So what it seems to me is that Kierkegaard is saying that if faith is an individual stance towards God as Luther says it is, then the body of believers can't be organised as a department of the secular community and State.
Well it's just an idea. It's hardly the whole truth and I'm not addressing any differences between the ways in which Luther and Kierkegaard conceptualise faith.
This is more-or-less how I've heard scholars frame Kierkegaard's connection to traditional lutheran ideas. He's basically trying to harangue the sola fide boys into having the courage of their convictions, and letting the princess(the individual) out of the tower(the church) once and for all.
I was just looking at Problema III for the beginning of the parts on irony and doubt and found myself in paragraph26. The one before he brings in Sarah and Tobit. It's about 3 pages long, dense and meaty. Would anyone be up for working through thoughts just on that paragraphy for a bit?
If not, I'll work alone. But it could be a help to go through it with others.
I think that part is my favorite of his secondary literary takes, even though I don't think I quite understood what he was saying about it. Maybe I'll give it another read tonight.
I'm reviewing ¶26 and just printed it large with a big margin for notes. (I can barely read without holding a pencil, preferably mechanical with extra lead).
Before we dig in much, I want to bring up some terms that show up here and throughout the book. They are no more important here than in the rest of the book but what we do with them will affect the way we read this paragraph and understand it. Early on, we are introduced to terms in relation to the mechanics of Jds's structural understanding of faith and society, and they are used in that same way throughout the book. I want to make sure I have these concepts of Jds's straight in my head, before attacking this:
Paradox
Movement (and the many variations: of infinite repentance, etc)
By virtue of the absurd
Actuality
Passion (see @HelenEva 's blog entry, ¶8, that left me with my jaw wide open, when I had this book on my mind)
Living (of having one's life) in the idea (See SK's original 3rd footnote to Problema III, where the concept of Poetic Collision is explained)
The absurd
Hero
Demon
To be clear, want to avoid, as much as possible, interpretation. As unpalatable as it is, I want this to be as close as possible to a bit of dictionary work, in order to have in my mind as I read, the way the vocabulary is used in the book, as if I'm reading a foreign language -- because I am.
I think that part is my favorite of his secondary literary takes, even though I don't think I quite understood what he was saying about it. Maybe I'll give it another read tonight.
So instead of the church being a community independent of secular structures Luther makes it a community of all the faithful organised by those secular structures. The churches are departments of the State and are responsible to the State's ruler.
@Dafyd thank you again for explaining this. It was very helpful.
Actually, this part shocked me. I'm a Baptist (calvinistic leaning, Independent sort in the U.S.) and only know bits and pieces of these aspects of church history. Everything about "organised by those secular structures. The churches are departments of the State and are responsible to the State's ruler." seems wrong.
This really was Luther's and the Reformers' view?
That's going to take a while to sink in.
Wow. Thank you.
Re-reading it right now, and I'm kinda hating it, stylistically. The guy has no talent for paraphrasing fairy-tales, but he's writing a whole book loosely structured around the analysis of various fairy-tales.
I think what makes Tobit And Sarah interesting for me is simply that...
1. I can actually understand what's going on in the original story, what the characters' problems are etc.
And also that...
2. It fits in with a sorta psychoanalytical-feminist critique of the book that I doubt I'm the first to speculate about. Without wanting to go down the usual biographical path, narratives in the vicinity of thwarted intimacy, problematic births, and intra-family violence are a big part of the show in Fear And Trembling, and Tobit, which has a relatively clear presentation of its ur-text, might help me to understand what's going on plot-wise in the other stories, eg. the merman.
I'm about halfway through the demonic-bridal night, and still not seeing his overall point, though in the next paragraph coming up is that "Now let's imagine Sarah is a man" maneuver, which IIRC is where he gets into his real analysis. Seems like a rather clankerous way to make his shift, but whatevs.
Everything about "organised by those secular structures. The churches are departments of the State and are responsible to the State's ruler." seems wrong.
This really was Luther's and the Reformers' view?
One of the big differences between Luther and other Reformers (Zwingli, Calvin, etc) is that Luther was operating in Germany which was largely ruled by nobility, and the other Reformers were operating in Free cities which were self-governing. (Both were part of the Holy Roman Empire but the Emperor had more influence in Luther's part of the world.)
So when Luther handed the government of the church over to the laity he was handing it over to laity with a different power structure from the laity to which Zwingli and Calvin handed over the church. The fundamental idea in both cases is that lay people govern the church. In Luther's case that means that the people who govern the lay people govern the church. In the Reformed tradition it's a bit more complicated since the underlying tradition is more republican and also each city and therefore each congregation was more independent.
@stetson I see we have been talking about different paragraphs. I am in the one before The Tobit Stuff. (Or are you reviewing TTS to prepare for 26?)
Thanks for going over why you like the Tobit Stuff. I like your style there with a titlc and everything for your post.
I'm looking forward to reading about your take on the section.
@Dafyd, thanks again! Did Luther include in his theology of the church an understanding of, or assumption that, the state ran the churches? Of was this just "the way things are."
Exerything you have written on this reinforces SK's description of secular uses of Luther's theology of grace in "For Self-examination." I think I've quoted it above somewhere. About Luther shoving James aside and secular minds seeing an opportunity.
I've only read "On secular authority," amd the piece with advice on how Christians should behave during a deadly Plague.
It fits in with a sorta psychoanalytical-feminist critique of the book that I doubt I'm the first to speculate about. Without wanting to go down the usual biographical path, narratives in the vicinity of thwarted intimacy, problematic births, and intra-family violence are a big part of the show...
In the 1990s, I heard a second-hand report of a Catholic conference at which a theologian gave a counter-traditionalist explication of Mary and her role in salvation, something about how we shouldn't just think of her as a queen reigning in heaven, but as a humble girl giving herself over to God's will.
My reporter quoted to me a line from the lecture, about how Mary's story was, in some ways, "absurd", which cemented my already existing inkling that the theologian's analysis was inspired by Kierkegaard, with possibly direct input from the Mary passage in Problem I.
Just read Paragraph 25 of Problem III. Most of it seemed rather nebulous, but I think think the basic idea is that in an age when society has moved far away from the monastic spirit, there is no appreciation of the absurd.
And yeah, monasticism. AKA The No Girls Allowed Club.
[Ya see how Mr. Keaton on Family Ties was wrong, and it's very hard to tease even the slightest inspiration for social solidarity out of Kierkegaard. His anti-human affection parables are perfectly suited for symbolizing his views on the proper relation between the individual and society. Even the stories used to exemplify the Knight Of Infinite Resignation, who does, in fact, act on behalf of the common good, involve parents having to kill their own children.]
His anti-human affection parables are perfectly suited for symbolizing his views on the proper relation between the individual Christian, acting qua the individual Christian, and society.
Did Luther include in his theology of the church an understanding of, or assumption that, the state ran the churches? Of was this just "the way things are."
I am no expert. I suspect the latter. However, the modern state as we understand it, being an organisation which claims to act as the manifestation of the collective will of the people it governs, was only just beginning to form when Luther was writing. England and France were much further along the road than anywhere in Germany. I suspect that Luther's theology of the relation between the church and secular powers may have been one of the sources for the modern conception of the state. Enlightenment theorists like Kant and Hegel were brought up as Lutherans. (Also, the Church of England is mostly Reformed or Catholic in its theology, but AIUI its relation to the secular nation is Lutheran.)
Some time ago we were wondering together about the Bible editions that Kierkegaard had relied on. I wrote to the librarians at the Hong Kierkegaard library at St. Olaf College and heard back from the brilliant Elizabeth. She directed me to the most recent edition of The Auction Catalogue of Kierkegaard's Library. I was able to find it in my Bookshare subscription!!! The man owned over 2000 books when he died. 80 of them were Bibles or anthologies of biblical texts. Greek, Hebrew, Danish, German, Latin. Some with Apocrypha.
No. Not at all. I am a librarian by profession and am a rather compulsive book buyer at home. I don't believe all the books I have ever owned, including the ones purged, have added to 2000. And now books are cheap in comparison to SK's lifetime.
Our books are catalogued and there are over 4,000. However, some of those are now in either our son or our daughter's homes. I think there will be more than 2000 in this house, though.
Sorry this kind of processing takes me so long. Hours over days.
Paragraph 26 Thoughts
This paragraph uses the newly developed concept of the demonic, the ultimate outsider, to demonstrate the challenge and importance of separation from the universal. It demonstrates that while some are by nature separate from society, others need to separate themselves for self-examination. Finally, there is an enormous cost for avoiding self-examination.
The demonic are the people who by nature or circumstance are unable to fit into the norms of society, unable to accomplish their ethical task as described at the beginning of Problema I:
his ethical task consists of always expressing himself in this, of annulling his individuality in order to become the universal. Whenever the individual wants to assert himself in his particularity vis-à-vis the universal, he sins, and only by acknowledging this can he once again reconcile himself with the universal.
A cryptid, a girl whose bridal chamber is inhabited by a groom-murdering demon, and deformed king, who should be the object of adoration rather than pity, are all beyond the pale and entirely unable to conform to the norms of the universal. Even when the Merman and Sarah try, they are unable to conform.
I have written some analysis of the details of the Merman’s options and the results. It’s too long to post here, but if one sticks very closely to the mechanics of de silentio’s system as he describes it in Problema I, it’s rather straight forward.
But what to make of this discussion of the demonic, the outsiders of society? As a C21 American, I can think of quite a few examples that fit the description of those unable to conform to the current, local social morality. How this fits with the movements described in F&T could lead to an interesting discussion.
More important in this paragraph is the social commentary. There is a strong connection made here between passion, work, living in the idea (I take this for living what one believes to be right; the term appears in one other place) and honest self-assessment. All of this is what can take place in the metaphorical monastery. In contrast to this view of how one ought to be, we have a sarcastic description of the careless, self-deceiving life – without passion for one thing or another – in which a person sees himself as having achieved the highest without having striven to achieve even the lowest possible goal.
The monastery here is a metaphor for the torturous exercise of serious self-reflection that leads to true self-understanding. Kierkegaard’s view, as demonstrated in signed works, is that this is only possible, when one separates oneself from society – which puts one at odds with society. Conversely, the cost of remaining always in company is high: “....whereas when one lives in society with others, one so easily forgets, so easily slips away from this, is supported in so many ways, is granted the opportunity to begin anew: I have thought that merely by itself, this thought, understood with proper respect, could serve to chasten many an individual in our times, times which believe they have already arrived at what is highest. But people concern themselves very little about this in our age, which has arrived at the highest—though in fact no age has been taken over by the comic as has precisely this one.“ The comedy, of course, is thinking of ourselves and our times in Hegelian dialectical terms of progress, when we are happy with diversion that prevents us from understanding ourselves.
“Should this actually be what the age needs, does the theater perhaps have need of a new piece in which someone’s dying for love is made ludicrous, or would it not rather be redemptive for the age if this happened among us: if the age became witness to an event of this sort, so that for once it could gain the courage to believe in power of the spirit, the courage to refrain from suffocating, in cowardly fashion, the better part of itself, the courage to refrain from enviously suffocating it in others—with laughter. Does the age really have need of a ludicrous Erscheinung [appearance] of a religious enthusiast…”
I read this as total exasperation. The language is religious: “dying for love” “redemptive” “believe in the power of the spirit” “Erscheinung” are all terms that relate to Jesus, his death and appearance (Erscheinung) to his disciples after his resurrection. Would it help to have a comedy written for the theater, in which all of the focus of faith is made laughable? Would people notice what they are laughing at? Would they even recognize it?
Laughter will come up again in the section about Voltaire, irony and the fan. Whether it’s Kierkegaard speaking here or de silentio, I read this section as a sharp condemnation of the shallowness of “the times,” which claims greatness for itself. While the main text will return to the concept of the demonic, this interjection, as many others, is particularly important but easy to overlook.
Thanks. That was well-researched and informative, as usual. I'll get back to in a bit. But first, the Tobit gender-reversal...
Okay. So if Sarah was a man, ie. if it was a groom having seven brides drop dead on their wedding nights in the bedchamber, he could just become some sort of Blue Beard and get his kicks from watching that happen?
I guess there might be legitimate social-psychological reasons for thinking that a more plausible response for a groom than for a bride in the times of Tobit. But what the heck that is supposed to prove about anything, I don't know. Just different ways of living outside the ethical, depending on whether you're male or female?
Anyway, I've been compiling a mental list of Kierkegaard's references to messed-up family and romantic situations. Tobit And Sarah was already on it, but the re-reading has just emphasized how deservedly so.
And, interestingly, in the one earlier passage of the book that(at least according to Lowrie) is a direct and obvious reference to Regina, Kierkegaard disguises her with masculine pronouns.
@stetson, I will look over the next sections later today with the gender-reversal in mind.
Your list of references to dysfunctional family situations sounds interesting. SK's own family situation seems to have scarred him severely, and those scars, particularly related to anxiety and his interest in psychology seem to be all throughout his works. From my small body of reading so far, it appears that he saw anxiety as normal and actually built it into his theology (I believe we see evidence of that throughout F&T); it's particularly apparent in SK's emphasis on self-examination and the insomnia that goes with it.
In F&T he seems also to employ the anxiety related to family dysfunction for its shock value in contrast to the cozy, safe, bourgeois lifestyle and thinking of his target audience: "You say you admire Abraham; you say faith is really important; you say you not only live by faith but have surpassed it. You don't even know what faith is: embracing the ultimate uncertainty as a done deal and living according to it, even though everyone else thinks you're a monster for doing that! Faith makes one a social outcast, seen as a one who is willing -- like a maniac -- to deceive and murder his own son because of "the voice of God; faith is the hardest thing of all."
I think the psychological restlessness, the anxiety, that formed SK's personality and is powerfully reflected in his work, is largely related to his own family scars. How could it not be? I'm sure there is a lot to explore there. Do you see other areas?
I am careful about employing this or that reading of any work, recognizing that while it can be done and done well, it may lead to readings that have no connection to the work as originally intended. I'm well-enough versed in PoMo and feminist criticism to understand why it is done what legitimates the practice. However, the best writers are honest about what they are doing and why. The worst reinforce the popular misunderstanding that Postmodernism claims that nothing has any meaning except what I claim it does.
I'm looking forward to discussion of Paragraph 26 as well as Sarah and Tobit.
I am reading but have nothing to add to these conversations because the paragraphs you are discussing are wooshing way over my head..
What questions do you have, even if it's "what do you think this means?" Or "what is he talking about?" I think questions are important in discussions. Both about the text under examination and the things people say about them.
Having someone to bounce questions off when I read F&T was what I really wished for the most, and it just wasn't available where and when.
I think you are in good company. I haven't read much 2ndary lit about F&T, but almost everything i am aware of focuses on the TSoE. My Essential Kierkegaard anthology only contains Problema I or the 3, and I don't think it includes the epilogue.
As you've seen, though, I think it can be important to question norms.
If you feel like working through the Problemata, I am willing to talk things over. I think it's essential to really forge through them, the meat of the book, if one is to evaluate the book or pull much from it.
After all the work of the reading, though, I don't feel like I can fit it all into a nutshell.
And I wonder if anyone else here has ever heard Country Death Song, by the Violent Femmes. The song is ALMOST a pure re-working of Fear And Trembling, right down to the violently dysfunctional family.
Unfortunately, it slips into a kantian cop-out towards the end. If you listen, you can try to find the exact point where that happens.
Missed the song. I just read the words. Actually, it reminded me more of Ballad of Reading Gaol by Oscar Wilde, a poem I'd forgotten about until a friend recently reminded me of it. The resounding theme:
Some love too little, some too long,
Some sell, and others buy;
Some do the deed with many tears,
And some without a sigh:
For each man kills the thing he loves,
Yet each man does not die.
Never got to Kant, so I kan't recognize the shift.
I think adding the weaning stories to the Dysfunctional Family list is an stretch. This is a normal process that must happen. Like many, many aspects of development and growing up, the process is initially rejected and resented by the child. But it is absolutely necessary for both of them.
The Merman and Agnete might fit, depending on your criteria. The Merman, as a cryptid, a minor sea monster of sorts, cannot have Agnete under the normal ethical standards of marriage, although marriage is highly praised in Either/Or (and as part of Family by Hegel) as a very admirable aspect of the ethical. In ¶26, we see:
for in this respect he is saved; he is saved insofar as he becomes disclosed. Then he marries Agnete. Nonetheless, he must have recourse to the paradox. For indeed, if through his guilt the single individual has come outside the universal, he can return to it only by virtue of having come, as the single individual, into an absolute relation to the absolute.
The Merman is in the tricky position of not being able to conform to the unversal, even though he wants to, because he is not a man. Unless somehow, by Agnete's power by virtue of the absurd, he can somehow conform, he remains outside. [I admit I am stretching a bit here, but I think I'm close to what SK intended through Jds.]
I still have to review the details of Faust a la Kierkegaard. However, in the play, Faust gets Gretchen pregnant and then discards her. She ends up in the nut house and kills herself eventually. J ds, however, gives him a conscience. Dangerous move.
I'm probably willing to concede to you on the weaning passages, but I'm gonna go and re-read that section in a bit. For now I'll say that while the process DOES entail an emotional distancing between child and mother, it is, as you say, in the service of a regular natural process. (As opposed to, say, killing your daughter as punishment for hunting a deer.)
As for my list, there's nothing in particular I wanna do with it. I just kinda wanted to record the evidence for romantic and family breakdown as an ongoing theme in Fear And Trembling.
As for Reading Gaol, I've always taken it more to be about how the murderer is executed for a crime that most people have commited in their hearts, rather than the murderer being an Abraham-like figure standing outside society and embracing the absurd(and from the view of a presumably misogynistic man in a patriarchal society, killing one's wife would likely NOT be absurd). IOW it's sorta the same point as Jesus saying "Don't think you're so great just because you haven't commited physical adultery, because doing it in your mind is no better."
Oh, and the point where Country Death Song reasserts standard social morality is...
"Gather round, boys, to the tale that I tell..." Because from that point on, it's made clear that the narrator now views his actions as unethical, and nothing else.
I was wondering to myself about the significance of the pseudonym "de Silencio". Could that imply that Kierkegaard is arguing something from silence, ie something unsaid?
As others have said, the structure of F&T is first to introduce the Abraham story and to explain about the TSoE and why this makes him different or possibly even unique. Then it feels like de Silencio wriggles around saying "Of course he wasn't like this person in this classical story" and even "if we mess about with the characters and story in this other one, he is still not like them.."
Maybe the overall bludgeoning effect of all these accumulating stories is the reverse; that Abraham really isn't so different to these other stories that we find wild/offensive/weird.
Maybe the voice from the silence is partly about familiarity - that we elevate and normalise this character from our own tradition whilst being repelled by these other characters from others. That Abraham is 'different' because we've given him a special trump card of following direct instruction of the deity. And these others are weird cultic murderers only because we don't believe it.
De silentio:
It's been a while since I thought about his name. I'm sure I will foret to include many things here, but here are some items I think are related:
-After Problema III (what is the title of III?) it seems even more meaningful.
-Think about the epigraph about the poppies and what that says about the entire book.
-in Tuning Up, how is silence talked about?
Abraham vs characters who killed their children:
J ds refers constantly to the differences between them. Think about all the characters he mentions from myth, drama, folk lit and the Bible in terms of "the system" de silentio describes when he describes the TSoE in I and expands the system in II.
I actually drew the system on graph paper using the descriptions from the Problemata. It was like turning on a light.
Start with a circle in the middle of the page, maybe 5cm in diameter. That is the universal. Really.
Once you have drawn it out, keep it handy as you read any description of movements and the characters' relationship to the universal.
Add to it as new information comes up in the text.
I started Fear and Trembling in 11/22, finished reading it in May. It was an intense read with much review and process writing as I wemt. And have been working with it ever since. Just short of a year. There is more to figure out, but I feel like I have put in enough work for a first pass.
But some of these other characters may also have been following a 'daimonion' of their own, calling them to do something diabolical (pun intended).
It can't be that Kierkegaard thinks that the only Christians can experience the voice of the deity calling them to an action way beyond the ordinary way-of-things universal. We know this from the way he talks about Socrates.
It may be that de Silencio think that he has special knowledge that sets Abraham apart from these other characters.
But unless de Silencio himself was a KoF, how would he know? Isn't this a fundamental ironic quandary at the heart of the book?
I'm sorry I can't parse your stream of conscience posts.
Anyway, I'll not be "reporting back" - at no point have I equated any of Kierkegaards pseudonyms with his own ideas, I have very deliberately been trying to understand what he is trying to do in F&T through de Silencio. Including in my most recent posts.
I absolutely do not mind being ignored, but I will not be talked down to.
I don't think Kierkegaard is using jds to try and imply a similarity between, on the one hand, Abraham, and on the other hand, Agamamnon, Jephthah, and Brutus. There is a pretty clear distinction between killing a loved because it will bring some benefit to your larger community, while logically recognizing that the person is gone forever, AND killing a loved one simply because God told you to, while believing, on the basis of no evidence beyond the belief itself, that that person will somehow be returned.
If Kierkegaard was trying to say that we shouldn't valorize violence in our own tradition while condemning it in others, then he would have picked an example of some hero in the Christian canon acting violently for the greater good, and compared it to someone in another tradition doing the same thing, eg...
You all think some African witch-doctor is a villain for killing people who don't follow his instructions, but how is that different from the author of Exodus saying "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live"?"
Now, this isn't the same thing as saying that Kierkegaard wants us all to go out and kill people to get ourselves closer to God. Again, I think Abraham is being used as an extreme example to indicate just how far Kierkegaard's system goes in divorcing the ethical from the religious. For a less outrageous example...
Many of us might think that if a potential convert is told by her militantly atheist husband that if she gets baptized, he will take their kids to live with his highly dysfunctional family, then the ethical thing to do is NOT get baptized, so that the kids are spared the trauma of a bad upbringing, AND that this accomadation would be approved of by God, 'cuz we all know God hates to see children suffer.
But Kierkegaard would disagree, and say that the ONLY way to get into communion with God is to convert, and if that means your children suffer as a result, then you have to make a choice between being a good parent and being a true Christian.
In terms of Kierkegaard's technical philosophy(Problem II, fourth paragraph)...
...love to God may cause the knight of faith to give his love to his neighbor the opposite expression to that which, ethically speaking, is required by duty.
Now, I assume that Kierkegaard would think that, having converted, the mother can then try and do whatever she can to alleviate the subsequent suffering of her children. It's just that she can't forego conversion in order to help her children, and still consider herself a true Christian.
I think adding the weaning stories to the Dysfunctional Family list is an stretch. This is a normal process that must happen. Like many, many aspects of development and growing up, the process is initially rejected and resented by the child. But it is absolutely necessary for both of them.
Having just re-read the Preface today, I can maybe be convinced to subsume the weaning codas into the counter-parables about Abraham, since the codas' focus on the alienating aspects of weaning is a function of having to symbolize their respective stories.
But they really are the icing on the danish. For example, the parable about Abraham protecting God's reputation by telling Isaac "I'm killing you because I want to!", followed by the blackening of the breast, is almost chilling.
Symbolic line-up...
Mother = God
Breast = Abraham
Child = Isaac
Just as the breast is blackened in order to deter the child from wanting it, so Abraham blackens his image in order to deter Isaac from absolving him.
Isaac's plea after being told that he is being murdered on his father's own volition as an idolatrous sacrifice...
"O God in heaven, have compassion upon me. God of Abraham, have compassion upon me. If I have no father upon earth, be Thou my father!"
Abrabam's subsequent praise to God...
O Lord in heaven, I thank Thee. After all it is better for him to believe that I am a monster, rather than that he should lose faith in Thee.
That is actually pretty operatic. I especially like the way Isaac calls God "God of Abraham", while also acknowleding that(as it appears to him) Abraham is a very evil person.
[In dry philosophical terms, Abraham is trying to preserve the idea that God is completely bound by the ethical.]
a resource for anyone who comes along to this thread:
I'm about done with "Kierkegaard and the New Nationalism" by Thomas Millay.
I was disappointed in Millay's attempt to use what he describes as Kierkegaard's asceticism to resist nationalism. I think much falls short in what is supposed to be the heart of the book.
HOWEVER
The first three chapters provide an outstanding overview of Kierkegaard's authorship, particularly the attack literature that is so neglected academically, the Denmark that he lived in and the philosopical/theological state of the Danish church at the time.
AND
It's an easy, straight-forward read, much to the relief of reader's of the primary sources.
It's an absurdly expensive book. Make use of Interlibrary Loan, if you don't have it nearby,
If, and I'm saying IF, I understand the summaries I've read of Millay(and I am well aware that he is high-up in the world of Kierkegaard, and I don't have Kierkegaard himself behind the curtain to come on for a mcluhanesque cameo)...
He seems to transfer Kierkegaard's Leap Of Faith onto the possibility for Europeans to rise against the evil nationalism bedeviling their continent. To repeat my ongoing analogy, it sounds like he's on the Mr. Keaton side of the Mr. Keaton vs. Jennifer debate, thinking that the Knight Of Faith's rebellion is somehow rooted in his opposition to prevailing social injustices.
Which, it'll probably come as no surprise to anyone, I disagree with. Kierkegaard's objections to society were not related to internal injustices inflicted upon the populace, but because the society, almost by its very nature AS a society, stands as a barrier to the single individual coming into full harmony with God.
That said, something else I've surmised from my brief skimmings is that he tends(in contrast to the standard existentialist analysis) to focus on Kierkegaard's attacks on the Danish church, which I'd imagine COULD provide some insight into Kierkegaard's attitude toward how that church interacted with other elements in society.
I think it was a few weeks back, I mentioned that Father Copleston seemed to find in Kierkegaard some slight antidote against nationalist-tinged Anglican establishmentarianism in England.
This is the only thing I've read by Millay; I am entirely unfamiliar with his other work or research focus. I don't think Millay does anything like "transfer Kierkegaard's Leap Of Faith onto the possibility for Europeans to rise against the evil nationalism bedeviling their continent. " Millay states clearly that he is an American focusing particularly on the matter of Christian nationalism as presents here, although he is well aware of religious nationalism growing around the globe. I don't believe there is any indication of the Keaton debate as you described it. Maybe something comes up in the last chapter.
The works of Kierkegaard discussed in Kierkegaard and the New Nationalism consist nearly entirely of the attack literature from the end of Kierkegaard's lifetime. Millay reviews them to to demonstrate the problem Kierkegaard saw with the theology as well as the position of the state church in Denmark. He also gives a good deal of information about Denmark at the time Kierkegaard was alive as well as the bourgeoisie to which Kierkegaard belonged. Millay discusses Kierkegaard's belief and practice in contrast to the bishops, Mynster and Martensen, but not using terms like "Knight of Faith." I found valuable Millay's discussion of how Kierkegaard's attack and Martensen's response played out in the press. In my opinion the first 3 chapters are the most informative and best supported.
In Chapter 5 Millay reviews the main points of Whitehead and Perry's book Taking American Back for God and uses it to demonstrate that religious forms of nationalism is on the rise worldwide. Additionally, he uses their work to demonstrate that Christian nationalism -- in the U.S. specifically -- has changed somewhat since Stephen Backhouse wrote his book, Kierkegaard's Critique of Christian Nationalism. Millay uses Richard Spencer to demonstrate that deconstructing arguments is no longer effective, as Backhouse had recommended in his book. Spencer laughs at the idea of logical arguments. "We all need a narrative."
At this point I think Millay's attempt to find in Kierkegaard an effective response to the new forms of nationalism falls apart. Earlier in the book he attempts to characterize SK as an ascetic, not merely in word but in lifestyle. This attempt is necessary, in order to support Millay's view that Kierkegaard resisted the state's provision of church as a service that saw to one's comfort in the afterlife as the state did in this life. Yeah; maybe; kind of. But SK was no ascetic as most would understand the word.
Millay attempts to demonstrate that a refusal like Kierkegaard's to accept what the state is offering is the most effective way to combat the new forms of Christian nationalism he identifies. I don't think he succeeds in showing that this is the case.
I have just started the last chapter and have been interrupted by much life over here. In it he reviews the liberation theology of Cone, attempting to show from the perspective of persons without power why or how asceticism practiced by those with power and means will help. We'll see if he convinces me.
The beginning of the book is really valuable for what it does well: Discuss the attack literature and the state of the state of Denmark at the time. His discussion of Whitehead and Perry's book is also valuable. I wish his editor had been a lot clearer about the weaknesses of his key arguments, though.
Still, I think the book is worth a read, even if I don't love all of it. It's also relatively short and an easy read.
I think your summary confirms my impression of Millay, in its broad contours, though he apparently wasn't specificay applying his argument to Europe, as I had originally mis-gleaned.
From the sounds of it, Millay might be guilty of overstating the parallels between the Christian nationalism of Kierkegaard's time and place, and that of 21st Cent. USA, as Christian nationalism in the USA does not exist in the form of an officially sanctioned state church(just for starters, it includes both protestants and Catholics, with the former including everyone from right-wing Methodists to Messianic Jews), which is inevitably going to change the way it manifests its power in society. (And this is NOT the same thing as saying that the American version is more benign.)
But nothing I've heard about Kierkegaard(see @Martin54's earlier enumeration of his reactionary positions) indicates to me that he was opposing the Danish state church for any reasons resembling those that motivate political progressives in opposing Christian nationalism right now.
Is Millay really saying that a movement like Richard Spencer's is promulgating its ideas in the same way that the Danish state-church promulgated its ideas in 19th Century Denmark? If so, that just falls apart right away, even simply as an institutional comparison.
Millay is focuses on the self-assertion of nations, which he demonstrates Denmark to have participated in as well. His overview of "The Golden Age of Denmark" was particularly vauable, demonstrating that Denmark achieved its Golden Age of wealth and comfort for a relatively small subset of it's population by all the normal means nations use. This background clarified for me that the entanglement of the church with the state involves the church directly in the self-assertive practices of the state. I expect that this point will become a effective lever in the last chapter, as Millay explores self-assertion of state/church powers among those without power. If not, it will be a missed opportunity.
Below are some quotes from Millay's preface, that I think explain what he is attempting to do in the book:
p. xi:
"I will argue that, in Kierkegaard's attack, we see a conjunction between Christianity and an ascetic political theology which fundamentally challenges the self-assertive core of nationalism."
"He argues forcefully and repeatedly that Christianity cannot be joined together with the self-assertive practices of the modern nation-state. Just as at the beginning of his authorship, he gives us an either/or: either we will be Christians, or we will live in a great nation -- we cannot have both."
p. xii
"The lie of Christendom, so far as Kierkegaard understood it, was to tell the itching ears of its audience that precisely the opposite was the case: that in fact you could have it all, that you could be happy in this life and the next. Such a lie thrives only when compliciy with the evil which rules this world is (consciously or unsciously) accepted, for it is the evil which makes earthly comforts available. Kierkegaard is here to remind us that the true Christian cannot accept such complicity; she lives in solidarity with the abased Christ."
and tying the background on Kierkegaard and Denmark to the contemporary situation, Millay says:
"In these writings, Kierkegaard takes direct aim a the political conjuncture of Christianity and self`assertion. Insofar as Christianity has beencoopted into the project of nationalism, Kierkegaard offers a counter-path of disjunctive resistance. To the current preoccupation with flourishing, Kierkegaard responds: 'No. hat we need to embrace is suffering. Askesis is the only path that will lead us toward faithfulness to the essence of Christianity.'"
I hope those help answer some of your questions.
While Kierkegaard was focused on salvation, I do think that the concern with the damage done by self-assertion is of primary importance. It involves more people who recognize the problem of Christian nationalism, many/most who are not Christians.
What I understood @Martin54 to be indicating is that the church/es at that time were the place where anything close to social justice was practiced. I don't remember Millay pointing it out directly so far ( hope he does in the chapter on Cone's liberation theology), but in the U.S. at least, we have a very bad history of churches being used to assert the goals of the state -- most notably with slavery.
Run out of time. I'll post this now, but want to come back to it muchlater today or tomorrow.
Time is still short, but I'll try to wrap up my biggest disappointment with the book. While I agree with Millay that Christians are not supposed to be focused on "having it all," and maybe we are called true asceticism, I don't think Millay shows that Christians practicing asceticism combats "Christian" nationalism in any way. Except for those practicing the asceticism. He doesn't demonstrate that the practice dismantles "Christian" nationalism at all.
There's still that last chapter to go. If it rescues his thesis, I'll let you know.
Is Millay defining asceticism to mean something in the vicinity of monasticism?
If so, then yes, I'd agree that asceticism is no surefire silver-bullet against the werewolf of Christian nationalism. The Reconstructionist Francis Schaeffer seems to have had little difficulty synthesizing austere calvinism and alpine retreats with his drive toward an American theocracy.
@stetson
In the chapter called "Asceticism in the Streets" Millay compares Kierkegaard's lifestyle to the practice of Devotio Moderna, the componants of which he discusses are: refusal of vows, cleibacy, poverty, renunciation, reading, eercises, self-examination, living an urban life, andundergoing persecution.
For more detail, I recommend you lay hands on a copy of the book through your local library system. For its content, it's outrageously expensive, even in ebook format.
ISBN (hardcover) 9781793640338 | (ebook) 9781793640345.
Comments
This is more-or-less how I've heard scholars frame Kierkegaard's connection to traditional lutheran ideas. He's basically trying to harangue the sola fide boys into having the courage of their convictions, and letting the princess(the individual) out of the tower(the church) once and for all.
If not, I'll work alone. But it could be a help to go through it with others.
Thanks.
Before we dig in much, I want to bring up some terms that show up here and throughout the book. They are no more important here than in the rest of the book but what we do with them will affect the way we read this paragraph and understand it. Early on, we are introduced to terms in relation to the mechanics of Jds's structural understanding of faith and society, and they are used in that same way throughout the book. I want to make sure I have these concepts of Jds's straight in my head, before attacking this:
To be clear, want to avoid, as much as possible, interpretation. As unpalatable as it is, I want this to be as close as possible to a bit of dictionary work, in order to have in my mind as I read, the way the vocabulary is used in the book, as if I'm reading a foreign language -- because I am.
What do you like about it? @Dafyd thank you again for explaining this. It was very helpful.
Actually, this part shocked me. I'm a Baptist (calvinistic leaning, Independent sort in the U.S.) and only know bits and pieces of these aspects of church history. Everything about "organised by those secular structures. The churches are departments of the State and are responsible to the State's ruler." seems wrong.
This really was Luther's and the Reformers' view?
That's going to take a while to sink in.
Wow. Thank you.
Re-reading it right now, and I'm kinda hating it, stylistically. The guy has no talent for paraphrasing fairy-tales, but he's writing a whole book loosely structured around the analysis of various fairy-tales.
I think what makes Tobit And Sarah interesting for me is simply that...
1. I can actually understand what's going on in the original story, what the characters' problems are etc.
And also that...
2. It fits in with a sorta psychoanalytical-feminist critique of the book that I doubt I'm the first to speculate about. Without wanting to go down the usual biographical path, narratives in the vicinity of thwarted intimacy, problematic births, and intra-family violence are a big part of the show in Fear And Trembling, and Tobit, which has a relatively clear presentation of its ur-text, might help me to understand what's going on plot-wise in the other stories, eg. the merman.
I'm about halfway through the demonic-bridal night, and still not seeing his overall point, though in the next paragraph coming up is that "Now let's imagine Sarah is a man" maneuver, which IIRC is where he gets into his real analysis. Seems like a rather clankerous way to make his shift, but whatevs.
So when Luther handed the government of the church over to the laity he was handing it over to laity with a different power structure from the laity to which Zwingli and Calvin handed over the church. The fundamental idea in both cases is that lay people govern the church. In Luther's case that means that the people who govern the lay people govern the church. In the Reformed tradition it's a bit more complicated since the underlying tradition is more republican and also each city and therefore each congregation was more independent.
Thanks for going over why you like the Tobit Stuff. I like your style there with a titlc and everything for your post.
I'm looking forward to reading about your take on the section.
@Dafyd, thanks again! Did Luther include in his theology of the church an understanding of, or assumption that, the state ran the churches? Of was this just "the way things are."
Exerything you have written on this reinforces SK's description of secular uses of Luther's theology of grace in "For Self-examination." I think I've quoted it above somewhere. About Luther shoving James aside and secular minds seeing an opportunity.
I've only read "On secular authority," amd the piece with advice on how Christians should behave during a deadly Plague.
Sorry. I'll check out paragraph 25 later today.
In the 1990s, I heard a second-hand report of a Catholic conference at which a theologian gave a counter-traditionalist explication of Mary and her role in salvation, something about how we shouldn't just think of her as a queen reigning in heaven, but as a humble girl giving herself over to God's will.
My reporter quoted to me a line from the lecture, about how Mary's story was, in some ways, "absurd", which cemented my already existing inkling that the theologian's analysis was inspired by Kierkegaard, with possibly direct input from the Mary passage in Problem I.
Just read Paragraph 25 of Problem III. Most of it seemed rather nebulous, but I think think the basic idea is that in an age when society has moved far away from the monastic spirit, there is no appreciation of the absurd.
[Ya see how Mr. Keaton on Family Ties was wrong, and it's very hard to tease even the slightest inspiration for social solidarity out of Kierkegaard. His anti-human affection parables are perfectly suited for symbolizing his views on the proper relation between the individual and society. Even the stories used to exemplify the Knight Of Infinite Resignation, who does, in fact, act on behalf of the common good, involve parents having to kill their own children.]
Granted, it sounded snappier in the original.
Can you imagine his house?!
How wonderful.
Paragraph 26 Thoughts
This paragraph uses the newly developed concept of the demonic, the ultimate outsider, to demonstrate the challenge and importance of separation from the universal. It demonstrates that while some are by nature separate from society, others need to separate themselves for self-examination. Finally, there is an enormous cost for avoiding self-examination.
The demonic are the people who by nature or circumstance are unable to fit into the norms of society, unable to accomplish their ethical task as described at the beginning of Problema I:
A cryptid, a girl whose bridal chamber is inhabited by a groom-murdering demon, and deformed king, who should be the object of adoration rather than pity, are all beyond the pale and entirely unable to conform to the norms of the universal. Even when the Merman and Sarah try, they are unable to conform.
I have written some analysis of the details of the Merman’s options and the results. It’s too long to post here, but if one sticks very closely to the mechanics of de silentio’s system as he describes it in Problema I, it’s rather straight forward.
But what to make of this discussion of the demonic, the outsiders of society? As a C21 American, I can think of quite a few examples that fit the description of those unable to conform to the current, local social morality. How this fits with the movements described in F&T could lead to an interesting discussion.
More important in this paragraph is the social commentary. There is a strong connection made here between passion, work, living in the idea (I take this for living what one believes to be right; the term appears in one other place) and honest self-assessment. All of this is what can take place in the metaphorical monastery. In contrast to this view of how one ought to be, we have a sarcastic description of the careless, self-deceiving life – without passion for one thing or another – in which a person sees himself as having achieved the highest without having striven to achieve even the lowest possible goal.
The monastery here is a metaphor for the torturous exercise of serious self-reflection that leads to true self-understanding. Kierkegaard’s view, as demonstrated in signed works, is that this is only possible, when one separates oneself from society – which puts one at odds with society. Conversely, the cost of remaining always in company is high: “....whereas when one lives in society with others, one so easily forgets, so easily slips away from this, is supported in so many ways, is granted the opportunity to begin anew: I have thought that merely by itself, this thought, understood with proper respect, could serve to chasten many an individual in our times, times which believe they have already arrived at what is highest. But people concern themselves very little about this in our age, which has arrived at the highest—though in fact no age has been taken over by the comic as has precisely this one.“ The comedy, of course, is thinking of ourselves and our times in Hegelian dialectical terms of progress, when we are happy with diversion that prevents us from understanding ourselves.
I read this as total exasperation. The language is religious: “dying for love” “redemptive” “believe in the power of the spirit” “Erscheinung” are all terms that relate to Jesus, his death and appearance (Erscheinung) to his disciples after his resurrection. Would it help to have a comedy written for the theater, in which all of the focus of faith is made laughable? Would people notice what they are laughing at? Would they even recognize it?
Laughter will come up again in the section about Voltaire, irony and the fan. Whether it’s Kierkegaard speaking here or de silentio, I read this section as a sharp condemnation of the shallowness of “the times,” which claims greatness for itself. While the main text will return to the concept of the demonic, this interjection, as many others, is particularly important but easy to overlook.
Thanks. That was well-researched and informative, as usual. I'll get back to in a bit. But first, the Tobit gender-reversal...
Okay. So if Sarah was a man, ie. if it was a groom having seven brides drop dead on their wedding nights in the bedchamber, he could just become some sort of Blue Beard and get his kicks from watching that happen?
I guess there might be legitimate social-psychological reasons for thinking that a more plausible response for a groom than for a bride in the times of Tobit. But what the heck that is supposed to prove about anything, I don't know. Just different ways of living outside the ethical, depending on whether you're male or female?
Anyway, I've been compiling a mental list of Kierkegaard's references to messed-up family and romantic situations. Tobit And Sarah was already on it, but the re-reading has just emphasized how deservedly so.
And, interestingly, in the one earlier passage of the book that(at least according to Lowrie) is a direct and obvious reference to Regina, Kierkegaard disguises her with masculine pronouns.
Your list of references to dysfunctional family situations sounds interesting. SK's own family situation seems to have scarred him severely, and those scars, particularly related to anxiety and his interest in psychology seem to be all throughout his works. From my small body of reading so far, it appears that he saw anxiety as normal and actually built it into his theology (I believe we see evidence of that throughout F&T); it's particularly apparent in SK's emphasis on self-examination and the insomnia that goes with it.
In F&T he seems also to employ the anxiety related to family dysfunction for its shock value in contrast to the cozy, safe, bourgeois lifestyle and thinking of his target audience: "You say you admire Abraham; you say faith is really important; you say you not only live by faith but have surpassed it. You don't even know what faith is: embracing the ultimate uncertainty as a done deal and living according to it, even though everyone else thinks you're a monster for doing that! Faith makes one a social outcast, seen as a one who is willing -- like a maniac -- to deceive and murder his own son because of "the voice of God; faith is the hardest thing of all."
I think the psychological restlessness, the anxiety, that formed SK's personality and is powerfully reflected in his work, is largely related to his own family scars. How could it not be? I'm sure there is a lot to explore there. Do you see other areas?
I am careful about employing this or that reading of any work, recognizing that while it can be done and done well, it may lead to readings that have no connection to the work as originally intended. I'm well-enough versed in PoMo and feminist criticism to understand why it is done what legitimates the practice. However, the best writers are honest about what they are doing and why. The worst reinforce the popular misunderstanding that Postmodernism claims that nothing has any meaning except what I claim it does.
I'm looking forward to discussion of Paragraph 26 as well as Sarah and Tobit.
What questions do you have, even if it's "what do you think this means?" Or "what is he talking about?" I think questions are important in discussions. Both about the text under examination and the things people say about them.
Having someone to bounce questions off when I read F&T was what I really wished for the most, and it just wasn't available where and when.
It feels like the Problema are repetitions of each other, getting more and more obscure and requiring more and more prior knowledge to understand.
I've always skipped over this section because I just don't get it!
As you've seen, though, I think it can be important to question norms.
If you feel like working through the Problemata, I am willing to talk things over. I think it's essential to really forge through them, the meat of the book, if one is to evaluate the book or pull much from it.
After all the work of the reading, though, I don't feel like I can fit it all into a nutshell.
The list so far(in what I hope is roughly the book's chronological order...
- The Binding of Isaac as the overarching topic
- The series of weaning metaphors(ie. child being pulled away from the mother)
- Defense of the literalist interpretation of "Hate your parents"
- The Virgin Mary experiencing dread and paradox as a result of her pregnancy
- Agamemnon sacrificing his daughter(*)
- Jephthah sacrificing his daughter(*)
- Brutus executing his sons(*)
- The Merman(I'm assuming, don't really understand it)
- The demon killing seven men before they can consumate their marriage to Sarah
- Kierkegaard comparing himself(albeit whimsically) to the theologian who defended eternal damnation for dead newborns
- Whatever was going on with Faust and Marguerite
(*) Granted, these filicidal stories were probably chosen for their comparative parallels with the planned filicide in Abraham and Isaac.
Unfortunately, it slips into a kantian cop-out towards the end. If you listen, you can try to find the exact point where that happens.
I think adding the weaning stories to the Dysfunctional Family list is an stretch. This is a normal process that must happen. Like many, many aspects of development and growing up, the process is initially rejected and resented by the child. But it is absolutely necessary for both of them.
The Merman and Agnete might fit, depending on your criteria. The Merman, as a cryptid, a minor sea monster of sorts, cannot have Agnete under the normal ethical standards of marriage, although marriage is highly praised in Either/Or (and as part of Family by Hegel) as a very admirable aspect of the ethical. In ¶26, we see: The Merman is in the tricky position of not being able to conform to the unversal, even though he wants to, because he is not a man. Unless somehow, by Agnete's power by virtue of the absurd, he can somehow conform, he remains outside. [I admit I am stretching a bit here, but I think I'm close to what SK intended through Jds.]
I still have to review the details of Faust a la Kierkegaard. However, in the play, Faust gets Gretchen pregnant and then discards her. She ends up in the nut house and kills herself eventually. J ds, however, gives him a conscience. Dangerous move.
So what do you want to do with your list?
I'm probably willing to concede to you on the weaning passages, but I'm gonna go and re-read that section in a bit. For now I'll say that while the process DOES entail an emotional distancing between child and mother, it is, as you say, in the service of a regular natural process. (As opposed to, say, killing your daughter as punishment for hunting a deer.)
As for my list, there's nothing in particular I wanna do with it. I just kinda wanted to record the evidence for romantic and family breakdown as an ongoing theme in Fear And Trembling.
As for Reading Gaol, I've always taken it more to be about how the murderer is executed for a crime that most people have commited in their hearts, rather than the murderer being an Abraham-like figure standing outside society and embracing the absurd(and from the view of a presumably misogynistic man in a patriarchal society, killing one's wife would likely NOT be absurd). IOW it's sorta the same point as Jesus saying "Don't think you're so great just because you haven't commited physical adultery, because doing it in your mind is no better."
Oh, and the point where Country Death Song reasserts standard social morality is...
As others have said, the structure of F&T is first to introduce the Abraham story and to explain about the TSoE and why this makes him different or possibly even unique. Then it feels like de Silencio wriggles around saying "Of course he wasn't like this person in this classical story" and even "if we mess about with the characters and story in this other one, he is still not like them.."
Maybe the overall bludgeoning effect of all these accumulating stories is the reverse; that Abraham really isn't so different to these other stories that we find wild/offensive/weird.
Maybe the voice from the silence is partly about familiarity - that we elevate and normalise this character from our own tradition whilst being repelled by these other characters from others. That Abraham is 'different' because we've given him a special trump card of following direct instruction of the deity. And these others are weird cultic murderers only because we don't believe it.
It's been a while since I thought about his name. I'm sure I will foret to include many things here, but here are some items I think are related:
-After Problema III (what is the title of III?) it seems even more meaningful.
-Think about the epigraph about the poppies and what that says about the entire book.
-in Tuning Up, how is silence talked about?
Abraham vs characters who killed their children:
J ds refers constantly to the differences between them. Think about all the characters he mentions from myth, drama, folk lit and the Bible in terms of "the system" de silentio describes when he describes the TSoE in I and expands the system in II.
I actually drew the system on graph paper using the descriptions from the Problemata. It was like turning on a light.
Start with a circle in the middle of the page, maybe 5cm in diameter. That is the universal. Really.
Once you have drawn it out, keep it handy as you read any description of movements and the characters' relationship to the universal.
Add to it as new information comes up in the text.
I started Fear and Trembling in 11/22, finished reading it in May. It was an intense read with much review and process writing as I wemt. And have been working with it ever since. Just short of a year. There is more to figure out, but I feel like I have put in enough work for a first pass.
It can't be that Kierkegaard thinks that the only Christians can experience the voice of the deity calling them to an action way beyond the ordinary way-of-things universal. We know this from the way he talks about Socrates.
It may be that de Silencio think that he has special knowledge that sets Abraham apart from these other characters.
But unless de Silencio himself was a KoF, how would he know? Isn't this a fundamental ironic quandary at the heart of the book?
De silentio is not equivalent to Kierkegaard. He is a mask. To attempt to equate them is an error on the part of the reader.
Can you provide examples from the book to support your assertion?
Good question. Follow it. Report back with support.
I'm swamped today in other areas of life. Can't spend more time on this today. And really have spent more than enough already.
If you have text-specific questions, I'll try to help. But really, I am interested in progressing in my own reading.
Two very good resources I recommend are the OUP VSP on Kierkegaard by Patrick Gardiner, and the Routledge Guide to Fear and Trembling by John Lippett.
Library board and SBPH paperwork await. Oh joy!
Anyway, I'll not be "reporting back" - at no point have I equated any of Kierkegaards pseudonyms with his own ideas, I have very deliberately been trying to understand what he is trying to do in F&T through de Silencio. Including in my most recent posts.
I absolutely do not mind being ignored, but I will not be talked down to.
If Kierkegaard was trying to say that we shouldn't valorize violence in our own tradition while condemning it in others, then he would have picked an example of some hero in the Christian canon acting violently for the greater good, and compared it to someone in another tradition doing the same thing, eg...
Now, this isn't the same thing as saying that Kierkegaard wants us all to go out and kill people to get ourselves closer to God. Again, I think Abraham is being used as an extreme example to indicate just how far Kierkegaard's system goes in divorcing the ethical from the religious. For a less outrageous example...
Many of us might think that if a potential convert is told by her militantly atheist husband that if she gets baptized, he will take their kids to live with his highly dysfunctional family, then the ethical thing to do is NOT get baptized, so that the kids are spared the trauma of a bad upbringing, AND that this accomadation would be approved of by God, 'cuz we all know God hates to see children suffer.
But Kierkegaard would disagree, and say that the ONLY way to get into communion with God is to convert, and if that means your children suffer as a result, then you have to make a choice between being a good parent and being a true Christian.
In terms of Kierkegaard's technical philosophy(Problem II, fourth paragraph)...
Now, I assume that Kierkegaard would think that, having converted, the mother can then try and do whatever she can to alleviate the subsequent suffering of her children. It's just that she can't forego conversion in order to help her children, and still consider herself a true Christian.
Having just re-read the Preface today, I can maybe be convinced to subsume the weaning codas into the counter-parables about Abraham, since the codas' focus on the alienating aspects of weaning is a function of having to symbolize their respective stories.
But they really are the icing on the danish. For example, the parable about Abraham protecting God's reputation by telling Isaac "I'm killing you because I want to!", followed by the blackening of the breast, is almost chilling.
Symbolic line-up...
Breast = Abraham
Child = Isaac
Just as the breast is blackened in order to deter the child from wanting it, so Abraham blackens his image in order to deter Isaac from absolving him.
Abrabam's subsequent praise to God...
That is actually pretty operatic. I especially like the way Isaac calls God "God of Abraham", while also acknowleding that(as it appears to him) Abraham is a very evil person.
[In dry philosophical terms, Abraham is trying to preserve the idea that God is completely bound by the ethical.]
I'm about done with "Kierkegaard and the New Nationalism" by Thomas Millay.
I was disappointed in Millay's attempt to use what he describes as Kierkegaard's asceticism to resist nationalism. I think much falls short in what is supposed to be the heart of the book.
HOWEVER
The first three chapters provide an outstanding overview of Kierkegaard's authorship, particularly the attack literature that is so neglected academically, the Denmark that he lived in and the philosopical/theological state of the Danish church at the time.
AND
It's an easy, straight-forward read, much to the relief of reader's of the primary sources.
It's an absurdly expensive book. Make use of Interlibrary Loan, if you don't have it nearby,
He seems to transfer Kierkegaard's Leap Of Faith onto the possibility for Europeans to rise against the evil nationalism bedeviling their continent. To repeat my ongoing analogy, it sounds like he's on the Mr. Keaton side of the Mr. Keaton vs. Jennifer debate, thinking that the Knight Of Faith's rebellion is somehow rooted in his opposition to prevailing social injustices.
Which, it'll probably come as no surprise to anyone, I disagree with. Kierkegaard's objections to society were not related to internal injustices inflicted upon the populace, but because the society, almost by its very nature AS a society, stands as a barrier to the single individual coming into full harmony with God.
That said, something else I've surmised from my brief skimmings is that he tends(in contrast to the standard existentialist analysis) to focus on Kierkegaard's attacks on the Danish church, which I'd imagine COULD provide some insight into Kierkegaard's attitude toward how that church interacted with other elements in society.
I think it was a few weeks back, I mentioned that Father Copleston seemed to find in Kierkegaard some slight antidote against nationalist-tinged Anglican establishmentarianism in England.
The works of Kierkegaard discussed in Kierkegaard and the New Nationalism consist nearly entirely of the attack literature from the end of Kierkegaard's lifetime. Millay reviews them to to demonstrate the problem Kierkegaard saw with the theology as well as the position of the state church in Denmark. He also gives a good deal of information about Denmark at the time Kierkegaard was alive as well as the bourgeoisie to which Kierkegaard belonged. Millay discusses Kierkegaard's belief and practice in contrast to the bishops, Mynster and Martensen, but not using terms like "Knight of Faith." I found valuable Millay's discussion of how Kierkegaard's attack and Martensen's response played out in the press. In my opinion the first 3 chapters are the most informative and best supported.
In Chapter 5 Millay reviews the main points of Whitehead and Perry's book Taking American Back for God and uses it to demonstrate that religious forms of nationalism is on the rise worldwide. Additionally, he uses their work to demonstrate that Christian nationalism -- in the U.S. specifically -- has changed somewhat since Stephen Backhouse wrote his book, Kierkegaard's Critique of Christian Nationalism. Millay uses Richard Spencer to demonstrate that deconstructing arguments is no longer effective, as Backhouse had recommended in his book. Spencer laughs at the idea of logical arguments. "We all need a narrative."
At this point I think Millay's attempt to find in Kierkegaard an effective response to the new forms of nationalism falls apart. Earlier in the book he attempts to characterize SK as an ascetic, not merely in word but in lifestyle. This attempt is necessary, in order to support Millay's view that Kierkegaard resisted the state's provision of church as a service that saw to one's comfort in the afterlife as the state did in this life. Yeah; maybe; kind of. But SK was no ascetic as most would understand the word.
Millay attempts to demonstrate that a refusal like Kierkegaard's to accept what the state is offering is the most effective way to combat the new forms of Christian nationalism he identifies. I don't think he succeeds in showing that this is the case.
I have just started the last chapter and have been interrupted by much life over here. In it he reviews the liberation theology of Cone, attempting to show from the perspective of persons without power why or how asceticism practiced by those with power and means will help. We'll see if he convinces me.
The beginning of the book is really valuable for what it does well: Discuss the attack literature and the state of the state of Denmark at the time. His discussion of Whitehead and Perry's book is also valuable. I wish his editor had been a lot clearer about the weaknesses of his key arguments, though.
Still, I think the book is worth a read, even if I don't love all of it. It's also relatively short and an easy read.
I think your summary confirms my impression of Millay, in its broad contours, though he apparently wasn't specificay applying his argument to Europe, as I had originally mis-gleaned.
From the sounds of it, Millay might be guilty of overstating the parallels between the Christian nationalism of Kierkegaard's time and place, and that of 21st Cent. USA, as Christian nationalism in the USA does not exist in the form of an officially sanctioned state church(just for starters, it includes both protestants and Catholics, with the former including everyone from right-wing Methodists to Messianic Jews), which is inevitably going to change the way it manifests its power in society. (And this is NOT the same thing as saying that the American version is more benign.)
But nothing I've heard about Kierkegaard(see @Martin54's earlier enumeration of his reactionary positions) indicates to me that he was opposing the Danish state church for any reasons resembling those that motivate political progressives in opposing Christian nationalism right now.
Is Millay really saying that a movement like Richard Spencer's is promulgating its ideas in the same way that the Danish state-church promulgated its ideas in 19th Century Denmark? If so, that just falls apart right away, even simply as an institutional comparison.
Millay is focuses on the self-assertion of nations, which he demonstrates Denmark to have participated in as well. His overview of "The Golden Age of Denmark" was particularly vauable, demonstrating that Denmark achieved its Golden Age of wealth and comfort for a relatively small subset of it's population by all the normal means nations use. This background clarified for me that the entanglement of the church with the state involves the church directly in the self-assertive practices of the state. I expect that this point will become a effective lever in the last chapter, as Millay explores self-assertion of state/church powers among those without power. If not, it will be a missed opportunity.
Below are some quotes from Millay's preface, that I think explain what he is attempting to do in the book:
p. xi:
"I will argue that, in Kierkegaard's attack, we see a conjunction between Christianity and an ascetic political theology which fundamentally challenges the self-assertive core of nationalism."
"He argues forcefully and repeatedly that Christianity cannot be joined together with the self-assertive practices of the modern nation-state. Just as at the beginning of his authorship, he gives us an either/or: either we will be Christians, or we will live in a great nation -- we cannot have both."
p. xii
"The lie of Christendom, so far as Kierkegaard understood it, was to tell the itching ears of its audience that precisely the opposite was the case: that in fact you could have it all, that you could be happy in this life and the next. Such a lie thrives only when compliciy with the evil which rules this world is (consciously or unsciously) accepted, for it is the evil which makes earthly comforts available. Kierkegaard is here to remind us that the true Christian cannot accept such complicity; she lives in solidarity with the abased Christ."
and tying the background on Kierkegaard and Denmark to the contemporary situation, Millay says:
"In these writings, Kierkegaard takes direct aim a the political conjuncture of Christianity and self`assertion. Insofar as Christianity has beencoopted into the project of nationalism, Kierkegaard offers a counter-path of disjunctive resistance. To the current preoccupation with flourishing, Kierkegaard responds: 'No. hat we need to embrace is suffering. Askesis is the only path that will lead us toward faithfulness to the essence of Christianity.'"
I hope those help answer some of your questions.
While Kierkegaard was focused on salvation, I do think that the concern with the damage done by self-assertion is of primary importance. It involves more people who recognize the problem of Christian nationalism, many/most who are not Christians.
What I understood @Martin54 to be indicating is that the church/es at that time were the place where anything close to social justice was practiced. I don't remember Millay pointing it out directly so far ( hope he does in the chapter on Cone's liberation theology), but in the U.S. at least, we have a very bad history of churches being used to assert the goals of the state -- most notably with slavery.
Run out of time. I'll post this now, but want to come back to it muchlater today or tomorrow.
There's still that last chapter to go. If it rescues his thesis, I'll let you know.
Is Millay defining asceticism to mean something in the vicinity of monasticism?
If so, then yes, I'd agree that asceticism is no surefire silver-bullet against the werewolf of Christian nationalism. The Reconstructionist Francis Schaeffer seems to have had little difficulty synthesizing austere calvinism and alpine retreats with his drive toward an American theocracy.
In the chapter called "Asceticism in the Streets" Millay compares Kierkegaard's lifestyle to the practice of Devotio Moderna, the componants of which he discusses are: refusal of vows, cleibacy, poverty, renunciation, reading, eercises, self-examination, living an urban life, andundergoing persecution.
For more detail, I recommend you lay hands on a copy of the book through your local library system. For its content, it's outrageously expensive, even in ebook format.
ISBN (hardcover) 9781793640338 | (ebook) 9781793640345.