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Kierkegaard's Journals

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2024

Victor White O.P.
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Extract

Even in the abridged form of the English translation the Journals of Kierkegaard are not to be read at a sitting, or even in a series of consecutive sittings. Their thought is at once too concentrated and their range too vast. Covering his jottings and reflections de omni re scibili et quibusdam aliis over twenty of his most creative years, the Journals could perhaps be assimilated in scarcely less a span. Not, therefore, a book to borrow. But emphatically a book to possess, to browse in and to browse upon, to open and to close at well-spaced intervals which allow ample time for digestion, for assimilation and rejection. A book to feed upon, for it contains in epigrams and tabloid essays the marrow of his thought. But for that very reason a book which, consumed gluttonously, must infallibly produce biliousness and dyspepsia accompanied by dizziness and nausea.

There will be some who find Kierkegaard indigestible and nauseating anyway. And that not only for the reasons which he himself anticipated; the reasons which would reflect upon his readers rather than upon himself. Not only, that is to say, because ‘every man is afraid of the truth,’ and ‘between man and truth lies mortification,’ or because he sought ‘to tear the veil from human twaddle and from the conceited self-complacency with which men try to convince themselves and others that man really wants to know the truth’ (1153). Not only because of the ‘scandal of the Cross’ which he proclaimed, fully understanding that if you ‘act just once so that your action expresses the fact that you fear God alone and do not fear men: you at once “scandalise” people,’ and that ‘whatever avoids “scandalising” is only what, out of fear of men and human respect, conforms entirely with worldliness’ (1116).

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Blackfriars , Volume 20 , Issue 236 , November 1939, pp. 797 - 810
Copyright
Copyright © 1939 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers

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References

1 The Journals of Sören Kierkegaard. A Selection edited and translated by Alexander Dru. (Humphrey Milford: Oxford University Press; pp. lxi, 603; 25s.)

2 Numbers refer to Mr. Dru's useful marginal numbering in the English edition.

3 Theodor Hawker. Sören Kierkegaard. (Oxford University Press. 1937.)

4 Bernard Kelly in The Thomist, July, 1939.

5 In addition to the Journals we now have the Philosoeical Fragments and Fear and Trembling, of which he wrote: ‘once I am dead, Fear and Trembling alone will be enough to immortalise my name’ (965). The vast range of his interests and the power of his thought are also illustrated in the many passages quoted in Theodor Haecker's little book and Dr. Lowrie's voluminous study, bath published by the Oxford University Press.

6 Published by the translator at Bazoges‐en‐Pareds, Vendée, France.

7 Kierkegaard et la Philosophie Existentielle (Vox clamantis in Deserto); En Guise d'lntroduction. (Paris: Vrin.)

8 We cannot here discuss how far this surrender was hindered by a pathological and non‐moral sense of guilt, how far by moral weakness, and how far by the defects in his ‘existential’ philosophy which misled him into supposing that surrender to the ‘Absurd’ must involve the sacrifice of ‘Socrates,’i.e., of reason. But this last factor is fundamental in any adequate Catholic appraisal of his life and work.

9 ‘I S.K.’s increasing dissatisfaction with Luther and Protestantism, and a tendency to mark their shortcomings in relation to Catholicism, is not a “result” to be used, but part of his work in bringing a “corrective.” Most of his criticism holds good against easygoing Christianity of any sort. But he is nevertheless open to the crudest misconstruction, and the apologist, whether Catholic or free‐thinker, would have no difficulty in making second‐hand use of his “god‐fearing satire” ' (p. liii).

10 An article on Christian Solitude by S. von Radecki, Die Schildgenossen, May, 1939, is illuminating on this point.

11 The Catholic reader should constantly bear in mind that for Kierkegaard, brought up as a Lutheran, the concept of simple fiducia is paramount in his idea of what he calls Faith.

12 George Bernanos: Les Grands Cimetieres sous la Lune.

13 Gerald Vann, O.P.: Morality and War, p. 43.