Kierkegaard did have a candidate for the marriage plan; namely the girl Regine Olsen whom he met in 1837 when she was only 14 years old. After finishing his studies, he felt economically strong enough to propose, and the couple entered a formal state of engagement. They exchanged numerous letters, but the relationship did not seem to progress. Eventually, however, Kierkegaard had second thoughts and broke off the engagement. Somewhat unexpectedly, Regine tried to oppose the break, but to no avail. Kierkegaard could not fit her into the plan of his life. Still, when she got engaged and married somewhat later, he was disappointed at the outcome. Somehow he had seen the story as a love of a lifetime, and he expected her to live on the memories as he was to do.

  An interesting parallel to Kierkegaard's love affair is presented by the later exponent of existentialist attitudes, the author Franz Kafka (1883–1924). In spite of two engagements, he never could decide to marry. His contemplation about the difficulties is found in his diary of 1913:

  I have to be alone a lot. Whatever I have accomplished is only a result of being alone.….

  I was often a completely different person in front of my sisters—this was especially the case earlier—than in front of other people. Fearless, exposed, powerful, surprising, moved as otherwise only through writing. If only I could be so above all through my wife! But would this not then deprive me of writing? Of all things not that, not that!

  Here we again echo the truly existentialist author's fear of becoming dependent. Only the lonely is free to follow his destiny.

  Literary career

  When Kierkegaard finally devoted himself entirely to writing, his output became prolific. In a few years he published what was to establish him as a leading author of the time and a classic of the future. The final form of his output owed a great deal to his mental development relating to Regine, but the rapid writing indicates that much of the material was well prepared during a long time.

  The main works of this period: Either‐Or (1843), Repetition (1843), Fear and Trembling (1843), (1844), The Concept of Anxiety (1844), Stages on Life's (p.38) Way (1845) established a reputation. Familiar both with the Hegelian style of argumentation and the dialectic method of Socrates, Kierkegaard chose a presentation where contrasting points of view alternated and broke against each other. In order to achieve this, he introduced various pseudonyms into the discourse, where he could adopt different attitudes and concomitantly present contradictory aspects of a variety of issues. In this way Kierkegaard was able to avoid the fate of the Danish Licentiate to let the various “I's” prevent each other from acting. Allowing the inner split of his mind, Kierkegaard could let them all present their views. To discern what was the “real Kierkegaard” in all this is difficult; in the end it may have been his intention to make it impossible.

  The magnitude of the work is immense, and both the linguistic and the philosophical presentations are hard to penetrate. It is, consequently, remarkable that the works became popular and their author a celebrity. This, perhaps, says more about the intellectual atmosphere of Copenhagen at the beginning of the nineteenth century than it says about Kierkegaard; in a less educated milieu, he may not have been noticed at all.

  Either‐Or took up the two issues dominating Kierkegaard's mind: the ironic detachment from reality and the necessity to live up to the ethical requirements of human existence. The former echoes the topics of his thesis, the latter his anguish about the relation to marriage. Together the two parts may be seen as a Hegelian thesis–antithesis tension. The synthesis was still lacking.

  Kierkegaard's next two big books take up the moral duty of a human again. As a starting point he chooses Abraham, who is challenged by God to sacrifice his son. This absolute imperative Kierkegaard takes as the starting point in arguing that the human has to posit himself on the multifarious issues confronting him in life. He was still much dominated by his Christian upbringing, but he was not yet ready to shoulder the uncompromising obedience imposed by God on Abraham. In his argument for radical decisions, he appears to justify his action in the affair with Regine. He expected the public to react with dismay, but to his surprise the works became a success.

  However, the quest for more of a synthesis goes on. Kierkegaard's concept of “Anxiety” was developed from a long tradition. The German Romantic movement had been dominated by a feeling of “Weldschmertz”, which could also be translated as “melancholy”, which is less drastic than the earlier translation “dread”. Modern psychologizing parlance has made it hard to grasp the exact feeling conveyed by Kierkegaard. The popular word “alienation” captures one aspect of the feeling.

  In 1844 Kierkegaard published two works. These have a more academic tone than the previous texts. However, in the spirit of all his presentations, the arguments are dialectic containing contradictory and obscure statements. The general movement of the discourse is to strive towards a synthesis directing the choices implied in the human life.

  In the work The Concept of Anxiety, Kierkegaard considers the dual parts of human life, body and mind; these can only coexist by the existence of the spirit. (p.39) But he finds that no rational argument, neither Socrates' dialectics nor Hegel's “logic”, can lead man to a rational decision about his being. The choice is free, and Kierkegaard experiences anxiety when confronted with the choice: Anxiety can be compared with dizziness. The person whose eyes happen to look down into the abyss becomes dizzy. Here we are reminded of the Danish Licentiate and his fatal state.

  Kierkegaard is immersed in a state where the strong experience of sin pervades his thinking. Faced with the insight that no science, including psychology, can direct man's choice of fate, Kierkegaard concludes: “Then everything is changed, and when freedom gets up again it sees that it is guilty. Between these instants lies the leap, which no science has explained or can explain.” The individual faced with his situation in the world has to make his own decision about what to do with life. If there is a God to be reckoned with, he does not prove himself, but his presence is manifest to influence the choices. No wonder the existentialists of the twentieth century were to emerge from Kierkegaard's position.

  Much of the work The Concept of Anxiety is written in the manner of Hegel. There may be an irony in this, because the superficially logical development of the ideas end up in a surrendering conclusion that no answer can be found along this path. Here an analogy with Wittgenstein's Tractatus suggests itself; the ladder of arguments leads just that far, then it has to be abandoned for what it cannot encompass.

  In the book Stages on Life's Way Kierkegaard suggests a synthesis of his considerations. A road emerges, which directs the individual from a theoretical to a spiritual attitude. The starting point is an esthetical attitude. In spite of Kierkegaard's interests in science as a young man, his mature activity did not touch upon the arguments of “exact science”. The personal situation in life directs the individual to make moral choices. This leads him to an ethical position, where personal responsibility emerges. However, there is no finality in this, and the ultimate position is termed a religious one. Progress on this road cannot be directed logically; somewhere a leap of faith or a decisive decision has to be taken.

  A “grand” conclusion?

  It seemed that by 1845 Kierkegaard had reached some kind of completing attitude. He still had much to say; in the work Concluding Unscientific Postscript (1846) he added six hundred pages of further discourse [28].

  The status of Christianity was still the central issue. After having settled with the rational road to religion, Kierkegaard now took up the historical roots of Christian faith. The accidental truth of history can never serve as the proof of a truth of reason. Here Kierkegaard chooses Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1729– 81) as his spokesman. This may well be a pose adopted by Kierkegaard. Lessing was a Romantic and mainly known as an author. To select him as a vehicle, Kierkegaard could remain outside the circles of academic philosophy and choose (p.40) a point of view opposite to the strictly academic Hegelian one. Lessing also may have appealed to Kierkegaard's attraction to the ironic.

  From Lessing derives the concept of a “leap”. When rational arguments fail, a discontinuous transition to a new attitude becomes necessary; when an eternal truth is stamped on a historical fact, this can only be performed through a leap. The transition is a discrete one, you either decide to make it or not; one cannot be in the process of making it. The choice when one becomes a personality is to become totally subjective.

  The work analyses the concept of “truth”, which takes on a strongly personal flavor. To be true is to be true to one's personality. The argument is that no reality has been attributed to a phenomenon before it has been transformed into a thought. But, because truth is also a thought, it cannot be arrived at by contemplating the external world only.

  As usual Kierkegaard is making many of his claims by attacking them. To extract a logically coherent position is difficult, but this is an essential part of what he wants to convey. Only by abandoning the rational approach and taking the leap, can we arrive at the truth. The only aid we may enrol along the way is irony. This makes it even harder to extract the serious parts from Kierkegaard's writing, but this is presumably part of the argument too. Already Socrates knew how to argue through irony.

  An ironic twist in the book Concluding Unscientific Postscript is the concluding remark by one of Kierkegaard's more popular alter egos, Johannes Climacos: Here we meet the statement that the entire book is superfluous. It is not supposed to induce by any means any real person to be the reader. Taken at face value, this seems to revoke the whole work. However, the emphasis is on the words “real person” and “reader”. Maybe Kierkegaard distinguishes between the reader who has to benefit from the discourse and the real person that already has taken the leap and cannot benefit from any further reading. This interpretation reminds us of the attitude taken by Wittgenstein in claiming that his Tractatus can only be understood by someone already having had the same thoughts and then no further argumentation is needed; the ladder of rationality can be thrown away.

  There is no doubt that Kierkegaard regarded his argumentation to be final at this point. Like Goethe's Faust he had reached the ultimate destination and consummated this by a huge manifesto just like Goethe. The play was finished, the author had said what there was to be said, and the rest was for posterity. Kierkegaard indeed seems to have expected to leave the world at this time. But he was to live another ten years.

  At this point we may draw an analogy between the dialectic method of Kierkegaard and physics. An idea in science emerges after accumulation of observations in nature. At some point the unexplainable insight appears, a researcher formulates a theory, which can be tested and finally be accepted. We have to accept as a fact that the empirical evidence is never sufficient to imply the law by logical argument. However, when grasped and tested the law becomes “The Law” and takes on a life of its own. It may be amended in time, its range (p.41) of validity may be discovered, and it may be superseded by more encompassing theories. But it is still more than a summary of the experimental facts, and its existence transcends its original support. To elevate a collection of facts to a general law invokes taking a leap, and the ultimate being of the law resides in the mind of the physicist.

  The legacy

  Søren Kierkegaard had expected to depart from life when his Postscript was finished. As this did not take place, he had to look around for further tasks to undertake. Not being an impressive figure, with a somewhat ludicrous gait and a weak voice, he had to continue as an influential author. His conviction that one had to take a personal moral stand made him take a look at society and fault it for superficial and insincere conduct. He became the center of strong conflict and violent debate. This stage of his life made his impact on the social scene even stronger, and it lives on as a lasting legacy of his activities. The details of this part of history are not of any essential importance for our arguments here, and hence I will only summarize a few of its features.

  One debate with the journal The Corsair concerned both ethical and literary matters. Founded in 1840, it was Denmark's first periodical devoted to political satire. It was witty and humorous but in some sense lacked profound sincerity. Its influence on the public was, however, to be strong and it was widely feared in the intellectual circles of Copenhagen. Initially it took a positive attitude to Kierkegaard's activities, but, true to character, he disliked being approved of by such a scandalous medium. There ensued a feud not lacking unpleasant features. The journal ridiculed not only the writings of Kierkegaard but also his appearance, his way of walking and manner of dressing. The writing made Kierkegaard laughing‐stock in the streets and left him with a lasting wound of mocked pride. As these controversies started in 1846, they added to his lack of a mission for his activities.

  It is curious to note that the role of another satirical journal Die Fackel came to catalyze the emergence of Wittgenstein's philosophy in Vienna at the dawn of the twentieth century. This makes one surmise that irony is the most fertile argument in a social debate, its power is felt immediately, but its effects may be huge and lasting.

  Kierkegaard's final years were devoted to debate with the Church. He took up this fight as an issue of moral sincerity. As the church of Denmark was a government institution, its clergy were civil servants under the state. For Kierkegaard, only the personally gained relation to the religious could be genuine and true; he found it to be impossible that a church priest could be sincerely religious. This controversial attitude put him in direct conflict with the earthly powers of the Church and came to be one of the lasting memories of his activities.

  Kierkegaard, however, had to wait several years before he started this campaign. In January 1854, Bishop Mynster died, and he had been a friend of Kierkegaard's father. It seemed that Kierkegaard wanted to spare him the (p.42) agony of confronting the son of his friend. After the funeral Kierkegaard lost this restraint and launched his attack. The starting point was the manner in which the Church offered a Christianity devoid of conflict, demands, and sincerity. Kierkegaard respected Grundtvig and his religious movement, but in the light of the new campaign, even Grundtvig was not devoting himself deeply enough to the real implications of a Christian life. Many articles were written, many persons were involved, and much argument was put forward on both sides. Thus the fight was on, and lasted to Kierkegaard's death in 1855.

  When dying in the hospital, Kierkegaard had a discussion with his friend Emil Boesen, where he among other things stated: “Greet everyone, I have been fond of them all, and tell them that my life is a great, to others unknown and incomprehensible, suffering.” Kierkegaard did not want a pastor at his funeral: “The priests are royal functionaries, royal functionaries have nothing to do with Christianity.” This was not to be; Søren's brother Peter Christian arranged the funeral and gave the speech himself. This was on November 18, 1855. The speech was personal, unassuming, and tactful. But it was just what Kierkegaard himself would not have wanted. His view was perhaps better expressed in an unsolicited speech by Henrik Lund, the son of Kierkegaard's sister.

  One question still remains to be dealt with. It is often stated that Kierkegaard was mentally ill. He certainly suffered greatly in his mind, and his brother Peter Christian ended his life in 1888 at the age of 83, several years after having succumbed to melancholy and doubts about God at the age of 70. His son Pascal Michael Paul Egede became mentally ill about the age of 30, whereas one of the sons of a sister was very melancholy but died early and escaped any eventual mental incapacity.

  We thus see that the Kierkegaard family was of delicate mental constitution, but this may only have been an aspect of their undeniable intelligence combined with an extreme mental sensitivity. Søren himself worked hard, manipulated his public image, and administered his economic inheritance so that it lasted to the end of his life. In spite of all his mental agony and his aversion to rational arguments, there are no signs that he did lose contact with the reality of life. He was eccentric and behaved strangely, but his devotion to thinking and his writing made this mode of life seem almost rational. With another lifestyle, he would have been another person. And as Søren Kierkegaard he lived and acted purposefully, loyal to his task as he saw it.

  So what is the legacy Kierkegaard bequeathed on us? His attacks on Hegel's influence were successful, but here he did not stand alone. A generation of thinkers carried philosophy away from Hegel's metaphysical systems and transformed his ideas in various ways. The remaining traces in modern Marxism are tainted with associations which make it hard to discern the Hegelian origin in the theory. The industrialization and social developments have carried society into a realm not fathomed at the time of Hegel. Here Kierkegaard had a very unimportant role to play.

  (p.43) Kierkegaard's attacks on the state church were a lost cause. In many ways, religion is still in the hands of an establishment, more or less tied to the political machinery. The individual is more free to develop his religious persona, but most formalities are still performed by functionaries.

  The lasting trace of Kierkegaard's writing is in the literary and philosophical fields. Generations of authors have felt the alienation of a world too strange or too fast for their liking and then the despair and anxiety offered by Kierkegaard has provided an atmosphere where they could breeze freely. They have had to live with his downcast mood, which has driven them to the edge of suicide, but Kierkegaard's influence lingers on in their works.

 

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