Søren Kierkegaard is
generally acknowledged as the founder of existentialism, primarily because he
focused on the individual, the existential subject. While the Idealists, namely
Hegel, sought for objectivity, Kierkegaard sought to bring out the subjective.
Presented here, in condensed form, are his ideas on objectivity, the individual
and truth as well as personal criticism of his ideas.
Kierkegaard rejected
philosophers’ tendency to take a stance of objectivity, speaking as if they
were outside of the universe, looking in from a region outside of time and
space, seemingly like gods and not participants in the world. Kierkegaard saw
them as ridiculous. He thought those who thought, no matter who they were, had
to exist. As such, they could not be outside of life.
In the Idealist view
which he was criticizing, the observer was detached, cool, rational, and did
not let his emotions or personal passions affect his reasoning. Rationalists
took a disinterested stance, since having no interest would make it so they are
not biased. Since Plato, the Western world thought the rational as the only
thing trustworthy, the senses and emotions were unreliable.
Kierkegaard felt that
Descartes was right with his “I think therefore I am.” But he thought it was
only good as a starting point. Kierkegaard though Descartes was wrong in
equating the self with thought alone, that existence could not be contained in
thought, only lived. “I am” is greater than the “I think.” He thought the
problem with thought was that it was too much from the standpoint of a watcher,
it was too preoccupied with the fleeting. “Two ways, in general, are open for
an existing individual,” Kierkegaard once wrote, “Either he can do his utmost
to forget he is an existing individual, by which he becomes a comic figure,
since existence has the remarkable trait of compelling an existing individual
to exist whether he wills it or not . . . or he can concentrate his entire energy
upon the fact that he is an existing individual (Concluding Unscientific Postscript).” Since philosophy, in his day,
was based on a philosopher whose stance was that of an individual that had
forgotten he was in existence, philosophy was then “comic.” He took it even
farther though, saying they had forgotten how to be humans, not only that they
were humans, but that the reader of their works was human as well.
Hegel’s system said
that an individual was a passing phase in the dialectic evolution in the World
Spirit. Kierkegaard rebelled against this submersion of the individual in the
mass. He refused to be reduced to anything below what he was. Whoever teaches,
in his opinion, in the manner has forgotten how to exist. A person who exists
will always and forever be concerned with his own existence and his fate.
Freedom, human’s passion for it, makes a person choose for themselves, and that
involves risk. Individuals are always becoming. Life is insecure and that
insecurity is expressed in how life strives to gain truth. Human existence is
constant striving. For Kierkegaard, the Hegelian forgets his insecurity and how
to strive, and his explanation of life omits his own existence. He believed the
only part of history one could be sure of was that of the fact they existed.
When society removes the individual, the results can be monstrous. Kierkegaard
urged a return to thinking subjectively, as a living being with the passion of
one who is mortal, not a god, whose life and what he thinks about is tied
together.
To correct the errors
he saw, Kierkegaard looked back to Socrates, who placed emphasis on
philosophical existence, on self-knowledge and self-realization. Kierkegaard
praised Socrates as one whose existence exemplified his ideas. Only when
philosophers gained self-knowledge and self-realization, when they became
philosophers in how they existed, not in terms of it being a job, when they
lived their philosophies, when they loved wisdom like Socrates, then their
insights would be of any value.
As such, truth, for
Kierkegaard, existential truth, is what is lived, not merely thought, the
abstract turned concrete, the ethical and religious appropriation of the ideal,
active practice and realization rather than doctrinal knowledge. But how would
something that is in the process of becoming know what its end form will be?
Nothing can know this, its place, or have its duty proven to it, but it must
still make choices.
Kierkegaard used an
example in the problem of death. Understood in an objective, historical sense,
it really has a vague meaning, even though it is quite a big problem that
cannot be ignored. Hegelian and universal history, knowing it, would not bring
one any closer to coming to grips with death, and life for that matter. If one reflects on their own death and
mortality in general, then a person can come to think existentially, to think
with the conscious fact that one is existing and mortal, not some sort of
disembodied brain. This differs from the speculative philosopher who writes
about what he has never, will never, and never planned on doing. In existential
thought, the soul itself is on trial.
Truth is subjective.
Everything one does, including search for the objective truths, gets value
through the individual, the way it is willed and decided on by the self.
Objective truth, such as mathematics and sciences, is easy to understand (so
long as those sciences are not quantum mechanics). An individual’s truth is a
bit harder to grasp, is more elusive. St. Thomas Aquinas said that truth was in
the intellect. Kierkegaard argued that religious truth was and is not how one
reasons it, but how it is lived. One who loves did not read a lot about love or
thought about it, but just loves. Truth is of the whole person, not just of the
intellect.
Objective truths can be
verified by outside sources, facts. They are neutral, in the existential sense,
since their actuality or falsehood does not change how you are. Subjective
truths, are only of you, cannot be verified from anything outside the self.
However, they can change you. Spiritual realities cannot be proven any more so
than a subjective one.
Kierkegaard maintained
that God is not discovered by abstract demonstration, that religion is a matter
of inward choice and requires a leap of faith. Religion is not a conventional
system of habits centered on going to church, practicing rituals and reciting
dogma, but is a spiritual quest, the search for spiritual reality, the striving
for the attainment of spiritual fulfillment, whatever that may be.
Truth is an individual
matter, not a collective one. Kierkegaard wrote, “A crowd in its very concept
is untruth, by reason of the fact that it renders the individual completely
impenitent and irresponsible, or at least weakens his sense of responsibility
by reducing it to a fraction…For ‘crowd’ is an abstraction and has no hands;
but each individual has ordinarily two hands (“That Individual”: Two “Notes” Concerning My Work as an Author)…”
Moving into critique is
rather daunting since this is one of the, or considered as such, greats of
Western thought, if not one of the most important. Nevertheless, it needs to be
done. It would be best to state to what degree we are in agreement.
First off, I find his
distrust of those who take an objective approach to philosophy as refreshing,
even though he is not, anymore, the only one to do this. It grants nothing more
to the philosopher than if it was a personal philosophy, and to be detached is
impossible. There is no way for a purely objective approach, personal bias
always shines through. He also gives great insight with the idea that that sort
of philosopher had forgotten how to be human and that their readers are also
human. I have never thought of it that way, I always just felt as if I was
being talked down to by the likes of Hegel and Kant.
His refusal to be
reduced to just another part of the masses and his importance of the individual
is what places him as one of the early Existentialist thinkers and I find I
agree with all of it, as well as his concepts of truth from the subjective
viewpoint. What I want to bring up here is his idea of the loss of the
individual as monstrous. When we lose our individuality, we lose our humanity,
when we go with the crowd, we lose truth, when we bow to an overarching will,
and we become nothing more than a single paragraph in a book at the hands of
the writer of that book. The monstrosity of the past that was the Nazis was
from the fact that the individual no longer mattered; it was all under the will
of one individual and the rest of the individuals were suppressed or killed.
While the importance of
the individual should never be understated, it should not be overstated. There
can be too individual of an individual, an individual who has no care for the
other individuals around it. This can result in something equally as monstrous
as the loss of the individual. When an individual is wrapped up in itself, it
can become a danger to itself. If it were to live a self absorbed life, then it
wants nothing from others, it may feel something for them, yet it will spurn
them. In return others will spurn it, and openly, and it will possibly ignored
in the end, leading to desperation to be seen as an individual. It can even
cause insanity.
To be such an
individual that one is individualistic can be self destructive. If only the
individual is seen as good for the individual, it will have no use of those
around him and he will shun them. Those others are not seen as individuals by
the individualistic one. Then we have one that has forced the rest of the world
into the shape of the monstrous entity that comes with the loss of
individuality. This is equally as wrong as forgetting that there is humanity in
yourself and others.
There are those that
would destroy others for their own individuality. Serial killers live only for
themselves, usually for no other. They are sociopaths. They feel nothing for
others. Theirs is a world dominated by their own wants and desires and they
will fulfill all of those wants and desires. That includes killing others,
ending their bid for individuality. This forgetting the other results in the
same event of forcing others into the monstrous entity, and the sociopath sees
this, and thinks of everyone as something for it to kill for himself, like an
animal.
Another individual that
is dangerous for other individuals since it is too much of an individual is the
one which chooses to exert its will over all others. One who would bend others
to its will is dangerous because others lose their own will to its. This was
the case, again going back to Nazis (not to be too cliché but they are a
fantastic representation for what I am getting at), and Hitler. He bent an
entire nation to his will and made a monster out of the individuals therein,
when he should have been the only actual monstrous one.
While Kierkegaard’s
concept of truth is in line with my thought, I find that there are some truths
that are objective that will hold sway over the subject, no matter if there is
a conscious allowance of that power. This is found in that which is
subconscious. The subconscious affects us on a level we cannot rightly
perceive. Yet any objective truth we are faced with will remain there and will
influence us in little ways. We will remember these objective truths we know about,
and even our rejection of them existentially will affect us. By seeing a truth,
by experiencing it, we have accepted it subjectively. It is working on us, we
cannot stop it.
Objective outlooks,
thought I do not necessarily agree with them, are necessary in certain fields.
Psychology hinges on the fact that the person that one is going to be paying to
talk to is objective and can thus give objective insights, no matter how well
that psychologist comes to know the patient. Subjective experience, in the case
of the psychologist, becomes part of the objective look on the patient and how
to deal with them, how to talk to them. What can never happen is that
objectivity and subjectivity be divided from each other. It is a symbiotic
relationship.
Kierkegaard, though
brilliant had some flaws. His intertwining ideas of objectivity, subjectivity,
and truth were revolutionary for his day as he was railing against the
Idealists. He became known as the father of Existentialism for his ideas, and
quite rightly. However, the ideas I presented in response to his are from the
standpoint of one who has read on the ultimately dangerous end or can see it in
a way he did not consider.
