It is often claimed that relativism, subjectivism and nihilism are typically modern philosophical problems that emerge with the breakdown of traditional values, customs and ways of life. The result is the absence of meaning, the lapse of religious faith, and feeling of alienation that is so widespread in modernity. The Danish thinker Søren Kierkegaard (1813-55) gave one of the most penetrating analyses of this complex phenomenon of modernity. But somewhat surprisingly he seeks insight into it not in any modern thinker but rather in an ancient one, the Greek philosopher Socrates. In this course created by former associate professor at the Søren Kierkegaard Research Centre, Jon Stewart, we will explore how Kierkegaard deals with the problems associated with relativism, the lack of meaning and the undermining of religious faith that are typical of modern life. His penetrating analyses are still highly relevant today and have been seen as insightful for the leading figures of Existentialism, Post-Structuralism and Post-Modernism.
Lecture 5.2 Kierkegaard, Møller and Schlegel
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Del curso dictado por University of Copenhagen
Søren Kierkegaard - Subjectivity, Irony and the Crisis of Modernity
421 calificaciones
University of Copenhagen
421 calificaciones
De la lección
Kierkegaard, Møller and Schlegel
During this unit, we will continue the analysis of the second part of The Concept of Irony. Here Kierkegaard introduces the irony of the German Romantics as a contrastive form of irony to that of Socrates. We begin with Kierkegaard’s account of Fichte’s theory of subjectivity which, he (following Hegel) claims is the forerunner to Romantic irony. This then leads to Kierkegaard’s account of the appropriation of Fichte’s theory by the Romantic authors, Friedrich von Schlegel and Ludwig Tieck. This lecture also introduces one of Kierkegaard’s great mentors, Poul Martin Møller, who was also interested in an analysis of Romantic irony as a form of modern nihilism. We see how Kierkegaard is critical of Romantic irony as “historically unjustified,” while he continues his praise of Socratic irony. Finally, we continue the biographical narrative of Kierkegaard’s life with an account of his relation to and broken engagement with Regine Olsen.
Conoce a los instructores
Jon Stewart, PhD, Dr theol & philFormer Associate Professor
Søren Kierkegaard Research Centre
[MUSIC]
Again, following Hegel, Kierkegaard points out that Fichte's theory of
the self-positing ego formed the foundation of the theory of irony in later
thinkers such as Friedrich von Schlegel and Ludwig Tieck.
But according to Kierkegaard, these thinkers distorted Fichte's theory by
trying to apply it in a different context.
Kierkegaard makes two related objections.
He writes, in the first place, the empirical and
finite I was confused with the eternal I.
In the second place,
metaphysical actuality was confused with historical actuality.
Since Fichte was a philosopher, his primary goal was to create a theory of
knowledge that corrected the shortcomings of Kant's philosophy.
Thus, when he spoke about the self-positing ego, or the eye,
this was something theoretical, but he wasn't talking about himself or
any other particular person.
By contrast, Schlegel and Tieck were writers on art and aesthetics,
and their agenda was quite different.
They took this theoretical entity from Fichte and
conceived of it as an actual living and breathing person.
In other words, they tried to employ this abstract ego.
There's a model for concrete behavior in the real world.
Specifically, Schlegel and Tieck saw in Fichte's theory a powerful tool
with which to criticize the world of bourgeois customs, values, and beliefs.
Fichte's ego didn't recognize the validity of anything outside itself.
And these later romantic thinkers seized upon this as a way to undermine what they
regarded the old fashioned and reactionary views in the society of their day.
But again, Kierkegaard points out that this differs from Socratic irony,
which as we've seen, was world historically justified.
By contrast,
he says that the Romantics use of irony was not in the service of world spirit.
Socrates examined and
undermined specific beliefs that historically were no longer viable.
But the Romantics use irony to criticize everything.
Their criticism was indiscriminate.
Their goal was to tear down society,
while at the same time glorifying the individual who was able to create himself.
It's true that in any society, there are always things that
are worthy of criticism, corruption, nepotism, hypocrisy, and so forth.
But from this it doesn't follow that all of society is corrupt, nepotistic, or
hypocritical.
Every society has elements which represent problems, but
it doesn't follow from this that the entire society is worthy of criticism.
Thus, the Romantics make the error of universalizing their criticism to
everything, and
due to this they end up criticizing things which are quite reasonable and sound.
But all distinctions get washed away in the Romantics' totalizing criticism.
This kind of indiscriminate criticism was never something that Socrates engaged in.
On the contrary, at his trial he emphasizes that it's important to follow
the laws and traditions of Athens, such as consulting the Oracle.
The Romantics don't criticize specific antiquated values and
institutions in order to replace them with better and new ones.
But rather, they do so in order to celebrate and
glorify the subjective ego itself.
Here, Kierkegaard grants the correctness of Hegel's criticism of the Romantics.
He writes, quote, we also perceive here that this irony was totally unjustified,
and that Hegel's hostile behavior toward it is entirely in order.
One characteristic of the Romantic ironist is that he can, so to speak,
invent himself anew at any given moment.
There's nothing about his life or past that's substantial or binding.
And he can freely change whatever he wishes whenever he wishes.
When we tell the story of our lives,
we naturally attempt to put things in a positive light or to give
things a particular pin in accordance with our interests in the present.
Thus, certain things about our past that were insignificant at the time
take on great importance when viewed in connection with some fact of the present.
Likewise, other events of the past which were quite important at the time
passed by unnoticed and are forgotten if they seem to have no connection
to what's regarded as relevant in one's life in the present.
In this sense, our past is not a static fact of the matter, but
rather is to a large degree fluid.
The Romantics take this to new heights by constantly telling new stories about their
past, based on whatever whim or mood happens to strike them.
Since they believe there's no objective external reality, they're free to
interpret things in the world and their past in any way they please.
Kierkegaard thus points that the Romantics were not interested in history per se,
that is, about concrete sources and evidence for what actually happened.
But rather old legends, myths, and fairy tales that came from the past but
were not regarded as having any objective truth.
Again, Kierkegaard acknowledges the correctness of Hegel's criticism of
Schlegel in his correct understanding of the actuality of history.
For Hegel there is certain inescapable elements of history
that one can't simply play with at random.
There's an objective meaning or logos in the development of human history.
And it's not just the different, arbitrary interpretations of individuals.
Kierkegaard refers to the Romantic slogan of living poetically
to capture the view of the ironist.
This might be taken to mean a person has good taste for
art and makes this a part of his lifestyle.
But, this isn't the main thing that this is meant with this here.
Instead, to be poetic in this sense means to write fiction, though,
in this case, to live as if one's life were a fiction.
So living poetically refers to someone who's constantly able
to make up his life anew at any given moment,
to create his life anew as if he were telling a fictional story.
The element of fiction is key here since it shows
that the Romantic ironist is in no way bound to anything in actuality.
There's no factual element of his existence
that he recognizes as having any validity.
Everything is a fiction that he can interpret and reinterpret as he pleases.
Kierkegaard is critical of this view since he believes that
there are certain irrevocable facts of existence, for
example, that we are beings created by God.
This is not something that we can choose to reinterpret at random.
We're created beings, and in this sense, are dependent on God.
This consequently, presents a certain goal in life that Christians try to achieve.
The Romantic ironist, however,
recognizes no such objective facts or existence and
no such goal beyond the finite ones that he himself ponders.
Kierkegaard goes to examine, in some detail,
Friedrich von Schlegel's appropriation, Fichte's conception of the subject.
Kierkegaard follows Hegel by singling out a specific work
that he takes to be representative of Schlegel's position,
namely his novel Lucinde, which was originally published in 1799.
The novel traces the love of the young man Julius and his beloved Lucinde.
Schlegel's goal was to celebrate the free, passionate,
romantic love of his fictional couple.
True love can only be found in the unrestrained spontaneous ecstasy of
individuals and can't be governed by other concerns, such as prudence,
respectability, familial connections, or financial concerns.
When this book appeared, it was the source of some controversy,
since it was regarded as immoral and offensive to bourgeois values.
Its allusions to the sexual relations between Julius and
his lovers were considered scandalous by the standards of the day.
In the work, Julius is portrayed as someone
who doesn't respect the rules of society.
He speaks openly about seducing different women, including a young,
innocent girl and an elite prostitute.
But these affairs leave Julius depressed and disillusioned.
Only when he finds his true love, Lucinda, is he redeemed.
The novel is thus about showing how Julius finds what might be called a new
immediacy.
That is, how we can discover the true, spontaneous
spark of love in a mature relationship with a woman whom he respects.
Julius thus finds his place in the world again after having lost it.
Schlegel's view is that it's the rise of bourgeois
society that's stifled true love.
According to this view, there was an earlier period in human history
when men and women spontaneously came together based on natural inclination.
They were not motivated by things such as increasing their fortune,
securing heirs, or allying themselves with rich or powerful families.
Instead, their personal love for the other person was their sole concern.
Kierkegaard takes this view to be somewhat naive.
Schlegel and the Romantics pretend to want to reconstruct this idyllic age, but
in fact, this is a fiction that they have created.
They suppose that this is a real attempt to return to a historical past,
but instead, it's a positing of an unrealistic utopian future.
There never was a time when human motives were so pure,
and it's difficult to imagine a time when they ever will be so.
Kierkegaard also points out that there's a contradiction in Schlegel's idea.
On the one hand, the work Lucinda is supposed to celebrate a naïve,
pristine conception of spontaneous, immediate love.
But then on the other hand, the critical view found in the book is intended to
undermine bourgeois morality concerning questions of love and marriage.
But this criticism is far from naive and spontaneous.
Rather, it's the result of careful philosophical consideration and
sophisticated social critique.
However the main criticism that Kierkegaard wants to level against
Schegel is that the novel Lucinda is not just an attack on a specific idea or
value but rather it's an attempt to undermine all ethics.
The view presented is that all ethics and
values inherited from traditional culture are ultimately arbitrary.
And so the romantic ionise is at his liberty to object him and create his own.
The bourgeois ethics associated with love and marriage are even repressive and
detrimental.
So the ironist sees himself at leading a campaign of liberation against this.
But this absolute negativity is indiscriminate.
Since it criticizes ethics in general, its critique is aimed not just against those
elements of bourgeois ethics that are worthy of criticism, but
also against those elements that are sound and true.
In this sense, Schlegel's criticism is unjustified.
We saw that Kierkegaard uses the phrase living poetically to describe the ironist.
And in this section on Schlegel, he explains in more depth what this entails.
We need to be careful here since,
from this it's clear that he doesn't mean what we usually refer to as poetry.
This might also be translated as living aesthetically in the sense of
making up one's own life with artistic sensitivity,
in contrast to slavishly following the rules and convictions of society.
Kierkegaard writes, I quote.
If we ask what poetry is,
we may say in general that it is a victory over the world; it is through
a negation of the imperfect actuality that poetry opens up a higher actuality.
So to live poetically is to reject traditional customs, values,
and habits that one regards as flawed and defective and to posit one's one.
In this way one negates the world of actuality
that is the world of established custom.
In addition, one creates a higher actuality for oneself.
That is, one creates a new set of values that are not contradictory and
flawed in the way that traditional values are.
According to Kierkegaard, Schlegel's attempt to undermine bourgeois ethics in
the name of something higher is ultimately unsuccessful, since the ethics that
the book Lucinda seems to advocate is one of sensual pleasure.
While they may admittedly be problems with some aspects of bourgeois ethics,
the simple striving for immediate pleasure of the senses
could hardly be considered a higher ethical state.
The ideological plea that motivates the word is one of freedom in the emancipation
from the repression of society.
But in exchange one gets instead a base slavery to the natural drives and
the needs to satisfy the senses.
This can hardly been seen as a higher form of freedom.
It should be noted that while Kierkegaard was working on this material
he was engaged to Regina Olson.
One wonders to what degree his reading of Schlegel's views of love and
marriage played a role in his ultimately dissolving the engagement.
In any case, this analysis was highly influential for Kierkegaard,
since he would come to treat the question of the pros and
cons of marriage in a number of his later works.
For example in Either/Or the book that he wrote immediately after The Concept of
Irony He uses elements from the character of the young Julius as a model for
the unnamed author of the first part of the work The Esthete who defends the view
of romantic love and for his picture of the seducer in The Diary of a Seducer.
He also creates the figure of Judge William as the author of the second part
of the work.
The judge, a varied civil servant defends the virtues of
love within the institution of marriage in bourgeois society.
In here Kierkegaard can be seen to incorporate elements
of the view of the mature Julius in Schlegel's novel.
The book Either/Or is a dialogue between these two worldviews.
But the dialogue actually began in the second part of The Concept of Irony.
An important figure in the Danish golden age was Poul Martin Moller who's often
thought to have been one of Kierkegaard's great mentors.
Moller was among other things a scholar of classical studies,
who helped to inspire Kierkegaard's love of the ancient Greeks.
It's quite possible that Moller encouraged Kierkegaard to write
about the notion of irony and Socrates for his dissertation.
Moller lived in this white building just on the other side of the courthouse from
Kierkegaard's family apartment.
Moller had been professor of philosophy in Norway from 1826 to 1830 before
assuming a position at the University of Copenhagen,
where he taught from 1831 until his death in 1838.
Moller was Kierkegaard's professor and
there's some evidence that the two cultivated a friendship.
There can be no doubt that Muller exercised a powerful
influence upon Kierkegaard.
Evidence of this influence can be seen from the fact that
Kierkegaard dedicated the Concept of Anxiety to Muller.
In that dedication, Kierkegaard refers to Moller as,
among other things, the confidant of Socrates.
Kierkegaard also wrote a very flattering passage about Moller in
the Concluding Unscientific Post Script Moller died in 1838,
a couple of months before Kierkegaard's father.
These deaths caused a great inner stirring in Kierkegaard.
It's thought that Moller's death changed Kierkegaard's attitude towards
his own life.
In the first years of his university studies,
he wasn't necessarily the most hard-working of students.
He was interested much more in the theater, literature and
expensive clothes than in his studies.
Since he came from a rich family, he was under no pressure to
complete a degree to secure for himself a livelihood or profession.
It was only after the death of Moller and
Kierkegaard's father in 1838 that he began to work seriously.
And after a couple of years, he finished his studies with his masters thesis,
The Concept of Irony, in 1841.
Why was Moller so important for Kierkegaard's dissertation?
Shortly before his death Moller had himself been developing his own ideas
about irony.
In his posthumously published works,
there's a draft of what seems to have been planned as a larger work on this subject.
The draft bears the same title as Kierkegaard's thesis, literally,
On the Concept of Irony.
In this text, Moller discusses many of the philosophical
aspects of irony that Kierkegaard comes to treat in his work.
Specifically, Moller's particularly interested in criticizing the romantics'
use of irony as a weapon to attack modern bourgeois culture.
In this context, he treats,
for example, the theories of the German philosophers Hegel and Fichte,
both of whom play an important role for Kierkegaard's analysis as well.
Moller criticizes the irony of the romantics arguing that it quote,
necessarily ends in an absence of all content, in a moral nihilism.
Here Moller, Kierkegaard's great mentor, clearly anticipated some of
the main features of Kierkegaard's work, The Concept of Irony.
Indeed, the work might even have been conceived with Moller
as a kind of advisor.
And then after his death completed, so
as to work out some of the insights that Moller was only beginning to develop.
In his journal, DD, Kierkegaard recounts a conversation that he had with Moller,
perhaps in this very house.
He notes that this took place on June the 30th, 1837,
less than a year before Moller's death.
The discussion concerned Socrates, and
some of the key topics were irony and humor.
Moreover, the comparison was also made between Socrates and Jesus.
All of these are elements that we can find in Kierkegaard's work,
The Concept of Irony, some four years later.
I'm joined here again today by Professor Brian Soderquist.
Brian, we know that Paul Martin Moller was interested in questions of relativism,
subjectivism, nihilism, and is the idea that there's no ultimate meaning.
Could you tell us a little bit about his interest in nihilism, for example?
>> Yes, true, Paul Martin Moller was indeed interested in nihilism.
Was one of the first in Denmark to use the term nihilism, and
this was really 50 years before it became a common philosophical concept
through Nietzsche and others.
But he tied his concept of nihilism to the German romantics and
specifically, to the German romantics' understanding of what it
means to be an artist or an author.
As Moller sought the German romantics, including Schlegel,
assumed that they could create a self, their very own self
identity in the same way that they create fictional characters.
And likewise, assumed that they could create the setting for that character in
the same way that an author can create the setting for a fictional character.
So, in that sense, Moller saw or sensed that there
was something that they had misunderstood, or
something that they had dismissed nihilistically.
And some of those elements simply can't be dismissed.
Namely, our time, and our place, and our embodiment.
So, on the one hand, Moller ties his critique of the German
romantics to our embodiment, something that can't be dismissed.
And with this embodiment, he's thinking particularly of the fact that
we find ourselves in a time, in a place.
And with a very real emotional life, with what he calls it kind of primitivity.
A kind of way of being in the world that can't simply be dismissed.
And something that's not in our full control,
as an author might be in control of a character.
And secondly, he's critical of romantics.
Because he thinks they overlook the fact that actuality, he calls it, or
our given setting, is not something that we can simply erase as an author can
erase a character setting.
We're thrown into a historical context in a social environment with
a long history of values and customs, traditions, and habits.
And he calls attention to the fact that we simply have to negotiate with those.
We can't start over.
Kierkegaard concludes the concept of irony with a short chapter entitled,
Irony as a Controlled Element, the Truth of Irony.
After the detailed analyses that he's explored in the body of the work,
this brief conclusion strikes the reader as almost perfunctory.
Here he presents his own view of irony in contrast to both Socratic irony and
romantic irony.
Scholars argue about the meaning of this chapter since
there are certain elements of it that can be read themselves as being ironic.
In this book, Kierkegaard seems to be presenting the conclusions to the work.
Some interpreters think that at the same time he seems to be pointing
in a different direction.
Kierkegaard begins this chapter with an analysis of irony in the context of art.
And he mentions a few authors who, in his opinion, have made use of it correctly,
Shakespeare, Gautier, and the Danish author, Johan Ludvig Heiberg.
His main claim here is that these points are great because
they embody what Kierkegaard calls a totality view of the world.
By this, it seems to mean that they have an overarching,
consistent world view that allows them to organize their art.
In their poems, they're able to organize and balance a large number of
different elements in accordance with this general view.
Kierkegaard praises them since they're able to use irony effectively
as an individual element in their works.
They're able to find the right time and place for
individual instances of irony, and to employ it to good effect, in these cases.
In this sense, he says that they're masters of irony.
They dictate exactly when it is to be used, and
construct situations where it's most appropriate.
This stands in contrast to romantic irony, which as we've seen is totalizing.
The romantics are not able to control irony as one element among others.
But instead, they're in effect controlled or
dominated by it as a single overriding element.
Thus, Kierkegaard criticizes romantic irony, and recommends what he calls
controlled irony, that is, the use of irony in specific, appropriate cases.
Kierkegaard then moves from the use of irony in art,
to the more existential question of the use of irony in life.
Here, he refers to his previous formulation of living poetically.
His positive view seems to be that the true ironist is one who
generally lives in accordance with the conventions and
customs of his society, but, who doesn't do so uncritically.
Rather, he isolates individual aspects of the actuality of his society
that he exposes as flawed by means of irony.
He writes, I quote,
in our age there has been much talk about the importance of doubt for science and
scholarship, but what doubt is to science, irony is to personal life.
Just as scientists maintain that there is no true science without doubt, so
it may be maintained with the same right that no genuinely human life is
possible without irony.
This is presumably in part a reference to Martensen's claim that philosophy
must begin with doubt, with the slogan, [FOREIGN], or one must doubt everything.
Kierkegaard seems to be saying that to be truly human,
we must all at some point pass through a phase of critical reflection,
where we subject our inherited beliefs and practices to critical examination and
reject those that are erroneous.
Kierkegaard thus implicitly agrees with Socrates' famous claim that
the unexamined life is not worth living.
Or put differently, the unexamined life fails to develop fully the faculties that
are unique to human beings.
Kierkegaard thus says that irony is the absolute beginning of personal life.
By using irony in a controlled manner, the individual can have a reflective critical
distance on one's culture in the established order of things.
Without trying to destroy it and
alienating oneself from it in the same way that the romantics do.
In one of the most important passages in all of Kierkegaard's writings,
he connects this view of controlled irony with Christianity.
He says that it's, particularly in his own day, irony of this kind is important.
He critically recalls the important scientific advances of the time.
And notes quote, knowledge not only about the secrets of the human race, but
even about the secrets of God is offered for
sale at such a bargain price today that it all looks very dubious.
In our joy over the achievement in our age,
we have forgotten that an achievement is worthless if it is not made one's own.
Here, he implicitly recalls Socrates in The Importance of Subjective Knowing.
Kierkegaard's contemporaries, like those of Socrates,
claimed to have astonishing knowledge about a number of different things, but
this knowledge can't be accepted at face value.
Rather, it must be examined by each individual and appropriated by each and
every one of us on our own.
What Kierkegaard here calls the secrets of God can't be learned as
a form of objective knowledge,
but instead it must be appropriated inwardly by each individual.
This is one of the central issues that will recur in some
of Kierkegaard's most famous works.
Irony comes in when one wishes to criticize what Kierkegaard takes to be
the mistaken view that we can know the secrets of God objectively.
He believes that this view,
which is widely held in his own day, is worthy of ironic criticism.
Thus, irony has an important role to play in the modern world.
In a profoundly provocative passage,
Kierkegaard plays on the words of Jesus who says, in John chapter 14,
verse 6, I am the way, and the truth, and the life.
Kierkegaard modifies this and writes, quote, irony as the negative is the way.
It's not the truth, but the way.
Here he emphasizes the negative aspect of irony, the aspect that he's argued for
throughout the work in reference to Socrates.
Irony doesn't construct or build something positive.
But rather it's important because it's negative because it criticizes and
tears down.
The implication seems to be that irony is an essential element for
coming to Christianity.
First, one must use irony in order to undermine the mistaken conceptions
of Christianity, which conceive of it as a positive and objective doctrine.
Then, once this has been done, one can have the proper relation to Christianity
by means of inward appropriation.
So irony as a negative force is not the truth itself, but
rather it prepares the individual to find the truth on one's own.
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