity, we find that the path is replete with paradox. One of the great guides on this path was an artist who thought he was both more and less than a believer. 100/100

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