Kierkegaard on Immortality

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[Tom T.]

>>What is troubling about S. K. is that he cannot convey many of his insights without dressing them up in irrationalist garb that makes them strictly false.<<

While it may very well be true that SK "was altogether too artful in his production" (see 2nd comment to come), I think that charging SK with using "irrationalist garb" that is "strictly false" is a bit too strong.

For instance, you ask in response to the SK quote about a proof of immortality, "Does my interest in my personal immortality constitute the proof of my personal immortality? Of course not. So why does SK maintain something so plainly preposterous?" It takes a bit of further reading, but SK is clearly alluding to Kant's moral proof of the existence of God and immortality, a proof that SK in the very next chapter heartily endorses in existential terms much stronger than Kant's more rationalist argument: "In this manner God certainly becomes a postulate, but not in the otiose manner in which this word is commonly understood. It becomes clear rather that the only way in which an existing individual comes into a relation with God, is when the dialectical contradiction brings his passion to the point of despair, and helps him to embrace God with the "category of despair" (faith). Then the postulate is so far from being arbitrary that it is precisely a life-necessity. It is then not so much that God is a postulate, as that the existing individual's postulation of God is a necessity." Swenson, note at the bottom of page 179.

And what could be more pertinent to a concern about immortality than the real, objective existence of God? It may not be a compelling argument for everyone, but it is certainly not an irrational argument.

I think I can produce a similar reasonable argument in the Postscript for each of your concerns, all within a chapter or so of your quote. But I think you know that; your main concern is expressed in the last couple of paragraphs of the article: why does SK insist on structuring the Postscript the way he does, conveying many of his insights in such a puzzling manner, seemingly dressed up in preposterous "irrationalist garb?" I am working on that and will post soon.

[Tom T.]

As promised, my answer to the question: why does SK insist on structuring the Postscript the way he does, conveying many of his insights in such a puzzling manner, seemingly dressed up in preposterous "irrationalist garb?"

I think it's because he did not want to provoke the very problem he was trying to correct. If he did write a Postscript in which all his philosophical commitments were laid out in an easy-to-follow linear argument, then he would be leading his readers into an objective way of thinking that he found to be a principal problem in his time. Not to mention, he considered such direct communication of his meaning to be banal.

Instead, what he tried to do was produce a text that would invoke in his readers a subjective state of intensive conscious concern about the meaning of the text - a sort of literary analog to the crisis situation in real life that provokes the intensive conscious concern (despair) that drives a person towards God. SK considered such a subjective state to be a core state of the actuality of an existing individual and the principle state of subjectivity in which the truths of God, the God-man, and Christianity could be received and acted on. So he wrote into his text a series of puzzle pieces of his argument that any reader would have to work hard to put together for themselves - if they wanted to.

I think he also insisted on an eccentric structure for his works because of a Socratic respect for the innate freedom and dignity of his readers. He did not want them to willy-nilly adopt an essentially religious commitment based on a dazzling metaphysical structure a la Hegel, or on any other reason except their own authentic personal subjective determination. So he intentionally wrote to defeat readerly expectations of quick and easy answers to deep questions of God, immortality, and freedom.

In the introduction to "Authorship and Authority in Kierkegaard's Writings" (2018 Bloomsbury Academic), the editor Joseph Westfall advances a thesis by James Conant much stronger than yours, that the Postscript was actually intended to show that all discussion about faith, morality, etc., was nonsense, including the Postscript itself. This guy wrote a pretty good response https://mercurialpundit.blogspot.com/2018/12/something-about-kierkegaard.html, but he did allow that SK might have been "altogether too artful in his production." I think that's a possibility. There are many whom I respect who aren't fans of SK. C. S. Lewis comes to mind; he said he could never get into Kierkegaard.

On the other hand, SK's works have been described by some as transformative, Harold Bloom, the Shakespeare scholar, pronounced Kierkegaard "permanently original," and people like Walter Lowrie were truly smitten by SK's works. Cornelio Fabro was obviously a big fan as well. So, it is also possible that his curious, puzzling writing style actually works - at least for some. And I think that's all SK expected in a readership, that there would be just a few "who with the right hand accepts what is offered with the right hand." Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses, Hong Preface, page 179.

[Tom T.]

The link I placed in the 2nd to last paragraph contained an erroneous comma at the end. Here is a proper link:

https://mercurialpundit.blogspot.com/2018/12/something-about-kierkegaard.html