A Literary Review: "The Crowd and Populism"
A reflection on Davenport's essay, "The Crowd and Populism: The Insights and Limits of Kierkegaard on the Profanity of Politics"
I have a confession to lead with, my reader; I delayed publishing this article by a week for the rather silly reason of avoiding undue outside pressure to meet “the demand of the times”, i.e., to write about what everyone else was writing about. I’ve had this draft semi-ready to go for a while now and I enjoyed reflecting on the intriguing but wholly misguided Kierkegaardian commentary of Davenport, but in an effort to avoid becoming a “premise-writer”1, I chose to delay this beyond the week of the American Presidential debate. No specific commentary is needed on that event post facto as I believe that my writing is already amusing enough not to have to fall into the depths of elder abuse for a cheap laugh. But this caused me to think: what precisely am I delaying this piece for? In order to become conflated with “the demand of the times”?
Well, that’s not a consistent character. That’s not a consistent character all. That, in fact, was me in my weakness falling into an Anti-Crowd, where “the Current Thing” is simply opposed for the sake of being in opposition to it. In a sense, it was not very Kierkegaardian that I should withdraw something simply for the fact that I didn’t want to get caught up in the hubbub of the sensationalism in the wake of two old men being given seemingly global attention to fritter away and it was not very Christian that I should withhold the truth (because why else would I want to write if not to share the truth?2) simply because it happens to coincide with a powerful media offensive. With that in mind, I am now attempting to right these wrongs and present a critique of an article written by J. J. Davenport for the tribute anthology to the life’s work of Robert L. Perkins, Truth is Subjectivity: Kierkegaard and Political Theology.
Armed Transcendence - in the face of mediocrity
Broaching the topic of “the political” with S. K. in mind is a difficult, if not impossible, task - that has been the party line since his own lifetime, even if the recent scholarship in the area has bravely and correctly stepped out from under the shadow of the silhouette of “Kierkegaard qua quietist” or “Kierkegaard qua acosmic individualist”. One of those who was most important in drawing S. K. into conversation with the social and political questions of various periods has been Robert L. Perkins, retired senior professor emeritus of philosophy at Stetson University and ardent defender of the Dane. Not only did his life’s work with the 24 volumes of International Kierkegaard Commentary set the standard for what Kierkegaardian scholarship should aspire to be, but he also intended to set out to get a handle on a Kierkegaardian political philosophy. To illuminate the context of this goal, Perkins was likely perceived in the same way as someone intending to set out in search of “Bertrand Russell’s evangelical theology” or “Nietzsche’s normative ethics” - a step above the utterings of a genuine madman.
In some ways, Perkins didn’t actually achieve the goal that he set out to overcome. Although there is no Perkinsian monograph that covers the topic in detail, he certainly produced enough of a prolegomena for us in contemporaneity to stand on the shoulders of giants - as Dooley stated, the IKC edition concerning A Literary Review: Two Ages did a lot to clear away the cobwebs and give grounds to sociological understandings of what S. K. considered to be the problems of liberalism3. Although he was by no means the first to do so4, Perkins is held in high esteem for laying the groundwork for English-language thinkers and the analytical tradition to engage more fully within the thought of our dear Søren. In that sense, Sylvia Walsh Perkins’ Truth is Subjectivity: Kierkegaard and Political Theology is a fitting tribute to a man who did the hard work of making these concepts not only respectable for the reflective thinker to tease out, but also took us to Mount Nebo (Deuteronomy 34:1-5) in providing the path out of the desert of academia in times gone by.
In lieu of a full review of the book, which contains multiple excellent essays from multiple excellent Kierkegaard scholars, I want to focus on a particular essay: “The Crowd and Populism: The Insights and Limits of Kierkegaard on the Profanity of Politics”, penned by J. Davenport5. In a characteristically Kierkegaardian way, there is a succinct and powerful exegesis of the “skeleton” of S. K.’s political thought, yet it falters at the final point; much like S. K. called for the genuine realisation of passionate, driven social action by self-conscious social agents but then ran to advise the king in the shadow of a looming revolution, Davenport takes us most of the way towards a genuine Kierkegaardian theory of non-quietist social engagement but reduces him to a standard issue liberal in the looming shadow of Trumpist politics. Although one might forgive Davenport for taking on a similar stance to S. K. in the moment of crisis, i.e., a panicked retreat to the comfort of the established order in the face of potentially disastrous fallout, I believe both perspectives should be held as a failure to carry S. K. through his philosophy to its logical endpoint - especially in the context of Christian liberty (Galatians 5:1) and what Davenport calls “the martyrdom thesis”6. Instead, we should turn to the anti-Kierkegaardian Kierkegaardian par excellence, Karl Barth, for a bit of advice: living als wäre nichts geschehen7.
Something About Davenport
Davenport begins with a view of S. K. as more of a metaethicist than someone who developed and defended a particular set of moral principles. This seems apparently straightforward, especially considering that his emphasis on the correct moral “orientation” and the distinction and movement between different “existence-spheres” plays a more important role in the life of the believer than anything else. To bolster Davenport’s account, we might even appeal to S. K.’s ardent faith in the words of the Apostle, especially “whatever is not from faith is sin” (Romans 14:23) and the Gospel itself in “with God all things are possible” (Matthew 19:26) - faith itself is the determinant of the goodness of an action and, when empowered by faith and with God, all things are possibly good. Even the most superficial knowledge of S. K.’s work through Abraham in Fear and Trembling should give us an insight into this perspective. As it stands, I think this is the best way to view S. K.: an ethicist in an unusual sense, largely because he was more concerned with our particular “hows” than our particular “whats” - a theme echoed in Politics of Exodus by Mark Dooley as well8.
Davenport’s assessment of Kierkegaardian anti-quietist politics rests on five “theses”: the purity thesis, the inwardness thesis, the justice thesis, the profanity thesis, and the martyrdom thesis. Taken at face value, these are very broad, conceptual themes which slot nicely into S. K.’s metaethical deliberative methodology. Understanding how they interlink, however, shows us that Davenport’s own conclusion in the essay falls short of what he was attempting to show us. In this case, we exonerate S. K. of being a liberal complicit in acts of oppressive aggression9 and find the deeply anarchic bent to his thinking which Davenport failed to diagnose.
Theses in Brief
Before we can diagnose the error in the paper, it would be good to touch upon what precisely these theses are and how they interrelate. When we have done that, we can prepare our “corrective” for Davenport - a movement which will lead us towards something much closer to contemporary anarchism than the liberal position he suggested.
As per Davenport:
The purity thesis: “...the highest form of ethical willing depends on loving others for their own sake beyond any concern for one's own finite goods or without conditioning love on receiving reciprocation.”10
The inwardness thesis: “…what matters for a person’s spiritual development is the pure quality of their volitional motives, which can be maintained without external reward, rather than any outward achievements which may depend on material resources.11
The justice thesis: “[There are] general obstacles with effects that vary widely by circumstance; for Kierkegaard was surely correct both that people in the most terrible circumstances have sometimes shown miraculous neighbor-love, and that improvements in people’s financial state or social status may instead facilitate their corruption.”12
The profanity thesis: “…some kinds of political movements are a threat to authentic faith [which] confirms the justice thesis, while cautioning that collective efforts to address injustice need to avoid methods that involve profanizing forms of mass consciousness.”13
The martyrdom thesis: “The Christian ideal need not imply that the only direct relation we should have to political causes or movements is a negative one whereby we expose their shallowness, or oppose them all in ways that inevitably lead to martyrdom, if strictly carried through.14
What kind of person do these theses create then? Well, this person’s political and moral actions are determined by a combined striving towards proper inwardness (what we might think of as an internal desire for Christ, in line with The Sickness Unto Death) and communities or social positions of “purity”. As Dooley noted in his rebuffing of the idea of Kierkegaardian quietism, this “purity” might best be understood as “the Christian community of neighbours”15; similarly, Eller typified the Kierkegaardian ideal as “the caravan” tied together in baptism, where den Enkelte covenants with his fellow Christians to be “a constituent member of the caravan”16 and lives out the Christian ideal as a collective that carries and is carried17 by its constituents. Although S. K.’s view of the use of violence is slightly murkier than Eller portrays, his understanding of Christian nonresistance illustrates the metaethical position well - where nonresistance is not just a commandment in the face of violence, but a call for honesty; it is better for the "caravan" to die on its journey to truth than go on “resisting” through lies.18
This, of course, is mediated by the subsequent theses: justice is not simply a matter of the pop-conception of “social justice”, but rather “actual” justice that leads to edification and the development of the self and faith. There is a certain conflation within radical Christian politics between the concept of justice and monetary gains - in that sense, it is very materialistic in that solutions to injustice are always dealt with (at least theoretically) in terms of the redistribution of money. Yet, “the love of money is the root of all evil” (1 Timothy 6:10), so how can this be our solution? Simply handing money over to the poor or spilling it into faceless institutions does nothing to alleviate the problem of our ethical quandary: those who withheld wealth from those who needed it still lack the inwardness of the connection with the other and the poor who were disenfranchised from society are now only integrated in terms of material wealth, not the creation and sustaining of genuine ethical bonds that create the caravan. S. K. wrestled with this at length in his work, coming to an “anti-egalitarian” conclusion that sits uneasily with modern anarchist thought. This will be explored at length elsewhere, but the most important aspect for this particular reflection is that vulgar material egalitarianism does nothing to address the problems we see in society - it kicks the can down the road by simply declaring that money is the solution to our problems. In this sense, it is closely related to the profanity thesis (a kind of mirror opposite of the purity thesis) in that exposure to sin can lead us further into sinful thought - we become desensitized to the evil around us and excuse developing evil if it is gradual enough. Thinking back to Abraham in Fear and Trembling, we could view Abraham’s refusal to speak about God’s command to sacrifice Isaac - in the understanding that God’s commands are themselves the very necessary good that underlies all religious ethical thought, any exposure of his particular “singular” mission to anyone still within the “universal” would be to expose it to profanity and degradation. Although we might not all be so (un)fortunate to find ourselves forced into a situation like Abraham’s, we can empathize with the idea of “sticking out” against the rest of society when we recognize moral or otherwise grounded differences with the “universal”.
And this leads us to the most bombastic of the theses: the martyrdom thesis. A full exposition of S. K.’s understanding of martyrdom (or, rather, his varying understandings of martyrdom that change throughout his career) would be a book-length study. Still, here we should note S. K.’s emphasis on the individual’s honesty in relation to their inward-outward agreement of their authentic self and their relation to God. By identifying a truth for which we are willing to live or die, we have found the concrete relation to undergird our will to martyrdom. As Westphal puts it so succinctly:
“An initial indication of what he means by the idea can be found by recalling an oft-quoted passage from the Gilleleie journal of 1835: “the crucial thing is to find a truth which is truth for me, to find the idea for which I am willing to live and die... What is truth but to Iive for an idea?” (JP, 5: 5 100). The animal lives out of instinct; man, as spirit, can live for an idea. The animal dics out of necessity; man, as spirit, can give his life because there is something worth dying for. To live, not out of habit but because one knows why life is worth living, and to die, not out of necessity, but because one values something more than life itself-that is to be related to the idea. The idca is a truth that claims me for its own in life and in death and, in claiming me, gives meaning to both life and death.”19
When we have a concrete idea that underpins our lives and we follow it sincerely, i.e., not only the want to do good but the consistent action that aims towards that good, we are in the position to make a possible leap into martyrdom - the obstinant refusal to sacrifice the truth in the face of violence; the aristocratic unwillingness to allow something as fleeting as temporary suffering to stand in the way of eternal glory.20
Taken together, we can build a positive account of S. K.’s metaethics in a way that cuts through some of the more obfuscated elements of his reflections. Lord bless the analytic tradition for their particular approach to philosophy.
Davenport’s downfall
While there are certain grounds we can challenge the above on, I have no interest in pulling it apart at the moment. Instead, I want to address the second half of Davenport’s essay: the application of Kierkegaardian metaethics to the U. S. election in 2016 between Hilary Clinton and Donald Trump21. In a particularly “in the moment” way, the essay presents an interesting case for Kierkegaardian opposition to the Trumpian campaign resting on the opposition to the profanity of Trumpist politics and the bully-boy tactics of the far-right in general.
The problem here is that the solution which Davenport offers seems to completely disregard a number of the theses he presented as reflecting S. K.’s thoughts.
Kierkegaard’s analysis directs us instead to consider the way that people espouse these beliefs, or pretend to, to make a partisan persona for themselves. Many Trump enthusiasts are not actually moved by substantive ideas, arguments, or ethical commitments on the issues just listed, but are instead mainly driven by a desire for solidarity against other groups whom they dislike. The worship of right-wing radio hosts and online conspiracy theorists, and crazy fan loyalty at mega-rallies, often makes it facially apparent that ultra-partisan Trump supports just want to feel part of something, to feel aggrandized by the power of the movement, and thus feel righteous and strong for a change. It is embarrassing to witness people clinging to patently empty slogans about greatness and chants calling for hostility to foreigners; the desperate lack of confidence in their own culture, learning, and ability to lead productive lives is sadly apparent at large Trump crowd events - I speak here from first-hand experience.
Many of these more combative right-wing types also correctly discern, without quite being able to articulate their resentment, that people on the far left have been increasingly enjoying a feeling of camaraderie by demonizing anyone who does not immediately kowtow to their ever-escalating demands for political correctness. It apparently feels great to many underachievers to brand others as intolerant relative to demands that everyone must endorse ever-more outlandish claims about systematic biases and oppressions of all kinds; the ‘more-woke-than-thou’ feeling of emotional superiority is especially intoxicating to many young people. So, people on the right want to feel the self-righteousness too, and get some crass payback in the process. The feigned efforts to give plausible reasons for Trump policies are, for these marionettes of the right, mere rationalizations for enjoying the feeling of confirmation from many others who share their hartreds - just as among groups on the exterme left.22
But politics does not need to be this profane. Kierkegaard did not try to articulate the possible political solutiosn to such redirections of religious faith [Davenport gives examples the American evangelical right and the Russian Orthodox church’s complicity with Putin’s nationalist regime] into nationalist fervor, or reductions of communal solidarity into aesthetic group-think, exploiting people’s desire for acceptance by others. The solutions include education: two nationally required courses, including one semester on basic civics, and another on logic fallacies23. would inoculate high school graduates from much misinformation. Massive campaigns against online propaganda and foreign hacking have also become necessary: we need to create very weighty deterrents against efforts by dictatorships to hijack our democratic discourse. Media reform is vital: mass media will never be responsible when it is run mainly on the profite motive, as the rise of social media platforms like Facebook has proven once again. But even with such reforms, ethical leaders would remain crucial: we cannot salvage anything with leaders who are willing to poison their people’s minds en mass. In particular, religious leaders must refuse and thwart anyone who would turn their faith into a political machine. If it requires martyrdom to prevent their faith from benig co-opted by corrupt politicians, then martyrdom becomes part of their vocation after all.24
As is often the case with these extremely contemporary issues, this wasn’t the only eccentric apologism that has attempted to reconcile S. K.’s seemingly anti-political stance25 with current politics issues: Kierkegaard Trumping Trump, for example, is an (apparent) account of S. K.’s defence(!) of democracy in the face of Trumpist populist “bullshit”26 that is currently sitting on my bookshelf and screams to be read before the “demands of the times” forget the very thing that it so sensationally was covering. My reader, it would be reactionary and stupid to offer any form of apologism for Trump or the contempt for the 45th President that pervades the “discourse” of postmodernity - and I have no particular objection in this regard. What I do oppose, however, is the idea that S. K. would obviously have fallen in line with the opposition to a populist figure of this kind. The idea of scuttling away to the opposite side's " protection " is merely another example of “the Crowd” at play - the Anti-Crowd. I suggest that Davenport’s dialectic is too slack, he collapses into the false choice between the two right-wing parties when there is an alternative, non-quietist alternative available to us.
For the sake of full disclosure to you, my reader, it is important to note that the Democrats (and many similar “left” (not really left at all) parties across the world) hold little sway over me. They are examples of “the concealed” that played such an important part in S. K.’s ironic worldview and inspired a great deal of Heidegger’s view of the world. Along with the unbearable smugness of Davenport’s prose jabbing at those on the far-right (itself, an institutional problem identified in the wake of Trump’s election and the Brexit vote that impacted and intensified the problem at hand - the self-appointed superiority of the centrist liberal contingent), we find that Davenport’s solutions seem to be saying two things at the same time: the Kierkegaardian would do better to avoid the empty rhetoric, posturing, and misguided self-righteousness of both the far-right and the far-left (which seems reasonable enough) in favour of… well, he doesn’t say. However, this silence leaves us with one solution without imposing an undue radicalism on Davenport that he obvious has no interest in: voting for the Democrats. At this point, my reader, hopefully you will have enough wherewithal to realise that a particularly resigned commentator might easily pick out just as many examples of the disaffected, “now is our time”, “vote blue no matter who” crowd that display just as many of these damning qualities that Davenport so openly opposes on the further-right: “bullshit”, open hypocrisy, and crowd-formative tactics that herd the votership into the “correct” channels to gain the “correct” opinions on matters that are at hand. With the benefit of hindsight, we can see this has been proven true: the identitarian politics of the centre-right, the deep unpopularity of Clinton, Biden, and Starmer, and the subsequent pseudo-fascist actions of those who take up office in their names - strike-breaking, enthusiastic support for Israel in the contemporary crisis, willingly supplying arms to neo-Nazis in Ukraine, all the while accompanied with a sense of superiority which is not justified by their campaigns (which might be best summarized as “we are not the further-right”). My reader, hopefully you have identified the problem at hand: the issue of the purity thesis! If we are truly intending to raise the standard of the Christian faith in the face of authoritarian bashing from both the left and right, how on earth can we view the liberal centre as anything other than simply another poison?27
Regardless, Davenport implies that the other choice (is it really a choice?) is preferable and in line with S. K.’s thoughts on the matter. But the appearance of an alternative choice conceals the collaborative nature of the party politics, a unified class or cadre against those who they rule over. As S. K. himself so beautifully illustrated this distinction when done towards edifying purposes:
“Just as costly fragrant essence spreads fragrance not only when it is poured out but, to the extent that it contains fragrance in itself, is fragrance, so that it permeates the vial in which it is contained and even in concealment spreads fragrance - likewise to that degree the goods of the spirit are communication, so that possession is communication, and just to acquire them is to enrich others.”28
But does the binary dialectic of party politics offer us this possibility of edification? When does concealment collapse into simple dishonesty? Understanding the glimpses we have gleaned from S. K.’s journals into his idea of proper social action should give us insights into how we respond to this question. I will leave it to the reader to investigate just how different the Democrats and the Republicans, or Labour and the Conservatives, or any other pair of liberal democratic parties actually are on important matters. While S. K. was not a quietist (Davenport notes thiswell ), his anti-democratic stance does give us the grounds to suggest that there is something “beyond” the binary choice of a two-party system.
A curious encounter
Buried deep in the journals, S. K. presented the most stunning insight into his postpolitical thought: a reference to “the Dunkers”, also known as the Schwarzenau Brethren - an Anabaptist group that captured the spirit of Pietism and had made the journey to America in the early 1700s. That S. K. knew about this group of radical Christians is a minor miracle. However, his insights into their structure (usually addressed purely for its theological implications) are invaluable for the political theologian. In reading the account, we might think that S. K.’s eccentric insights are just another interesting footnote in his varied understanding of the Christian world around him - contra Christendom. However, as Eller points out, there is something more important here that we can pick out.
Having learned about the Dunkers in Benjamin Franklin’s autobiography29, S. K. reflected on their piety as such:
“Franklin (in his Leben und Schrijten v. Binzer, 2nd vol.) mentions a sect, the Dunkers, who would not compose a written creed—so as not to hinder themselves in free development. Franklin finds this very excellent, since otherwise sectaries distinguish themselves simply by matching their opponents. Now, 'the latest' can be true enough; but nevertheless, these sectaries are by this token also again expediti. This is inexplicably the case—however they may have succeeded on that score in forming a sect.30
Eller comments:
This statement is so compact as to be almost cryptic, but actually, S.K. saw much deeper into Brethrenism than did the reporter upon whom he depended for his information. In the first place, we already have seen that to be Christian expediti marks a very high ideal in S.K.'s thought, the same thing, really, as being a "caravan" church. His remark about sectaries simply matching their opponents is a report of Franklin's opinion and not necessarily an expression of his own. The next clause—"Now, 'the latest' can be true enough"—is where S.K. rejected and went beyond Franklin's interpretation. He had read enough of Franklin to identify him correctly as a free-thinking child of the Enlightenment who, although he might welcome Christian morality and ethics, would pride himself on his rational and "scientific" modernity and thus have little use for anything relating to dogma, tradition, and orthodoxy. Thus the aspect of non-creedalism that appealed to Franklin, S.K. saw, was the freedom to adopt current modes of thought, to keep one's religion in pace with the world. But of course, this decidedly was not the orientation of either S.K. or the Brethren; and S.K. was able to recognize a kindred spirit—in spite of Franklin's non-sectarian exegesis. Thus S.K.'s phrase must be taken to mean, "Now I suppose it is possible—although not very probable—that Franklin's implicit assumption about modern thinking being the truest could, at least occasionally, hit the mark. The possibility dare not be ruled out, although certainly the principle itself is a very unreliable one. But nevertheless, these Dunkers are not the modish friends of fashion, as Franklin would have it; they are expediti, freeing themselves from creeds not in order to follow the world but to follow in obedience the teachings of their Lord and Master and the leading of the Holy Spirit." What little S.K. did know of Brethren sectarianism, he seems to have seen as reflecting his own faith.31
The most important part here is that S. K. saw the anti-creedalism of the Dunkers key to their absolute freedom as Christians living against Christendom - they are not free in order to follow the world, but in the pursuit of obedience to the Lord! Their openness to new thoughts and new ways of approaching the faith allowed for greater freedom, greater introspection, and (most shockingly of all, no doubt, to those who are used to “church authority”) greater disagreement between individuals and individual collectives within the grander church.32 The example Eller outlines is that of foot-washing: in deep reflection on the gospels, the Brethren discovered there was room for varied interpretation in regards to feet washing. Mack Junior comments:
"Inasmuch as we have understood that some brethren have difficulties with regard to feetwashing [Since its inception the church had interpreted John 13:1-17 as a positive command and had practiced feetwashing as a part of its agape meal and communion service.], which Jesus has commanded to his disciples as if it had been performed between the supper and the breaking of bread. And because they think it not rightly done if the feet are washed before the meal, we felt moved in sincere love to give the reasons why we wash feet before the meal. At the same time, we would say that it is our belief and view that if a brother or any other person can in love and moderation instruct us according to the word of the Lord more fully and otherwise than is here pointed out, we would be ready to accept it not only in this point of feetwashing but in other matters as well. And we would not at all rest upon long usage but would let the word of the Lord be our only rule and guide.33
In this case, the open acceptance of the variety of whats that people do in the pursuit of faith in favour of discovering the correct how or why people are doing them is central to the Brethren ideal that Eller so expertly brought into conversation with S. K. - it is not a matter of the particular actions, but rather how those actions facilitate a proper faith and dedication to the Lord. As you may have noticed, my reader, few churches practice this ancient tradition in the modern day - but the inwardness to follow Christ in order to share love for others like he did is central to the thought of the Eller, Kierkegaard, and those unorthodox anarchists in the Brethren.
But how can foot-washing relate to radical politics? It starts (as all radical Christian politics should) in the very simplicity of what it means to be a Christian: simple faith. Dedication to Christ in a way which acknowledges the subject’s lesser status in regards to the Absolute (or, against the “negative concept” of the omniscient God34) is essential to the freedom of being constantly in error - the tolerance between individual communities in regards to a pious action shows tolerance for genuine Christian action within the faith. Disagreement is no longer an excuse for turning against the other as we have been shown that those who disagree can carry on towards the telos of salvation on differing paths. In essence, there is no essential Christian life - we are granted freedom in the body of Christ to resist sin, which leads us to remember those scriptural promises of freedom. Do we turn away from the Lord when He tells us: “Truly I tell you, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you”? (Matthew 17:20) No, we hold fast to the freedom promised us.
In that sense, I ask for a little more originality. The thought of regurgitating “the most important election of our lives” smacks me with a sense of worldly necessity, an avoidable “unavoidable choice” - if neither option is desirable because it lacks the form of the Christian faith, then Christians should have the courage to go beyond it. Where is our freedom towards obedience? Jacques Ellul springs to mind: that this is the state we find ourselves in means simply that the Christians have already failed - there is no good option aside from becoming Christians in deed today.35
A Protestant monastery?
Monastic Protestantism is an unusual but not nonexistent phenomenon. The number of Protestants who are open to the idea of monasteries is probably higher than the actual number of monastic adherents within the tradition, but any changes in regards to this tendency have been restricted to individual churches and usually in small groups that exist as long as the particular monks and/or nuns remain alive. This is, no doubt, an excellent PhD thesis for someone to pick up and explore the overlap between the Catholic and Orthodox traditions and “monasticism-curious” troops within the Protestant tradition, but that would go beyond what is essential for our investigation today, my reader. Instead, I want us to focus on what S. K. saw as necessary within “monastic-like movements” for Protestants within his contemporary society:
“There is no doubt that our age and Protestantism especially may need the monastery again or that it should exist. ‘The monastery’ is an essential dialectical element in Christianity; therefore we need to have it out there like a buoy at sea in order to see where we are, even though I myself would not enter it”36
Let’s zoom in on this aspect:
‘The monastery’ is an essential dialectical element in Christianity
Like the good not-quite-Hegelian he was, S. K. here establishes a dialectical relationship between two necessary factors: the general population, possibly pious, possibly inauthentic, and the monastic “buoy at sea”. The dialectic is set out in a way that shows us what we would actually desire in a revitalised or newly-established monastic tradition: a collection of Christians who relate to the world as “not of this world” (John 18:36) - there are Christians who act as an inspiration, a faulty telos for the rest of the world to see. As S. K. was deeply critical of genuine monasticism elsewhere in his work (for example, viewing monasticism as a paradoxical form of worldliness in its refusal to have outward expressions of faith simply because they are outward: “We do well to remind ourselves here that failing to link the thought of God to any outward action because of outward appearance brings us back to monasticism – for dabbling leads to nothing”37), we should be careful not erase all nuance here and fall into the tired trope that S. K. was really becoming a Catholic in his latter years - something which becomes more and more tenuous if you search for the words “papacy”, “papists”, and the likes in his published and unpublished works.
But what does this monastic dialectical element “do”? S. K. tells us:
…we need to have it out there like a buoy at sea in order to see where we are, even though I myself would not enter it.
As usual, S. K. is quick to affirm that his dilettantism will not be sacrificed for aesthetic reasons - but this shouldn’t be our focus. Instead, the phrase “buoy at sea” captures something that is both theologically and politically interesting - the neo-monastery is something that we yoke ourselves to in times of trouble when we need respite from battling against the crashing waves of “the world”. The “caravan” (as Eller referred to it) is not renouncing the world, but displaying open nonconformity to it38 through its refusal to entertain the demands of worldliness. In its negation of mass society, the neo-monastery acts as a point of conflict for the world to deal with, an “offense” that plays on the conscience of those who interact with it. Much like an honest reading of scripture, according to S. K.’s hermeneutics in For Self-Examination, the monastery should be the immovable “no!” that calls people to the Lord.
But what does this have to do with politics? The most basic answer, which certainly deserves a greater unpacking than this, is that the monastery itself acts as “the Christian community of neighbours”39 that acts against mass society - in developing a response which is Christian against the dialectic of worldly politics, we have created an anarchist response of the most unorthodox manner. The genuine community of neighbour-love understands its role in the world, what it means to go on als wäre nichts geschehen40 [as though nothing had happened] - the world cannot shake the roots of faith from its grounding when faith is held in a community that “carries and is carried”41 by its constituent members all working against the necessity of finitude (or, “what society is like”) towards the absolute freedom of divine infinite (or, by making free choices towards a particular telos)42. Instead of falling into either category of the liberal democratic enforced choice or, even worse, collapsing into despair due to the horror that is elicited from one particular choice forces the individual into an inauthentic choice for the other, i.e., crowd-formation, the individual lives against the entire concept of the universal dialectic. They are in a moment of “post-suspension ethics”43 and will not be forced to adopt another “objective” system of ethics in order to reconcile themselves to less than the Christian ideal. The monastery, the buoy of faithfulness, is an immovable “no!” against the pressure of (post)modernity.
Armed Transcendence - Towards a Kierkegaardian Anarchism
My aim here was not to necessarily disagree with Davenport’s aesthetic conclusion - as “with God all things are possible” (Matthew 19:26), a variety of political actions can be justified so long as they can fit with the “grammar” of Christianity44. However, the temptation of this phrase, especially within a Kierkegaardian framework of freedom, is the reduce the liberty of Christianity to an empty-handed “say-nothingness” of aesthetic choice. The double danger of understanding the power of faith, as so often is the case when we begin to reflect deeply on these matters, is that “all things are lawful for me, but all things are not expedient” (1 Corinthians 10:23) - we are not Stirnerites, who drag us out over the “70,000 fathoms of the deep” and abandon us to a post-Calvinist moral solipsism that justifies all things to all people. The Christian exists within a framework that is logical (if not always reasonable) and historical (if not always reliable), meaning that certain choices are verboten simply because they contradict the grammar of Christian thought. We have “contours” to our existence which facilitate the gift and task of upbuilding.
In that sense, while I like Davenport’s very analytical framing of a Kierkegaardian approach to political reflection, it is disappointing that he didn’t follow it through until the end. His work loses courage in the moment of choice, in the false, self-constructed dialectic of “faceless right-wing party one” and “faceless right-wing party two”. The implication that all other options are quietism could be seen as a nasty trick (although, to extend this critique as far as that in regards to Davenport himself would be inappropriate), one which relies on the idea that the options before us are the correct Christian options which must be taken in some way. “No!”, says the Kierkegaardian rebuttal; the individual exists within the world, but is not of it. There are other options available to us, there are always other options available to us, including ones which are deeply trying but deeply faithful at the same time. In this sense, the Kierkegaardian monastery45 is another option for the faithful - against the dialectic, against the world, against the mass society of liberal democracy.
The Religious Confusion of the Present Age Illustrated by Magister Adler as a Phenomenon: A Mimical Monograph, p. 14, P. Minor, edited by S. Kierkegaard. To clarify my position: “The premise-author has no need to communicate himself, because essentially he has nothing to communicate; indeed, he lacks precisely the essential, the conclusion, the meaning in relation to the presuppositions.” In short, he is a “fad chaser”.
Here, we can identify the role of the “essential-author”, Ibid., p. 15. To illustrate the point: “The essential author is essentially a teacher, and the person who is not or could not essentially be a real author is essentially a learner. - Rather than nourishing (which every essential author is; the difference is only in relation to gifts and scope), every premise-author consumes.” I will let you look around for these wonderful creatures in your own time.
Politics of Exodus: Kierkegaard’s Ethics of Responsibility, p. 3, M. Dooley
For example, Jacques Ellul’s career, beginning with The Technological Society, is almost a love letter to S. K., expanding on those same socio-philosophical insights made in A Literary Review: Two Ages - giving birth to the field of “the philosophy of technology”, alongside Neil Postman and the ever elusive but obviously Kierkegaardian Heidegger.
p. 5-31
"The Crowd and Populism: The Insights and Limits of Kierkegaard on the Profaity of Politics", p. 9, J. J. Davenport, from Truth is Subjectivity: Kierkegaard and Political Theology, ed. S. W. Perkins
Theological Existence Today!, p. 9, K. Barth
Politics of Exodus: Søren Kierkegaard's Ethics of Responsibility, p. 4, M. Dooley
Politics of Exodus: Søren Kierkegaard's Ethics of Responsibility, p. 5, M. Dooley
"The Crowd and Populism: The Insights and Limits of Kierkegaard on the Profaity of Politics", p. 7, J. J. Davenport, from Truth is Subjectivity: Kierkegaard and Political Theology, ed. S. W. Perkins
Ibid.
Ibid., p. 8
Ibid., p. 9
Ibid.
Politics of Exodus: Søren Kierkegaard's Ethics of Responsibility, p. xxii, M. Dooley
Kierkegaard and Radical Discipleship, p. 312 V. Eller
Ibid., p. 350
Ibid., p. 305
"Kierkegaard's Sociology", p. 137, M. Westphal
"The Gospel of Sufferings: Christian Discourses", from Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits, S. Kierkegaarad, p. 318
Attentive readers will no doubt make the connection between recent real-life events and the initial reluctance I had in sharing this essay.
“The Crowd and Populism: The Insights and Limits of Kierkegaard on the Profaity of Politics”, p. 23-24, J. J. Davenport, from Truth is Subjectivity: Kierkegaard and Political Theology, ed. S. W. Perkins
Dear reader, note that the writer at this point vomited in their mouth - as if what we are crying out for is an ever grander swathe of individuals who know but don’t understand the terms ad hominem and the like. Davenport exposes his deeply liberal understanding of education in that the secret formula for getting the right society is simply a matter of rolling out the right classes. Logic and “fallacies” are very low down the list in terms of practical application as well as a largely aesthetic response to a deeply ethical problem - in turn requiring a religious response.
“The Crowd and Populism: The Insights and Limits of Kierkegaard on the Profaity of Politics”, p. 30-31, J. J. Davenport, from Truth is Subjectivity: Kierkegaard and Political Theology, ed. S. W. Perkins
Although actually “post-political”, if we are willing to follow his logic through to its conclusion.
In the Frankfurtian sense.
Note that with Starmer’s recent election, my reader, the writer intends to escape the inevitable infinite resignation that comes from witnessing a Labour victory brought on my mass Tory exodus - not Labour’s inspiration. Time will tell whether this scepticism is correct.
"States of Mind in the Strife of Suffering" in Christian Discourses, p. 118, S. Kierkegaard
Talk about a strange mode for theological edification.
Papier X4 A73
Kierkegaard and Radical Discipleship, p. 324-325, V. Eller
Kierkegaard and Radical Discipleship, p. 324 V. Eller
Rights and Ordinances, A. Mack, Jr. published, S. Sauer; quoted in Kierkegaard and Radical Discipleship, p. 84, V. Eller
Comment on "Kierkegaard's Attack on Hegel", M. Weston, from Thought and Faith in the Philosophy of Hegel, p. 140, ed. J. Walker
Violence: Reflections from a Christian Perspective, p. 56 J. Ellul
JP III, 2750
Quoted in “Re-radicalizing Kierkegaard: An alternative to Religiousness C in light of an investigation into the teleological suspension of the ethical”, J. Mulder, Jr., from Continental Philosophy Review 35, p. 314
Kierkegaard and Radical Discipleship, p. 229 V. Eller
Politics of Exodus: Søren Kierkegaard's Ethics of Responsibility, p. xxii, M. Dooley
Theological Existence Today!, p. 9, K. Barth
Kierkegaard and Radical Discipleship, p. 350 V. Eller
Politics of Exodus: Søren Kierkegaard's Ethics of Responsibility, p. 18, M. Dooley
Selves in Discord and Resolve: Kietkeguard’s Moral-Religious Psychology from “EitherlOr” to “Sickness unto Death”, E. Mooney, p. 46-47
"Kierkegaard, Wittgenstein, and a Method of "Virtue Ethics"", R. C. Roberts, from Kierkegaard in Post/Modernity, p. 148
Which, if he had lived to hear the phrase, would no doubt have caused him to vomit in his mouth.