It seems to me that the most important factor in reading Kierkegaard is exactly how one does it. You can assume, as he himself demanded, that his pseudonyms are individual personae, writing from each one’s particular perspective and experience. Or, you can approach each book as a puzzle, sifting for meaning inside every perplexing sentence as you fumble your way toward “What Kierkegaard Thought.”
I don’t think I’ve written anything about my current ongoing reading of the SK oeuvre, with good reason: I take the first approach, and the thing about taking the pseudonyms seriously, so to speak, is that the reading starts to feel quite personal, and I would never claim to be particularly expert in, you know, “What Kierkegaard Thought.”
SK’s works, particularly the first authorship, are similar to the Bible, an analogy I choose on purpose. It’s not a single work, but a library of books written by multiple authors, who are sometimes aware of and sometimes in conversation with each other; each individual book, when read individually, must be understood in a certain way, but when read as part of the whole, must be understood quite differently.
But in each case, that understanding occurs inside the reader, as something he or she develops in dialogue with the work, as opposed to something presented as direct guidance from the author. Just as the Bible does not present a system (which is why academic theologians produce “Systematic Theologies”), SK’s works are not offered as bullet points, nor can they be broken down into them.
I mean, you can try; but you will miss the point.
I’ve been reading Either/Or over the course of 2024 with a fellow group of engaged readers, and last week we reached the point in Volume 2 where Judge William has decided to “stop theorizing” (around page 266 of the Hong translation). This is after he has fumbled his way through hundreds of pages of circular arguments, trying (just as “A” did in Volume 1) to find a theory that explains and justifies the life he has chosen. At this point, I think that he has become uncomfortable with where his theorizing has led.
As I read it, Judge William has realized that a life spent in devotion to duty and in concert with civil society, if one is to do so as a whole individual rather than a mindless cog, requires one to internalize that duty. Following the Hegelian universal/particular/individual pathway, as the Judge understands it (and I don’t pretend to), leads him to saying that, simplistically and not in so many words: as long as one believes that what one is doing is good, then it cannot necessarily be said to be wrong.
The Judge writes:
“But however much the external is changed, the moral value of the action remains the same. Thus there has never been a nation that believed that children should hate their parents. In order to add fuel to doubt, however, it has been pointed out whereas all civilized [sic] nations made it the children’s duty to care for their parents, savages [sic] practiced the custom of putting their aged parents to death. This may very well be so, but still no headway is made thereby, because the question remains whether the savages intend to do something evil by this. The ethical always resides in this consciousness, whereas it is another question whether or not insufficient comprehension is responsible.”
The Judge then turns away from his theorizing, because — as I read it so far — he is uncomfortable with this sort of moral relativism, and his attempts to wriggle out from under it have failed. There is really little difference between his ethical life and A’s aesthetic life, in terms of practical outcome. One wants to do whatever he desires; one wants to fulfill his duty as a member of society, but that duty will ultimately conform to his desires. (Isn’t it funny how so many self-professed Christians in the United States wind up discovering that Christianity just happens to support their own personal inclinations toward ethics and politics?)
Even in our little Either/Or reading group, nobody seemed eager to accuse the “savages” in the Judge’s example of being objectively wrong based on their actions (never mind their motivations). After all, perhaps the aged parents being put out to ice were suffering from terminal diseases; perhaps they were inflicted with ceaseless physical pain and the “savages” believed they were sending them to a better, eternal life. How could that be wrong?
These are the ways we try to justify such a thing as, in this particular case, placing a calculable value on a human life. Of course, rarely does anyone go “whole hog” on that sort of thing — governments and the WHO may be able to place a dollar value on a human life, but actual human beings don’t usually go through life evaluating individual family members based on their country’s gross domestic product, and would look askance at anyone who asked them to do so.
But I wonder, without any sense of the eternal, a reality beyond the material world, how can one say it’s wrong to do so, or where to draw any sort of line? If I believe that aged parents are actually more valuable to society than, say, a devotee of Nietzsche of any age (and I think I could make a good argument), then who is to say that my valuation is incorrect?
I think that Judge William is like us. He has put forth his theory, such as it is, and followed to where it inevitably leads. Faced with its actual implications, he changes the subject, just like we all do.
So my point in all of this is to ask, can one get the “gist” of Kierkegaard by dissolving it into bullet points, or into a blog post like this one? Perhaps. But whether I am “right” or “wrong” in my interpretation, will you lie awake at night thinking about it, wondering what it means for the way you lead your life, the way I did last night about Judge William and his theorizing?
I’m guessing, definitely not. And that’s, in my considerably uninformed opinion, how (and why) to read Kierkegaard (and not my blog posts). Not so that one can somehow figure out “What Kierkegaard Thought” but so that one can somehow figure out what he or she thinks, and what it actually means.