Soren Kierkegaard: A Biography Book

Joakim Garff's Soren Kierkegaard is a whopper of a biography coming in at 810 pages, but the tone was fairly light and the pace fairly quick so it was by no means burdensome. It took a long time to finish more because I fell ill about halfway through and all productivity went goodbye. I'm thankful for this fact, as the feeling of my own infirmities helped me to empathize with Kierkegaard's own physical frailty and the sense of melancholy that easily accompanies it. While my frailty caused literary productivity to fall in the sense that I read less, seemingly nothing could stymie Kierkegaard's fountain of a pen. He wrote originally and voluminously, if not obscurely in some places, till the grave a-swallowed him away at forty-two.


Method

Garff proceeds by blending Kierkegaard's published works, unpublished letters, and Danish culture in an easy to read style that stays entertaining. The mix favors letters almost as much as published work, which makes for a balanced, true-to-life presentation of complex man of big ideas by presenting the sundry details. The letters help to round out the image of Kierkegaard as solitary individual and a single man'the true soul in opposition to the false collective' as neither a thrifty ascetic nor a secluded misanthrope.

Hear Kierkegaard's secretary Israel Levin recount an episode of Kierkegaard's utter prodigality and love for luxury:

During the busy and work'filled years from 1844-1846, Levin could become almost a regular part of the household: "At times I spent up to eight hours a day with him. Once I ate at his house every day for five weeks. Merely providing nourishment for his hungry spirit was also a source of unending bother. Every day we had soup, frightfully strong, then fish and a piece of melon, accompanied by a glass of fine sherry; then the coffee was brought in: two silver pots, two cream pitchers and a bag of sugar which was filled up every day." …But then came the moments Levin hated. No sooner was the coffee brought in than Kierkegaard went over and opened up a cupboard "in which he had at least fifty sets of cups and saucers, but only one of each sort." Levin thought the cups revealed signs of a strange mania for collecting things, and he was similarly unable to understand why Kierkegaard has assembled such an "astounding number of walking sticks" which merely stood out in the entryway, taking up space. "Well, which cup and saucer do you want today?" Kierkegaard asked, standing in front of the cupboard. Levin could not have cared less and merely pointed wearily into the mass of china, but this sort of arbitrariness was not tolerated'Kierkegaard wanted an explanation. So Levin had to search his soul in order to justify his choice.

But this was not the end of the bizarre scene. Kierkegaard had his own quite peculiar way of having coffee: Delightedly he seized hold of the bag containing the sugar and poured sugar into the coffee cup until it was piled up above the rim. Next came the incredibly strong, black coffee, which slowly dissolved the white pyramid. The process was scarcely finished before the syrupy stimulant disappeared into the magister's stomach, where it mingled with the sherry to produce additional energy that percolated up into his seething and bubbling brain'which in any case had already been so productive all day that in the half-light Levin could still notice the tingling and throbbing in the overworked fingers when the grasped the slender handle of the cup (290-291).

This was a complex man, and if that account is any clue, also a very wealthy man who could afford luxury in the time of cholera (cf. p. 700). He inherited everything from his father, a successful textile merchant. He claimed to write at his own expense for the benefit of Danish culture. This is a deductively valid statement, but on is terms this meant that he made less than he spent on total living expenses, not simply on printing expenses. To give an example of what this meant, if I write and sell a book over the course of a year, and if this book produces $500,000 in my favor, and if, in order to write this book I spend $500,001 on pastries and shirts and coffee and servants and a penthouse suite, and other productivity-inducing luxuries, I have written that book to my expense of $1. In his words, "Without extravagance I would never have been able to work in the scale that I did; for my extravagance has always been calculated solely in order to keep me productive on this enormous scale," a tactic of putting one's money where one's mouth that resulted in dozens of books, hundreds of essays, and thousands of letters.


Forms of communication

Kierkegaard's works are easily split into two sections: the pseudonymous and the direct. His philosophy of communication for the first half-or-so of his life sometimes involved the use of rhetorical voices, not necessarily equated to Kierkegaard's voices. At this moment in culture pseudonyms were used frequently as well, so there was precedent for this practice, one that has sadly died. Sometimes he would use one for concealment, to annoy someone else, or for the purpose of supposal; "what would it look like if someone said this in this situation, to this person, and how would that sound? " This is called fiction, and though Kierkegaard did not write fiction in the true sense with characters and plots and settings, he did write creatively and poetically with a tuned aesthetic.

The instant recoil into frustration at the idea of this indirect communication through the use of not-100%-equivalent-to-himself voices can be calmed at the idea that this is exactly the case when someone writes a novel, forms which often contain antagonistic, vague, or complex characters. This doesn't make interpretation any easier, but once again, there's clear precedent for what he does, so it should not be a cause of especial conceptual frustration. "The times practically teemed with false names. Indeed, pseudonymity came close to being an unspoken aesthetic requirement, and this sort of literary mystification held great appeal for Kierkegaard" (216).

The nice thing about reading Kierkegaard is that he wrote plenty of things via direct communication, so options abound for the one who wants to not read through a mist. His pseudonymous works tend ramble and elude a lot of easy interpretation.


Fear and Trembling

"O, some day after I am dead , Fear and Trembling alone will be enough to immortalize my name as an author. Then it will be read and translated into foreign languages. People will practically shudder at the frightful emotion in this book" (251).

The relation to Kierkegaard that first drew me to him, that many evangelical Christians share, is a point in Francis Schaeffer's apologetic works where he presents the "line of despair" by which Western Culture's conception of God and Salvation went from Medieval And Fine to Modern And Flawed, essentially. Kierkegaard is credited with making everyone think that faith is an irrational affair, that it's something in which reason provides no defense. You can imagine how this idea might irk an apologist, a priori.

The kernel of the idea of salvation that Kierkegaard presents is more critically examined by other people in their wonderful books, but for the sake of shortcutting (read James Barr if you don't like this idea), think of Kierkegaard's situation as this: (1) in the context of Hegelian philosophy that emphasized The Way Things Are as logical and completely reasonable, (2) in the context of the syncretism Danish-Church state of the church, and (3) the context of what he perceived to be a weakening of people who believed God earnestly enough to do act differently than they otherwise would did they not believe (his criticisms of Bishop Mynster and Mynster's successor Martenson (both of who were popular, wealthy, and knighted) were founded on this very idea). Take this context, and then take this story that summarizes in kernel form the staggering nature of salvation that he thought was largely lost on his generation: suppose there is a king who is wealthy and is a good man, king to many people. One day this king calls on of his commoners via summons into his chambers to meet with him. At this the commoner is astounded that such a king would have any desire to meet with him. But this is not where the summons ends. The king further states that he desires to make this commoner his own son. This king has adoption in mind, and from now on the commoner will carry out the king's work on the king's behalf, and is heir to the kingdom. If this were to happen in our world aside from the gift of sonship that God offers in the giving of his son Jesus for a sinful race, you have you admit that it would strain credulity. God's calling of humans into his favor ought to give pause to the way we see things typically happening. It ought to bend the way we view the world, and redefine love itself. It ought to seem too good to be true, and the catch is that it is too good to be true, at least in human terms of "too good". It is the single thing that does not fall into the category of "too good to be true," making it not the object of common sense or result of rationality, but of faith, which transcends both. If this utterly gratuitous action of the part of God does not give pause to the course of nature, then it is not truly seen.

This is in my estimation what Kierkegaard is getting at when he talks about faith. One of the things Barr is good to say is that the Kierkegaard of Schaeffer's experience would be the Kierkegaard brought to him by the students he met who had read Camus, who read Kierkegaard as an absurdist (and for Camus absurd=meaninglessness, futility, despair), which if you track with my depiction of his "faith," does not follow, in addition to "if you track with" works like Purity of Heart is to Will One Thing & The Sickness Unto Death & Lily of the Field, Bird of the Air, e.g. you will simply not nail Kierkegaard as an absurdist of any kind.


Conclusion

This book mirrors the man in question: long, sometimes tedious, sometimes blissful, sometimes enigmatic. Kierkegaard's literary legacy is a wealth, and I expect to tap it for many years to come. This book served as a great starting point for reading any of his works, and the dimension of the man's character that Garff adds in invaluable in making him stand as something more than the author of texts, a man who lived a fully human life, complete with grief, depression, hunger, pride, humility, skill, fame, humiliation, and a name that will endure wherever Western philosophy is studied.

If you're wanting to read some of what Kierkegaard wrote in a more edifying vein, I recommend "The Crowd Is Untruth," which you can find at: , and you can also read a nice commentary at: