Prolegomenic Unscientific Postscript to "The Crowd and the Anti-Crowd"
A reflection on writing and the humour of the divine
Not long after I had finished writing The Crowd and the Anti-Crowd, I had come across what I can only describe as a particular proof that God exists. I’m sure this is probably quite a startling thing to declare to you, my reader, on the grounds that a concerted study of Kierkegaardian literature should lead us to say that no such thing is possible1. There is something rather unphilosophical about this proof, however, as it requires a particular function that the majority of philosophers and theologians lack: a sense of humour. If we were to step back through the storied history of philosophy and theology (up to and beyond the point where they were practically or actually synonyms in certain parts of the world), it would be far easier to point to the hordes of philosophical geniuses who weren’t willing to pop a joke or amusing observation into their work for fear that their audience would be completely misled from the Word of their insights, doomed to forever live in ignorance after having missed the genuine genius that lays before them further down the page - presumably through their fits of laughter, uncovering the solitary joke that sits within the tome that has so far doubled as a pillow. More often, due to the fustiness of philosophical works, the humour within the pages has actually been a surprise for the philosopher who has been writing: only on reflecting on the work can they actually see that what they had written was an elaborate joke played on them, a kind of literary irony that plays out through the philosopher and their work (and, due to historical factors, more often his work - the very serious bourgeois gentleman being particularly prone to opening himself to becoming somewhat of a joke) that they couldn’t recognize until all the serious work was already done: writing, reviewing, discussing, teaching, implementing, re-reviewing, etc. How wonderful to think that we start influencing the minds of the general public and students long before we’ve had chance for an ironist to dip his grubby fingers in the unspoiled bindings of very serious philosophy. Bertrand Russell, for example, had no idea of the hilarious joke he was telling by writing “In Praise of Idleness”2, a celebration of laziness and an aristocratic3 detachment from reality - which would best typify the majority of his work not concerned with mathematics, logic, and the like: “lazy”.
Back to the matter at hand, however: my proof of the existence of God. This is very much an actually serious matter, so I should probably adopt a similarly serious attitude towards writing as had the philosophical minds that laid the groundwork for me to write so self-indulgently. The issue that led me to conclude that God exists was the philosophical backdrop (or ideological foundation, we might say) for the above mentioned piece I wrote above. In deliberating and distinguishing the problem of “the Crowd” in modernity, I found that there was a particular irony in the strengthening of the cultural apparatus that justifies crowd-formation and “intellectual terrorism”4. In this way, I found myself as an aspect of irony playing out around me - the “coercion of reality” itself was something that I was a part of, a wave moving over and around me, sweeping me up as a para-academic mind (and I’m sure there are many who would view this claim as already far too vain to ever actually be self-accredited) in the panpsychical ideological torrent of pseudo-intellectual journalistic fervour of politics in modernity (and I’m sure there are many who would view this claim as far too generous to a journalist, a Windbeutel per Schopenhauer, a Vindsluger per Kierkegaard - anything but “anti-” might be too generous, perhaps). Let me set the scene - again:
24th May 2024, the British Unelected Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, declared that there would be a general election. For those not in the know, this would lead to a national vote on the ministers to represent the various parts of the United Kingdom in the next government that would serve under His Majesty, Charles II. After the disastrous showing in the local and mayoral elections earlier in the month, Sunak’s announcement of a general election shows either his intense personal self-belief that flies in the face of public opinion or a desperate measure to implement some kind of change for a reason as yet unbeknownst to the general public. In either way, the current Prime Minister does show an uncharacteristic openness in the Conservative Party to the idea that a leader within a democratic society5 should, indeed, be democratically elected - something that Johnson and Truss seem to have viewed as an inconvenient formality.
Standing opposite the incumbent Prime Minister in the Labour party is man-of-the-people, proletarian par excellence, Sir Kier Rodney Starmer, KCB KC. Having successfully subverted Corbyn’s left faction in the preceding years, which promised openly anti-proletarian values such as the redistribution of wealth and the nationalisation of public services, it makes sense now to view Starmer, Knight of the Realm, as the true representative of the working man. Having cleared the party of leftist influence, I am sure we are all assured that Starmer’s would-be Blairite stance as the modern neoliberal is much more in line with the actual values of the working class than, say, the proletarian everyman Harold MacMillan, 1st Earl of Stockton, and his disapproval of Thatcher “selling the family silver”. My reader, if you are not accustomed to British politics, rest assured: the identification of Earls and Knights in support of the working class contra those without titles is only a coincidence.
Before we descend into a slap-fight about modern British politics, I would like to reorient my critique: I am not interested in presenting apologia and hagiography for those standing in the upcoming election, but rather to point at the arms of the state already operating in the way typical of the crowd-former, the leveller, the ideological apparatus of humanism:
Regardless of where you fall on the political spectrum (or if you even regard the political spectrum as a useful tool at all), I would like to draw attention to the representative of the people, privately educated professional taste-maker, Sonia Sodha, quickly took up arms to discipline the remaining “leftist” aspects of the Labour votership that seemed to have overlooked that their demand that “We Deserve Better” should have been filed away in the discard pile of history, along with a threadbare sweater and the hope that politics could actually deliver something other than neoliberal foundationlessness. Taking an amusingly contradictory stance of both i) disinterested observer of the Labour faction, offering “helpful” social commentary on the very complex, very serious matters at hand of electoral pragmatism and “right side of history”-ness which seem to have escaped the attentions of the more utopian groups within the “left” and ii) interested whip of the Starmerite Labour-Right, demanding a military-like obedience to the pragmatics of the anti-Corbyn turn in the face of the leadership question, we find das Man, “the One” who will form “the Crowd” around them - God be willing. To take this stance must require a great deal of skill for Ms. Sodha, who obviously views Labour unity and solidarity as something of an unfortunate but unavoidable necessity: even if there are displeased voices within the ranks, there is a pragmatic need for social unity and “doing our part” that is required in order to overcome the greater evil of the Conservative Party.
However, this apparently unifying ideal (whether we want to commend it as noble, which we might not) didn’t seem to extend in Ms. Sodha’s ideological taste-making in 2019, where she criticized Corbyn in no uncertain terms. I would be the last to call for slavish obedience to a particular party (imagining the great American cultural export of “Blue No Matter Who” as a worrying prospect) or demand that people shouldn’t change their minds on certain matters - that would be ridiculous, a demand for “sameness” over genuine repetition and upbuilding of values. What is concerning, however, is the apparent lack of recognition in the words of our privately-educated intellectual representative of the blue-collared: she seems to have only adopted this pragmatic approach in the context of her particular contingent gaining an upper hand in the matters at play.
Here is where we out our crowd-former, the arm of the ideological apparatus at play: Ms. Sodha is merely a cattle-prod of Starmer’s contingent, providing discipline and subterfuge (a term that seems woefully inaccurate - superfuge, perhaps? Maybe even superliminality?) to the intellectual trends of the current age: now that people have made their minds up in contradiction with the guiding force of the powers that would-be, they must learn to take a more pragmatic approach and suspend their particular politics until the universal political goal (getting our guys in government) is realized. Similar calls for pragmatism appeared in America with the election of Biden, with the effectiveness of “pushing them left” politics being best exemplified by his proletarian epiphanies in strike-breaking, handing arms over to Nazis within the Ukrainian ranks, and continued support for Israel’s atrocities in the ongoing Gaza conflict despite public outcry. In accordance with generic Enlightenment values, the importance of the particular (the individual) is downplayed in comparison with the universal (while it would be misleading to say “the” collective, we might go as far as to say “a” collective); the Guardian, as has so often been the case, has presented itself as a wolf in sheep’s clothing to spread panic and inauthenticity amongst the ranks. In fact, it might even be worse than that. For, you see: the ass wearing a lion’s skin is usually outed by his inconvenient braying - but when the fox starts to recognize the braying as roar of a lion, then he will have no way to distinguish whether he should be frightened or not6. To continue to be unscientific, an exploration of S. K.’s concept of “manliness” (with its wonderfully outdated terminology making even the suggestion of discussion a point of contention) would be very useful here.
Again, my reader, I don’t intend to force you to take any particular stance on these matters - I am aware that these issues are contentious and difficult for the seemingly good-hearted voters within the Democratic and Labour voterships to acknowledge, like a cruel joke was played on them. In some cases, acknowledging the gap between the values that led one to vote for a particular party and the actual actions of said party may not simply be a matter of “forgotten promises” or the ineffectuality of liberal politics - indeed, it seems to be more like these representatives have left the voter with a dislocated shoulder and a broken arm whilst still demanding them to take up the applause for such actions because, of course, you did vote for them! It is in this gap that both the anarchist and the Christian spirits thrive: in the gap between contingencies of hypocrisy and ideology, which demand we all simply surrender our principles pragmatically, whilst also flagellating every possible movement that allows for a genuine voice to cry out against the “pragmatic” whip-hand of modernity.
(Of course, to some amongst us, “the Crowd”, this hypocritical-ideological gap doesn’t really matter.)
I am simply pointing out the hypocrisy within the ranks of both the American and British offices of crowd-formation: it does not matter what is said, simply that is leads to the instrumental goal of getting elected.
Back to the matter at hand, again, my reader: apologies, but this winding prose should deliver you to the same position that I am in if you have followed me on the same path thus far - and the path is hardship7, for we are destined for hardships (1 Thessalonians 3:3). In sharing some thoughts on Kierkegaard’s understanding of “the Crowd” and offering a clarification on what might constitute the “shadow-existence”8 of the Anti-Crowd, divine revelation shone down upon me.
If we are to believe that there is a higher power and that He is all-knowing, all-powerful, and all-loving, then we might look for signs in our lives that show that he truly works in the world right now and delivers us signs as to how to proceed, then we should be wise to acknowledge that the Spirit moves in us without a thought concerning time, space, or restrictions on our particular position within temporality. The Eternal has no interest in matters of temporality - why would it? Something that is infinitely lesser than itself could only aspire a curious misunderstanding. But this possibility also leads to the danger of assuming that everything we see if a particular sign from God: an insidious holdover from pagan thought, “general religiosity” or “Religiousness A” in S. K.’s words, that makes us the main character of existence and turns theology and faith back into the anthropocentric matters of immanence that Either/Or, Fear and Trembling, and the various Upbuilding Discourses are attempting to guide us through9. In that case, I will take Yoder’s advice10 and boldly proclaim the Spirit has worked in me: through the inspiration to establish the foundations of a Kierkegaardian political analysis in modernity, it seems like God uses inspiration to point us towards the right ideas just before there comes the triple upheaval11 of reality - telling the punchline before we have heard the joke. In this way, in displaying my unthinkable Wesleyan-Arminian bias, I want to state it quite clearly: my proof for the existence of God is that the combination of coincidence and inspiration in the life of the believer seems to be grandest proof we could ever ask for. But, in a cruel twist of fate (or a pang of divine wit, if we are to believe Climacus), this proof could only ever move in the life of the already faithful. It may be wise to remember that the cry to heaven “Lord, increase our faith!” comes from the mouths of the messengers, not the unbelievers (Luke 17:5).
“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.”12 Indeed, dear Søren, you may have been correct. No wonder theologians and philosophers have failed to do their job throughout history - without the recognition of “the absurd”, without the natural humour of dealing with negative concepts of infinity lightly and positive concepts of contingency in all seriousness, all we can do is “chatter”. And if we “chatter” for too long, we might have forgotten that it is all a bit of a joke - God reaching out into the universe is simply waiting for us to catch on with the set up.
Famously exemplified in the philosophical bombshell of Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments - any parallels between the title of this essay and Climacus’ magnum opus are purely coincidental, I can assure you.
“In Praise of Idleness”, B. Russell, from In Praise of Idleness and Other Essays, p. 1-15
Where precisely this aristocratic air came to the 3rd Earl Russell, OM, FRS, is beyond me, of course.
A favourite phrase of the bizarre anarchist spirit, Jacques Ellul: Violence: Reflections from a Christian Perspective, p. 97, J. Ellul
And by no means am I prepared to defend the concept of liberal democracy, especially on the grounds of the Christian faith within modernity. While certain American and German contingents have clearly made a link between the King of Kings, the Lord our God and His Son Jesus Christ and the modern liberal democratic state (for is there a role more open to democracy than divine monarchy?), I think it would be more appropriate to view Christian democracy as an eisegetical affair, as if the establishment of worldly government in I Samuel 8 (albeit in a monarchy, but I’ll ask that we forgive our Hebrew predecessors for not having considered the obviously worshipful implications of vox populi) was some kind of celebrated event - a hilarious misreading tantamount to a joke, if not for everyone seemingly taking a very serious stance on it since the Constantinian turn.
"The Gospel of Sufferings: Christian Discourses", from Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits, S. Kierkegaard, p. 300
Repetition: A Venture in Experimenting Psychology, p. 154, C. Constantius
Rudd’s assessment of the Kierkegaardian “spheres” as “Platonic realism” really is one of the great insights into the Great Dane in recent years. "Kierkegaard and the Critique of Political Theology", A. Rudd, from Kierkegaard and Political Theology, p. 25, edited by R. Sirvent and S. Morgan
Discipleship as Political Responsibility, p. 21, J. Yoder
Kierkegaard and the Climate Catastrophe: Learning to Live on a Damaged Planet, p. 20, I. W. Holm
JP I 1030