Christ Contra the Crowd

Overcoming the Crowd as the individual

One of the most frequent errors people make in discussing Kierkegaard’s solutions to “the Crowd” is assuming that he was quickly dismissive of both the aesthetic and the ethical “spheres” of his anthropology in favour of the ethical-religious. In a sense, we would be correct to say that S. K. did view ethical socio-sphere as a permanent solution to the problem of nihilist crowd-formation; in another sense, however, it would be an error to suggest he held a kind of revolutionary dualism, like some kind of theo-Marxist, where the ethical-religious Christians are opposed by literally everyone else. The temptation to exalt this is palpable: firstly, it allows us to show S. K. as a religious extremist, driven by his wish for an authoritarian seizure of power under a Christian state that fits with his imaginings¹; secondly, it allows us to reject S. K. as a quietist that would take up the faith in withdrawing from the world completely, similar to the Amish. However, this is the case and these two charges can firmly be rejected.

Instead of viewing the aesthetic, ethical, and ethical-religious existence-spheres as sequential “stages on life’s way”², S. K. was presenting them as modes of existence which defend against the realm enemy: the shadow-existence³, the inversion of the existence-spheres when they collapse into nihilism. This is important: “the Crowd” is not the widespread adoption of aesthetic values because aesthetic values are still, indeed, values! Instead, contra aesthetic values lie the despair of indecision and contra the ethical lies the despair of conformity. Of course, S. K. did definitely believe that a Christian ethical-religious protest against the world was the only way to protect against collapsing into nihilism. But understanding what he meant by this (along with some help from the Kierkegaardian par excellence, Jacques Ellul) requires some nuance, some reflection, and an openness to the possibility of surrendering teleological rewards in order to avoid crowd-formation.

The Collapse and “The Crowd”

Understanding “the Crowd”, or rather, overcoming crowd-formation, requires us to understand what S. K. meant by his “existence-spheres”. These are not stages which follow on from one another⁴ (which would make the notion of a “collapse” nonsensical), but rather loci for different forms of life in which an individual can affirm their individuality. Every “existence-sphere”, although obviously categorically different from one another, is unified in that it describes how an individual relates to themselves as an individual: it is entirely possible to live out the aesthetic ideal, it is entirely possible to live out the ethical ideal, and it is entirely possible to live out the ethical-religious ideal as well. There is a bad habit of some interpreters of S. K. to presuppose a Kierkegaardian “voice” behind each text, as if S. K. was simply presenting cases of “bad lives” that we could reject before engaging with them in a meaningful way. A kind of literary “straw man rogue’s gallery”, where there is an obvious winner. As pointed out by both Maughan⁵ and Schönbaumsfeld⁶ point out, this wouldn’t be “miauetic”, acting as the Socratic midwife in the birth of authentic, subjective ideas, but rather bludgeoning the reader over the head with scripture until they submit to the Word on an aesthetic level - if that was the aim of S. K.’s authorship, then Kaufmann is vindicated.

Instead, we might want to examine what S. K. meant by “collisions” and “the offense”. When we have made a commitment to a certain locus of existence, we find that there are certain pathways cut off from us: the aesthetic mourns his inability to make long-lasting commitments when he finds a commitment worth committing long-lastingly, like Heraclitan who finds that there is a river he can step into twice, a point of light that illuminates the rest of existence and acts as a subjectively-held “ground” for values; the ethicist mourns his inability to “move” from his adopted sets of values, like the Eleatic who has noted that the world is simply one and that motion is an illusion, yet he is mocked by the deranged man pacing before him and proving that we can indeed move, indeed that the ethicist is moved by reality in art, love, politics, and morality; the ethical-religious man mourns the hardships that lie before him (1 Thessalonians 3:3), aware that eternal truth puts him in sharp distinction with “the demands of the times” in contingency and makes his life forfeit to the will of God and the movement of the Spirit in the body of Christ. And nothing can rationally or logically move us from one sphere to the other (as well noted by Kemp in his short article on repetition⁷, where Judge Wilhelm’s weaselly trickery in declaring the ethical pursuit of marriage as the aesthetic par excellence in his moralist assault on “A” is really nothing but a conflation and muddying of the “existence-spheres”, not an analogy between the two⁸), but rather we are “coerced by reality” into falling out of one sphere and into another by a collision. This collision could be the despair of wanting to make a long-lasting commitment to the other in marriage, the desire to “move” in artistic or romantic expression, or the infinite negation of Christ (“the offense” of the gospel) in his eternal “no!” to humanity. This collision, the dialectical relation of the individual to something external to him, is the way in which the individual’s picture of the world becomes distorted and incoherent under the introduction of new information – to those of you familiar with Wittgenstein, this will no doubt ring a few bells.

Source

While these are varied and disparate approaches to understanding the life of the individual, it does present us with an almost obvious fact that is often overlooked in philosophy – especially radical philosophy: individuals lead very varied and disparate lives which cannot be accounted for with simple models of, say, economic determinism or nationalist abstractions. Instead, we are forced to recognize the deep, meaningful variance in life qua existence and becoming, overcoming overly simplistic models of theo-philosophical anthropology. There is nothing essential uniting the “spheres” together aside from a will to authentic expression of one’s individuality, which certainly leads to problems in the life of the individual regardless of which sphere correlates to the agent in particular. This is important for S. K. as it is not the authentic life of the individual which leads to “the Crowd”, but rather the collapse. In the loss of authenticity and the confusion that follows, individuals fail to make meaningful connections to one another and can no longer drive towards teleological goals or remain “grounded”⁹ in relation to their “form of life”. In that way, although it would require a short book to even behind broaching the issue of what “authenticity” actually means for S. K. and those who came after him, the biggest enemy is not any particular driven view (up to and including Nazism, it should be noted), but rather the nihilism of indecision¹⁰.

Aesthetic Collapse and Despair

As outlined elsewhere, “the Unhappiest One” is the one who cannot find rest in this life. But who is the person that is most restless? The aesthete, the individual who is haunted by a fear of missing out, the individual who wants to taste everything – everything – that life has to offer. In viewing life as a smorgasbord of experiences that are waiting to be experienced, the individual has no real consistency of character outside of their “desire to desire”¹¹. While fleeting and impulsive, it is not a form of despair (or, at least, not a heightened form of despair) on its own – it is merely the expression of life as something which should be enjoyed, which requires the individual to be flexible, open to life, and ready to enjoy the fruits of this world as they appear to us. It should be little surprise to you, my reader, that this can probably be identified as the cultural ethos of liberalism and modernity at large, with the age of consumption being the widespread cultural appropriation of a need for experiences. While this view of life may be best understood in the philosophies of Epicurus, Stirner, and Sartre, we may also draw an analogy with a particular figure of aesthetic expression who may Kierkegaardian scholars (rightfully) draw away from in order to avoid the embarrassing and concerning conflation that appeared in the 1930s and 40s: Hitler.

As explicated in the masterful “Toward a Kierkegaardian Understanding of Hitler, Stalin, and the Cold War”¹², the Nazi drive to “grab out” for power was one of aesthetic expression. It did not matter what was claimed or if there was any particular reason for any particular claim; all that mattered was that there was a “show of power” which allowed for the German people to see that their particular mythological understanding of reality was vindicated in a way which could be seen and appreciated. When we boil the Nazi ideology down to its most basic, says Bellinger, there is a simple demand for more, regardless of the economic, political, or very real human losses that accompany it. In that way, we might even agree with the Marxists that fascism is simply liberalism in despair – it is nothing more than consumption completely unyoked from the individual and turned into a nationwide “Crowd” that exists only to consume and assimilate. Needless to say, this sprawling expansion, much like the life of a would-be Don Quixote or Don Giovanni in old age and no longer capable of their delightful appropriation of adventure and romance in their human frailty, must come to an end – and with that, the collapse.

In this state of despair, the aesthete loses themselves to the pressures of reality – we cannot live as eternal womanizers, as eternal intrepid adventurers, or eternal fascist colonizers because, eventually, our powers run out. Set free to rampage over the world as best they can within their limited time here, the aesthete faces the curtain call, the looming danger of apocalypse and death, as an end to movement. The Eleatics have been proven correct: “When death comes, the word is: Up to here, not one step further; then it is concluded, not a letter is added...”¹³. Of course, it would be far too reductive to simply view the remorseless scythe of the Reaper as the only collision of the aesthete to face – in each of these samples of aesthetic demands, the collision presents itself in the terrifying realisation that the game will eventually stop; that there is decay ahead of the power; that there will be the apocalypse for the individual or the collective before the aesthete is ready to acknowledge it (if they would ever acknowledge it at all).

The aesthete is broken when they recognize that they have a variety of "firsts" in life - but nothing beyond that¹⁴.

Ethical Collapse and Conformity

The ethical, then, seems to be the obvious choice to take. For whatever reason we wish not to live like Don Giovanni or Adolf Hitler (and there are many reasons), we will be forced into the other locus of existence – the rigidity of a mortal “no!” against the “coercion of reality”. This is a far safer position to be in, of course, as it allows the individual to flourish as an individual within reality as a consistent moral character that has clearly defined contours and characteristics. We avoid the issue of being like “jellyfish”, in the knowledge that “you have never practised in the right direction...”¹⁵ – a “feeling individuality” that is merely reactive to the externalities of life, only ever making a movement when “poked” by whatever is around them, only capable of establishing themselves when there is opposition¹⁶. In a sceptical sympathetic turn to the nihilist bravado of the “virtual right”, we might even say that “the ethical” is established to chase away the temptation of allowing “a desire for desire” to descend into the wishy-washy nothingness of a politics of “the Current Thing”. Please note, my reader, that this bravado is simply just a negation of “the Crowd” and, in turn, simply the Anti-Crowd forming under our noses. Never mistake virtual activism (reactionary or revolutionary) for authenticity.

Logically, it follows, that rejecting the boundless and formless existence of the aesthete is the way to avoid the collapse into despair. While you are partially right, we should correct ourselves to be as specific as possible: it not avoiding the collapse into despair, but rather avoiding a collapse into despair. In faithful Kierkegaardian terms, while the aesthete is destroyed in the “despair not to be oneself”, either running away from the realisation that the self shines through the desperate attempts to avoid it or the violent bursting forth of an attempt at self-overcoming¹⁷ - either the collapse into a helpless meekness or a collapse into Nietzschean-like grasping for becoming something other than what we are. And this is achieved in commitment to specific ideals – a “jumping off the fence” on the matters which force us to “jump off the fence”. Iconically, the issue of marriage is key to the early thoughts of dear Søren: the aesthete’s fear of missing out can’t be reconciled in the “mediocrity” of a “middle way”¹⁸ – he must choose, whether to marry or not marry. This is the crucible in which the ethical man is formed: by choosing to marry, remain married, and commit to his wife, the self-righteous Judge Wilhelm is all too aware of how ethical he is, how wonderful he is. The duty of love to the other is not "not just a sad backward glance", but an activity which he repeats as something he enjoys¹⁹.

In predictable Kierkegaardian subterfuge into the deepest recesses of the human soul, we find here a glimpse of S. K.’s own method: it doesn’t matter which choices an individual makes (at least, in the broadest sense), but rather that the choices “that individual” makes are choices which do not attempt to ignore the either/or – they recognize the incommensurability of certain choices in life. And this point relates to the individual’s ability to recognize themselves as free and responsible in relation to their moral choices in life. Although Judge Wilhelm cycles through hierarchical and historical factors for free will, reasoned decisions and contemplation on reasoned decisions open us up to identifying new volitional and motivational states²⁰ - at the root of it, the ethical man is forged in the reasoned decision to become something, to become “himself”. And this choice is not “floating free” in the flux of reality, but provides the individual with the possibility to create a historical character that does not simply ebb and flow with the “externalities” around them. Some things are cut off forever and some things are grasped with both hands. Reality becomes dichotomous – there are necessary contours to our lives; known goods, known evils, and a distinction between the two²¹. The anxiety of choice is overcome by assessing our ability to have been ethical in the past when choices have become apparent and then the reflexive role this plays in the choices that must be made in the present.

But here is where we find the problem – and on two fronts. Firstly, the problem of the anxiety of choice isn’t restricted to the past (where the choices are already made) and the present (where this choice must be made) – indeed, there is an open and unknowable future ahead of us that offers us no reprieve. Resurrecting the thing-in-itself, S. K. cleverly makes the Hegelian dialectic into something which is genuinely necessary: the gap between the “I” in the present and the “I” in the future is an unbroachable distance that I can’t make guarantees about²². Showing his clear Humean influence, S. K. sticks a knife in the side of every Hegelian, every Marxist, and every anarchist who would dare show the proof they hold in the crystal ball of their theory: you do not know the future and nothing about the past will tell you about the future. The philosopher is wearing the emperor’s new clothes: historicism is the first and last refuge of the coward who insists that he understands history, has the formula of history at hand, and can now predict the future with this knowledge. What is genuinely only a hope is dressed up as “scientific”²³. We are always justified in invoking the problem of induction against these pseudoscientific historical theories – especially in regard to the isolated subject. The unknowability of the future is unknowable for “that individual” to the extent that even death is a possibility at every horrible tick of the clock²⁴, so there is no comfort in a moral theory which attempts to explain what will happen. The future remains the unspun thread that still needs to be broached.

And this fear, this horrible realisation that I could always abandon my principles, destroy the historical character that I have created. Some thinkers, such as Stirner, even considered this as a positive – I can always reinvent myself whenever I want²⁵. But the ethical man, staring this possibility in its gaping maw, notes that the possibility for unethical action – and from here, collapse.

And in this collapse, we find the most terrifying prospect of all: not outright despair or churning self-deception, but conformity. No one knows how unethical they are quite like the ethicist²⁶, therefore the possibility of a wrong choice, the concerning chance that there is a sin which will go unrecognized, unsettles the thinker until the very choice to choose oneself is a potential lie. The authentic self-choice collapses: the mass man appears. Instead of the authentic choice to say “yes!” to life by providing contours to existence, the ethicist collapses into a nothing, a figure in “the Crowd”, who flees into the comfort of mass society in order to hide from the reality of existence. The reality being: there is no formula to ethics, no handbook for morality, and nowhere to hide when the only metric is the self against God.

The ethicist is broken, but probably appears perfectly functional, by the nature of reality laughing at his formula. The choice to choose oneself is insufficient when we remember that we are moving into the future, being washed in the thing-in-itself and that there is nowhere to hide from that unknowability. Nowhere to hide because “the Crowd” does not conceal, but annihilates.

Christ as love, faith, and hope

Now that we have seen the possibility of the collapse of the aesthetic and the ethical in some sample “forms of life”. It makes for grim reading: in trying to hold to an authentic sense of self-expression, we risk the loss of characteristic coherence and the looming threat of time as a fundamentally undermining aspect of our lives; in trying to hold to an ethical rigidity which sets the contours of right and wrong, we risk the loss of self below the fusty abstractions of an imposed system of ethics that forget the “I” exists in actu as opposed to in abstracta. The Kantian dualism is shown to be insufficient for a genuine expression of self, with each path leading us to a loss of self, despair, and inauthenticity. To say that S. K. may have agreed with his contemporary pessimistic thinkers²⁷ might be underselling it, but he also rejected the possibility of “release” in aestheticism due to a loss of self. In either direction, there is no freedom for the individual – we are either a despairing grasp out at reality and incapable of presenting ourselves as a coherent subject or a mass man doomed to conform to society without the violent “bursting forth” of the self qua subject.

But this, of course, is not where S. K. ended his analysis. He was no stranger to the terror of existence and that creating a consistent character comes with the double danger of both the despair of losing the self and the collapse into the culture of the mass man. No matter which way we look, there seems to be no path which offers us a reprieve from the terror of reality – we are left in absolute, infinite resignation that life, in its challenges, is a riddle we cannot solve. And that would be enough to take up a position of nihilism – if we were to forget what held us aloft in those moments before the collapse, what gave shape and meaning to life before we saw “beyond” the restrictions of our condition before we saw that we were out on the 70,000 fathoms of the deep and couldn’t see what held our feet up.

But here is the beauty of the ethical-religious: repetition. One of the most difficult aspects of S. K.’s thought, only outlined in an often overlooked book released on the same day as the infamous Fear and Trembling, is understanding what he meant by repetition and how it formed the basis of his critique of Plato, Hegel, and anyone else who would dare to stand between the life of the faithful and God Almighty. The “author” of that book was Constantin Constantius, a psychologist who was nominally determined to “stay in place”, like a cerebral Zeno. Let’s take a look at what Vigilius Haufniensis, a different pseudonym, applauded as the perfect definition of repetition:

“[R]epetition is the interest [Interesse] of metaphysics, and also the interest upon which metaphysics gets stranded; repetition is the solution [Løsnet] contained in every life-view [ethisk Anskuelse]; repetition is conditio sine qua non for every issue of dogmatics.”²⁸

As any reasonable person with an interest in philosophy, you are no doubt now completely enlightened by this practically analytical, concise, and clear explanation from Constantius.

Let’s talk in clearer terms: Kierkegaard perceived metaphysics to be clearly and totally distinct from “the existential” (which seems reasonable enough). But, in an effort to keep that distinction actually distinct, this required the issue of recognising that the perceived “dualism” of aestheticism and ethics forces one to recognise that life is not like logic. Much like the aesthete falls apart in the baselessness of abstract freedom, the ethicist is gripped too tightly by abstract principles. By forcing life into an abstraction, it is already death; instead, life is a vacillation between the “Herclitan” life of expression and the “Eleatic” life of responsibility. “Philosophy is perfectly right in saying that life must be understood backward. But then one forgets the other clause—that it must be lived forward”²⁹ – by attempting to avoid long-lasting commitment or by forcing the self into the iron cage of ethics, we attempt to make life understandable forwards.

But what does Christianity offer us here that is so superior to either the aesthetic or the ethical life? It seems strange to suggest that a religious tradition, with its clerical structure, codex of moral laws, and the unavoidable submission to a deity. This sounds very similar to the ethical, in a way, in that the individual gains principles which shape their life – but they are then restricted in the “no!” of the law.

But, this isn’t so. Before we finally unpack the methodology of Kierkegaardian repetition, we should turn our attention to another person who S. K. wasn’t:

A human being is spirit. But what is spirit? Spirit is the self. But what is the self? The self is a relation that relates itself to itself or is the relation's relating itself to itself in the relation; the self is not the relation but is the relation's relating itself to itself. A human being is a synthesis of the infinite and the finite, of the temporal and the eternal, of freedom and necessity, in short, a synthesis. A synthesis is a relation between two. Considered in this way, a human being is still not a self.

In the relation between two, the relation is the third as a negative unity, and the two relate to the relation and in the relation to the relation; thus under the qualification of the psychical the relation between the psychical and the physical is a relation. If, however, the relation relates itself to itself, this relation is the positive third, and this is the self.³⁰

Hopefully, my reader, the gentle, accessible Anti-Climacan prose has gifted you the liberty of the Christian faith. If you need to have this unpacked a little more, however, read on.

The idea of human qua spirit is key here – spirit, for Kierkegaard, was not a synonym for the immaterial soul that appeared in earlier thinkers. Instead, S. K. made a stern case for monism[2]. The relation in the quote above (or, rather, the “relation relat[ing] itself to itself”) is the relation between the self qua body and the self qua soul, the finite and the infinite, the necessary and the free. This seemingly dualist understanding of the self is actually a bold statement of monism – the human subject is neither body nor soul, but rather a synthesis of the two and this synthesis must be held in an active, existing relation between our physical and psychical aspects. Of course, this is all very not-quite-metaphysical, not-quite-psychological; it is difficult to make much sense of what is being said here without a more concrete explanation.

Remember that the two aspects of S. K.’s self are body and soul which are linked, finitude and infinitude which are linked: every person is both capable of the possibility of infinite love, as a reflection of divine love, and the potential for eternal salvation, but restricted to their mortal form, which decays and dies in this world. Despair and collapse occur when we try to favour one over the other: a desire to instantly be with God, to “be grasped by a higher power”, to act as a divine conduit on earth right now is akin to attempting to escape our finitude in this life. In that way, we fall into the same despair as the aesthete – the terrible realisation that we cannot overcome our physical selves and we are, indeed, restricted in this world. Evans, in his assessment of S. K.’s psychological analyses, made a parallel here between the life of excessive infinitude and schizophrenia³¹ - there is a complete loss of self in “imagination”, an utter inability to tell the fact of divine intercession from superstitious overreaction³². But, on the other hand, we can’t go the other way either: hard physicalism strips life of its necessary striving towards “the beyond”, a telos beyond the individual themselves. With a sufficiently reductive view of the human being, an anthropology of “a walking bag of meat”, we find that there is no reason to go on as we view the world in facts alone; values become arbitrary, irrelevant, or just something of a bygone age. Evans, with a finger of the pulse of the modern age, makes comparisons with major depressive disorder – or, depression³³. Without values (not even a single value!) that reflex back onto the individual as a “something outside the self”, we are left in our finitude with nothing to look forward to, nothing to aspire to, only simple consumption and production. In that sense, S. K. no doubt would have had a dim view of Marxism, even more so than his already dim view of non-Marxist socialism in his own contemporary life. Again, we can make parallels to the ethicist – the rigidity of his view of life means there is no possibility of movement, no possibility of breaking out of a depressive cycle. But, obviously, there is a third option: how does this synthesis work and how does it relate to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit?

In the synthesis, we run up against “the edge of reason”. In attempting to live out infinitude, we find that we are not infinite. In attempting to live out omnipotence, we find that we are not all-powerful. In attempting to live out omniscience, we find that we do not know everything – including, possibly, the immediate future. Here emerge the “negative concepts” of Kierkegaard’s thought³⁴, where the human individual finds themselves in relation to the universal and needs to appropriate it into the particular. For those of you who are more comfortable with criticism of S. K. than S. K. himself, you may have seen this described as an “anti-ethics” stance – something utterly incomprehensible for anyone who has spent any time dealing with the work itself. S. K. does not call us to abandon ethics but to recognize that there is an individual within any and all moral choices that must become the focal point of the decision. And, although Sartrean readings of S. K. are extremely popular, they miss the point – there is a valid thought available to us, we can cut through the cynicism and the “fact” of relativism to identify the genuine truth. The most offensive aspect of this to this modern age is that the truth is not humanist – it is merely appropriate by humanity but comes from God. Of course, none of this is possible until one is ready to accept that they are neither the radical subjectivity of the Lord nor an inert piece of matter without freedom - we are restricted, but free; we are incapable, yet capable; we are a contradiction, mirroring the divine in our contradictory nature of the analogy between essence and existence. Of course, still, for S. K., God is the infinitely qualitatively different - this parallel should not serve as the root of a natural theology, which, in turn, just gives us a new anthro-theology, but rather gives us the baseline in our understanding of what we are capable of and how that relates to our task from the Lord³⁵.

As mentioned, the recognition of the united duality of humanity is key to understanding the freedom in Christ. Running up against the “negative concept” of omnipotence, omniscience, and omnibenevolence (along with all the other attributes of God that S. K. was prepared to accept), we find that we are always understood negatively. And this, in turn, is the root of S. K.’s pessimism and freedom: for all of our actions, we are always wrong in relation to God - it is unthinkable for the maximally great being to be incorrect on any certain principle, so how precisely can we suppose that we would be greater than God? Even in God’s most reconciliatory moments of the Old Testament such as I Samuel 8, in granting a king to Israel God has seen His people turn from Him - and, in turn, the chaos that ensues. As Judge Wilhelm reminded his young counterpart, we are reminded of “the edifying thought that against God we are always wrong”³⁶. This sets the boundary for the human, so we are now corrected in our stance on the world: our duty is to follow God and follow Him closely.

But this, of course, is not real advice!³⁷ We are asking people to take on as normative values something we just described as “negative concepts”, a kind of sceptical displeasure with one’s own actions. If we were to actually “follow God” (and this phrase needs a million and one qualifications), then we would find ourselves adhering to legalistic ethical commitments - but this fails to capture the spirit of scripture and reintroduces the problem of rigid moral systems. In that way, “follow God” needs to be more specific and more concrete. And God qua concrete object of our faith is, of course, Christ. Instead of the “awe-inspired” religiosity of Schleiermacher, S. K. calls us to something far greater in the real transfiguration as the follower of the Lord. As explored in Marrs’ brilliant dissertation³⁸, Kierkegaard is not simply telling us to revert to a slavish adherence to abstract rules but saying that the dialectical tension of the freedom of the aesthete and the necessity of the ethicist is found only in the ethical-religious solution to life: in Christianity empowered by the pattern, paradigm, and prototype of Christ Himself.

In an effort to avoid Schleiermacherian vagueness, we should clarify Climacus’ position on Religiousness A and Religiousness B, the root of this dialectical tension. Religiousness A is a kind of “general religiosity”, a general appeal to feelings of the supernatural and “the great beyond” which humanity can experience from time to time. This watershed moment, as the liberal theologians saw it, was in feeling “grasped by something higher”, being driven towards the divine in a way which paves the way to genuine transcendence in the individual’s complete submission to God. This, one can assume, is quite a common image of the religious zealot, who feels that they are emptied of “the self” and feel some kind of divine power taking hold of them and guiding them towards greatness. Indeed, this is commonly understood as the main reading of Abraham’s view of his life in the Binding of Isaac (Genesis 22) where God has lifted any and all ethical obligations from Abraham’s shoulders in order for him to become a grim harbinger of a capricious divine will that is beyond his understanding and he must simply hand his son over in an effort to remain faithful to the Lord. Not so much a faith of intellectual transcendence, but “empowered” sola fide to overcome the self in the destruction of the self. For those of you who have a partial understanding of S. K.’s work, this might even be a particular understanding of the Melancholic Dane’s oeuvre³⁹ - however, that is certainly not the intention of Climacus nor Kierkegaard. Instead, the “general religiosity” of Religiousness A is attempt to escape the divinely-rooted obligation to God simply because He is God that typifies the greatness of the prophets and is tantamount to the genuine transfiguration of the individual that S. K.’s anthropology bullishly refuses to budge on: we are capable of not only becoming ardent servants of the Lord, but we can also embrace our servitude in a way that the call to become a Christian is not one of Infinite Resignation but of wholehearted and impassioned commitment to do what is right for the right reasons - because God implores us and because Christ has shown us. The Brunnerian “point of contact” seems to be rooted in this Kierkegaardian view of the Christian subject: it is not enough to simply be gripped by a higher power, but we are also called to grasp back onto the Lord in order for genuine upbuilding - where this dialectical tension in the self provides the tension of possibility and necessity required for a consistent character that can undergo upbuilding and only in religious consciousness, represented as a balanced tension of necessity and possibility, can a true repetition occur⁴⁰ - to take us from either the despairing randomness of the aesthete or the legalistic faux-restriction of the ethicist into the journey of genuine self-discovery via the light of God that shows us both where we are and where we could, no, shall be!⁴¹ Although Merold Westphal, an eminent Kierkegaard scholar and vigorous theologian in his own right, has identified this tension as the sign of a new stage, a “Religiousness C”⁴², I think there is more to the story here.

A radical re-reading of “the teleological suspension of the ethical”

Westphal, in presenting his understanding of the supposed Kierkegaardian Religiousness C, offered us a very common and very contemporary “overcorrective” of the Kierkegaard story that it is difficult to escape in current scholarship, it seems: an insistence that Kierkegaard was far more indebted to Hegel than the first generation of Kierkegaard scholars realised (which is true) and that, really, there is a hidden Hegelianism that runs through all of S. K.’s thought that merely needs teasing out from behind sharp but superficial critiques of the German Idealist par excellence (which I contend is false, along with J. Mulder amongst other thinkers). In insisting that Kierkegaard was “showing and not saying” a new hidden, almost Gnostic stage of Religiousness that lay beyond the purview of “general religiosity” and absolute, passionate commitment, we “go beyond” Kierkegaard in the same way that Kierkegaard qua Sartre, Kierkegaard qua MacIntyre, or even Kierkegaard qua Christian Nietzsche interpreters have so often done - we have turned him into the most embarrassing thing of all, a Hegelian! If we were to follow this line of thought, we might feel that Pattison’s (partial) assessment of S. K. as a “neo-Gnostic”⁴³ is somewhat accurate if we are to follow Westphal into the unsayable beyond. However, this doesn’t seem to be the case to me and betrays a genuine universality (albeit a potentially unrealizable one) of S. K.’s thought which drives into the heart of his eternal obsession - the role and life of the subject in particular in relation to God as the absolute and the gift and task of life. In that way, Mulder has offered us a particularly useful re-reading of Kierkegaard that helps us understand his work sans pseudo-Gnostic drippings.

Before we can assess how this relates to the particular self, a note on the Kierkegaardian method: the gap between the human self and the divine. Although possibly more well-known due to the garbled retelling at the hands of Albert Camus in The Myth of Sisyphus, the idea of “the absurd” and absurdist dualism does sit at the root of S. K.’s thought. In attempting to collapse the gap between the subject and the object (or, rather, the path by which the subject “works his way out of his objectivity”⁴⁴), S. K. is showing us a key aspect of becoming the self. The “negative concepts” of God’s omnibenevolence, omnipotence, and omniscience act as discipline for the Christian: in recognizing that I am not omnipotent, I can realize that I am not God and there lie things beyond my strength; in recognizing that I am not omniscient, I can realize that I am not God and there lie things beyond my knowledge; in recognizing that I am not perfect (in whichever way we attempt to define that), I can realize that I am not God and there are things which lie beyond me. The pressure is lifted - no longer does the plight of the proletariat or the immiserated rest solely on the shoulders of a single political interest group⁴⁵ as there is always a possibility of the “beyond” our capabilities. In realizing that God, in particular His promise of salvation, is the engine of history, the Christian radical does not need a perfect theory - the pressure is lifted from us and we can act without the buck stopping with us, our party, or whatever organization we might feel is necessary⁴⁶.

Of course, “not-powerful”, “not-knowledgeable”, “not-good”, etc. is no basis for positive thought and actual lived existence. It is very easy to fall into the trap of adopting the Christian doctrines and ethical postulates as absolute negations of secularity - God’s eternal “no!” against the relativity of human history. But this is insufficient (and cowardly, to boot) says S. K.: we must “go beyond” this coy and evasive scepticism and step out as active Christians actively being Christians in the world. In that sense, we cannot rely on an abstract, negative image of God the Father (and there are analogies to be made here with the Barthian Nicht-Gott) to give us a course to live out our lives; instead, we must turn to the Son. Christ is the “pattern, paradigm, and prototype” for humanity in that his life is perfect beyond our capabilities; if we are to discover the path for proper faith realized as Godly works (the “inward-outward agreement” of the person infinitely passionately committed to God), we must hold ourselves in our subjectivity as a follower of Christ. Because there is a certain level of impossibility here (which lays a mild problem at the root of S. K.’s adoption of the Kantian “ought implies can”), we should wonder how ethical it is to advise someone to negate their existence in relation to the Father and to promote themselves in relation to the Son. But S. K. was by no means telling us to become Palestinian apocalyptic preachers or even to descend to a kind of aesthetic poverty; rather, he was pointing us towards one of his favourite and most enthusiastically believed pieces of scripture: with God all things are possible (Matthew 19:26). In relating ourselves to the negative concepts of the Father, we must relate ourselves to those concepts. We cannot do this abstractly, we cannot be led to this by “the Crowd” or the one who intends to wield it as an intimate understanding of the self qua fractured self in relation to the Absolute forces us into a position where we must become subjective (because “subjectivity is truth”) in order to relate to anything at all. And here is where S. K.’s crowd-breaking kicks in: when we are a subject, a genuine existing subject before God, we cannot be forced into adopting a position that allows for crowd-formation. And the Messianic path that we follow in taking up the cross and following the Lord (Matthew 16:24) is one which cannot collapse back into “the Crowd” as it demands hardship⁴⁷, it demands sacrifice, and it demands faith - things which cannot be done passively, but must be held as positive, affirmative actions in the life of the believer. This is the repetition that rips through the essence of “the Crowd” - I will recognize myself as “not-God” in relation to the Father, I will recognize my path in relation to the Son, and I will become a self via upbuilding in relation to both.

Paul preaches to the pagans, as Kierkegaard would do in Denmark

But, then, what is this self? Who emerges on the other side of this auto-deconstruction? Think back to the difficult yet illuminating passage from The Sickness Unto Death:

A human being is spirit. But what is spirit? Spirit is the self. But what is the self? The self is a relation that relates itself to itself or is the relation's relating itself to itself in the relation; the self is not the relation but is the relation's relating itself to itself. A human being is a synthesis of the infinite and the finite, of the temporal and the eternal, of freedom and necessity, in short, a synthesis. A synthesis is a relation between two. Considered in this way, a human being is still not a self.

In the relation between two, the relation is the third as a negative unity, and the two relate to the relation and in the relation to the relation; thus under the qualification of the psychical the relation between the psychical and the physical is a relation. If, however, the relation relates itself to itself, this relation is the positive third, and this is the self.⁴⁸

As humanity is a synthesis, we might think that some kind of Hegelian sublimation is the natural outcome here. But note the very particular phrasing: [i]n the relation between two, the relation is the third as a negative unity, and the two relate to the relation and in the relation to the relation. If we are to suggest that the tension between finitude and infinitude creates a new concrete “thing”, this “thing” would be negative - and in its negativity, it will exist as a sceptical foil against reality - like the Greek pagans, it will collapse in on its own negativity and fail to create anything new. We have not stepped out from the scepticism of an understanding of the Father! There is still more to do. In a sense, we are trying to justify a new false “knowable self” that is an open book to the individual (in which case, Deleuze’s bizarre early assessment of S. K. would be correct) as opposed to the actual “fractured self” that S. K. said we are doomed to. If we accept this sentence as Kierkegaard’s assessment of the actual self. Instead, look at the final sentence, where we find our tension restated: [i]f, however, the relation relates itself to itself, this relation is the positive third, and this is the self. The self must be relating to itself, there is an active aspect of the self that must be present in order for it to be a self. This is not a static stage, but a condition of tension. Just like the tension that exists between the negation of the Father and the positivity of Christ, we must become a tension - we must become transfigured in this tension.

But why did this error of Westphal’s come about? Simply put, it is because people relativize and overexplain the central theme of Fear and Trembling - by underemphasizing the radical nature of “the teleological suspension of the ethical”, then the entire point of the book is lost. Much like Derrida’s latter commentary on the work of de silentio⁴⁹, there is a temptation to make the teleological suspension into another system of ethics that the individual “leaps” into - but this is not the case at all. While we might say that this is simply the natural outcome of a (possible) atheist appropriation of Kierkegaard by Derrida⁵⁰, it is not accurate to say that S. K. view his understanding of faith as an ethical theory (or, rather, theories - in relation to “first ethics” and “second ethics”) amongst ethical theories. This is very much a shame as Derrida was otherwise an extremely competent interpreter of the Kierkegaardian understanding of ethics, especially in regard to what it would take to become an individual within the crushing impossibility of a world which cannot be changed through the actions of one individual - yet only that single individual can act against the pressure of “the Crowd”! What a conundrum to find ourselves in. Instead, we should see the individual “releasement and abandonent of the law of the concept”⁵¹ the (false) essence of the adopted ethical system in an expression of religious-aesthetic expression:

“At the final stage of Kierkegaard’s Christian dialectic, we have true inwardness which is identical with true outwardness, though neither are confined in any way whatever (inwardness is not, for this would be hidden inwardness, and outwardness is not, for this would be to retreat into an external ethical system, and I have indicated why I don’t think this is the way to go). This yields a strenuous and dangerous brand of faith, one that requires an utterly radical break with the world and all of its fondest hopes, and I simply do not see Kierkegaard giving us any reason to mitigate that.”⁵²

The tension of the infinitude of the aesthetic-religious self against the finitude of the ethical-religious self creates this position where the individual does not “leap” into a new form of the ethical which sets new parameters on acceptable behaviour. This would be the destruction of the aesthetic, conscience-driven aspect of moral thought that would be the self-oppression in the face of the moral demands of the universe and the moral response of the agent of Christ. As both Calvin and Luther upheld, breaking through the moral boundary of an enforced law via sola fide requires us to not only realize, not only act out but also to simply exist in the inward-outward agreement that “to exist is to be released open” in the ethical choice of understanding what shall be done and wanting to do what shall be done.⁵³

In exploring what this inexplicably continental lyricism means, Mulder turns to Works of Love and the basis of how S. K. saw Christ contra “the Crowd”: the love-relationship must be sacrificed for the God-relationship in order to discover true love⁵⁴. With the view that the New Testament is like a love letter from the divine that shapes us through the emotional and passional grasping of the individual⁵⁵, it is the love for Christ and the search for the divine “point of contact” that takes us out of this essentialist need for another system of ethics that we can clearly define the contours of and gives us the blueprint for morality - this is far too secure in abstracta (gnostic, even!) for Kierkegaard, who instead points us back towards the need for both the intellectual and the passionate aspects of the self working in tandem and in tension.

But this takes us back to the problem we were addressing: how does this help us navigate around “the Crowd”? Again, we turn back to Abraham to understand what is necessary for understanding S. K.’s teleological suspension: not the simple difference between competing ethical systems, as if Abraham was merely recalculating his particular ethical thesis when God reached out to him, but rather the very thing that de silentio could not make sense of in the story: Abraham's happiness.⁵⁶ This moment of crescendo in Fear and Trembling shows us that Abraham’s journey is not merely one of ascension into a new ethical, but rather the tension laid out in The Sickness Unto Death (as noted by one contemporary critic of S. K., especially in regards to the Postscript⁵⁷): Abraham doesn't experience joy until Isaac is received again - the ethical suspension happens in order to chase the telos, but only in the release after the act is Abraham liberated into joy⁵⁸. Here is where “the Crowd” is disintegrated - in the face of the transformation of faith, of the release of the Pauline promise of sola fide, Abraham eschews the "formal structure of faith", but keeps its content⁵⁹. Taking Matthew 19:26, “with God all things are possible”, very seriously, S. K. is showing us the importance of faith and tension in the life of the Christian - regardless of who we are and how we approach our expression of faith, we can fulfil the will of the Lord and be released from the baying maw of “the Crowd” as “that individual” who follows Christ’s example as the content of our faith in the expression of the authentic life of the faithful. It is always possible, but always difficult, to truly have faith - yet this means that there is always a way to break out of “the Crowd” even within the very conditions which construct herdlike behaviour - a liberal, democratic society. And here we find the intellectual knot in S. K.’s work that is often overlooked:

“...[w]hen the believer has faith, the absurd is not the absurd – faith transforms it, but in every weak moment it is more or less absurd to him”.⁶⁰

Especially “the Crowd” through the life of Christ is not a doomed attempt to live out Christ’s life (as if such a thing was possible or even desirable) or the adoption of a new ethical framework (as if such a thing answered our problem), but the turning to and understanding of what is “beyond” the absurd - without “going beyond” the absurd unduly. We are not dabblers in ethical thought, but finding the absolute relation to the absolute - 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 because dabbling leads to nothing⁶¹. This is the wholehearted, full-blooded commitment to a life of love, a life of faith, a life of hope - to the point of perceived force⁶² - that lends us the genuine inward-outward agreement of our wants and our works. And what are our wants?

Whether it now is a help or a torment, I will one thing only, I will belong to Christ, I will be a Christian!⁶³

And what are our works? Well, potentially anything at all - because with God all things are possible. And there is no “form of life” that is cut off from the Christian as “everything is permissible for me; but not all things are helpful” (1 Corinthians 6:12). Only in the Body of Christ is someone truly free to become a self in the process of upbuilding, but the Body of Christ calls many to His service.

1. This particular critique was launched from the pseudo-Nietzschean perspective of Walter Kaufmann, who saw S. K. as a tricky totalitarian that would do anything for power - except openly state it.

2. The second great aesthetic tome of the same name has likely done a great deal of obfuscation in understanding what S. K. actually meant by upbuilding and the “spheres”. In a way, it’s interesting to wonder if this was intentional: since the Kierkegaardian “spheres” can be viewed as a protest against the “stagist” view of the existential, perhaps the name was intentional in order to root out aesthetic engagement with the text’s ideas. Of course, this kind of speculation with S. K.’s work can get very cerebral and disconnected from reality.

3. Repetition: A Venture in Experimenting Psychology, p. 154, C. Constantius

4. "A New Way of Philosophizing", from On Kierkegaard and the Truth, p. 54, P. L. Holmer, edited by D. J. Gouwens and L. C. Barrett III

5. The Lily's Tongue: Figure and Authority in Kierkegaard's Lily Discourses, p. xxx, F. Maughan-Brown

6. A Confusion of the Spheres: Kierkegaard and Wittgenstein on Philosophy and Religion, p. 80, G. Schönbaumsfeld

7. "Repetition", R. Kemp, from Kierkegaard's Concepts - Tome V: Objectivity to Sacrifice, p. 228, ed. J. Stewart

8. Either/Or, vol. II, essay I, Judge Wilhelm, ed. V. Eremita

9. Although, to at least some extent, this notion of a “ground” would be wildly inappropriate for the aesthete and undesirably arrogant for the ethical-religious.

10. "The Cares of the Pagans" in Christian Discourses, p. 88, S. Kierkegaard; indeed, S. K. reconsidered indecisiveness as the vice turned virtuous in secularity, as if being intellectually detached from the material reality is something to be proud of. As it turns out, this intellectual detachment and false commitment to non-commitment actually leaves one at the absolute mercy of the press, das Man, and other crowd-formers.

11. Taking Responsibility for Ourselves: A Kierkegaardian Account of the Freedom-Relevant Conditions Necessary for the Cultivation of Character, p. 225, P. Carron

12. C. Bellinger, Foundations of Kierkegaard's Vision of Community: Religion, Ethics, and Politics in Kierkegaard, p. 224, ed. G. B. Connell and C. S. Evans

13. "At a Graveside", from Three Discourses on Imagined Occasions, p. 78 S. Kierkegaard

14. "The Aesthetic Validity of Marriage" from Either/Or: A Fragment of Life, p. 402, ed. V. Eremita

15. Ibid.

16. Kierkegaard and the Climate Catastrophe: Learning to Live on a Damaged Planet, p. 13, I. W. Holm

17. The Sickness Unto Death, p. 54-74, Anti-Climacus

18. "Thoughts That Wound From Behind - For Upbuilding: Christian Addresses" in Christian Discourses, p. 207, S. Kierkegaard

19. "The Aesthetic Validity of Marriage" from Either/Or: A Fragment of Life, p. 386, ed. V. Eremita

20. Taking Responsibility for Ourselves: A Kierkegaardian Account of the Freedom-Relevant Conditions Necessary for the Cultivation of Character, p. 201, P. Carron

21. "The Meaning of Kierkegaard's Choice between the Aesthetic and the Ethical: A Response to MacIntyre", J. J. Davenport, from Kierkegaard After MacIntyre, p. 82, ed. J. J. Davenport and A. Rudd

22. Comment on "Kierkegaard's Attack on Hegel", M. Weston, from Thought and Faith in the Philosophy of Hegel, p. 139, ed. J. Walker

23. "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. 321

24. "At a Graveside", from Three Discourses on Imagined Occasions, p. 78 S. Kierkegaard

25. The Unique and Its Property, p. 16, M. Stirner

26. "Jacques Derrida: Faithful Heretics" by M. T. Mjaaland, from Kierkegaard's Influence on Philosophy - Tome II: Francophone Philosophy, p. 119, ed. J. Stewart

27. And he certainly did – to the extent of referring to Schopenhauer as his double. "Kierkegaard's Uncanny Encounter with Schopenhauer, 1854", P. Stokes, from Kierkegaard and Great Philosophers, p. 69-70

28. Repetition ref

29. JP I 1030

30. Sickness Unto Death, p. 13, Anti-Climacus

31. Søren Kierkegaard's Christian Psychology, l. 1145 S. C. Evans

32. This, undoubtedly, may strike a secular reader as something quite unusual – how does the Christian distinguish between the two? This is the problem that S. K. wrestled throughout his authorship, largely informed by his Humean proclivities and unwilling to sacrifice his belief in God. With this in mind, an irrationalist, fideist approach to faith can obviously never lead from S. K.’s writings – regardless of his reception as such in the early 1900s.

33. Søren Kierkegaard's Christian Psychology, l. 1207 S. C. Evans

34. Comment on "Kierkegaard's Attack on Hegel", M. Weston, from Thought and Faith in the Philosophy of Hegel, p. 146, ed. J. Walker

35. See “Barth on Natural Theology”, K. L. Johnson, from The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Karl Barth, vol. I, p. 99, ed. G. Hunsinger and K. L. Johnson for an exploration of Barth’s partially Kierkegaardian response in regards to the Catholic appropriation of this analogy as natural theology. While we could side with either Barth or Przywara here and stay faithful to Kierkegaard, I believe that the “ligaments” of Catholicism would still be a point of contention for the Dane and would still face considerable assault from the anti-Catholic theology laid out throughout the authorship.

36. Either/Or, p. 596, ed. A. Hannay

37. For the Christian readers, now, I imagine this will cause a great deal of alarm. The idea that “follow God” isn’t real advice will likely bring up excited imaginings of heresy and apostasy, but this is key to S. K.’s understanding of the way “the Present Age” functioned - we cannot rely on old methodologies when the dam has blown; we must find a new way to understand God that is both true to God and also true to the age. Whilst the likes of Schleiermacher and Hegel attempted to do so, they were more concerned with “the demand of the times” and less so with the Almighty.

38. To Become Transfigured: Reconstructing Søren Kierkegaard's Christological Anthropology, D. Marrs

39. Such as explored in Adams’ “The Knight of Faith” from Faith and Philosophy - in an effort not to speak ill of the recently departed, my commentary will end there

40. "Repetition", R. Kemp, from Kierkegaard's Concepts - Tome V: Objectivity to Sacrifice, p. 229-230, ed. J. Stewart

41. Papers and Journals, I A1

42. “Kierkegaard’s Religiousness C: A Defense”, from International Philosophical Quarterly, vol. 44, Issue 4, December 2004, p. 535-548

43. Quoted in "Kierkegaard's Pessimism", p. 46, P. Jepsen, from Danish Yearbook of Philosophy 56 (2023)

44. Concluding Unscientific Postscript to the Philosophical Fragments: A Mimic-Pathetic-Dialectic Composition - An Existential Contribution, p. 62, J. Climacus, tr. D. F. Swenson, ed. W. Lowrie

45. While Marx famously rejected “Great Man Theory”, the election and promotion of the internationalist party form maintains the Messianic view of the theory in that there is still a world-historical “thing” that needs to come to be before actual change can be implemented. There is a quaint idealism in the view of many anarchists and Marxists in this regard, particularly those in the “post-left” and “left communism” contingents: the engine of history is, in fact, the cloistered scholar and this implies that the democratization of knowledge is the now sufficient reason for the emerge of a “Great Party Theory” which will tip the world over into the next necessary epoch. If only we had known that collective “Right Think” was necessary for world revolution.

46. Hauerwas’ Resident Aliens is a particularly interesting commentary on the role of the church, in this regard, in that he rejected reactionary, liberal, and quietist ecclesiologies whilst also maintaining that its role is still radical - it must create both the conditions for Christians and Christians outright. When that fundamental duty is in action, then we can think about something more substantial.

47. "The Gospel of Sufferings: Christian Discourses", from Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits, S. Kierkegaarad, p. 304

48. Sickness Unto Death, p. 13, Anti-Climacus

49. As explored in "Derrida, Judge Wilhelm, and Death", I. Duckles, from Kierkegaard and Death, ed. P. Stokes and A. J. Buben

50. I say possible as Derrida was always rather coy about his particular faith commitments. Caputo explored this at length, commenting on Derrida’s suspiciously pseudo-theistic allusions when pushed to talk about Kierkegaard.

51. The Political Theology of Kierkegaard, p. 37, S. Brata Das

52. “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. 321

53. The Political Theology of Kierkegaard, p. 37, S. Brata Das

54. “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. 309

55. For Self-Examination and Judge For Yourselves! and Three Discourses (1851), p. 51, S. Kierkegaard

56. Knights of Faith and Resignation: Reading Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling, E. Mooney, 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. 305, 322

57. "Eiríksson’s Critique of Kierkegaard and Kierkegaard’s (drafted) Response: Religious Faith, Absurdity, and Rationality", R. Fremstedal, from Magnús Eiríksson: A Forgotten Contemporary of Kierkegaard, ed. G. Schreiber and J. Stewart, p. 161

58. "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. 305

59. "Eiríksson’s Critique of Kierkegaard and Kierkegaard’s (drafted) Response: Religious Faith, Absurdity, and Rationality", R. Fremstedal, from Magnús Eiríksson: A Forgotten Contemporary of Kierkegaard, ed. G. Schreiber and J. Stewart, p. 163

60. JP, I A10

61. "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

62. Works of Love, p. 121-122, S. Kierkegaard

63. Training in Christianity and the Edifying Discourse which 'Accompanied' It, p. 117, Anti-Climacus, edited by S. Kierkegaard