"Anyone who decides to directly approach Kierkegaard's works immediately perceives that he is starting a unique literary activity that has no equal in any other literature. It is a circle of thought that evades the system of any philosophical or theological school. It is an expression of dread. The reader feels in front of a high and arduous mountain, without paths; or he feels like being in the midst of a storm where it seems that there is no reference point." ~ Cornelio Fabro, "Introduction" in Søren Kierkegaard, Le grandi opere filosofiche e teologiche, 23. Translation from the Italian is mine. Fabro was one of the foremost kirkegaardian scholars.
In any case, I think it is undoubtedly true that the Danish philosopher often offers very interesting insights. His The Concepts of Dread is a book not suitable for the faint of heart, it is a somewhat obscure text, and in my personal opinion not the best of Kierkegaard's works. Nevertheless, I have decided to discuss it because, in spite of its obscurity, Kierkegaard ends it with words which I find shining with hope. Moreover, even though I disagree on many points with Kierkegaard's philosophy, I believe that the so-called "atheistic existentialism" (represented by thinkers such as see Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus) has nothing to do with both Kierkegaard's philosophical intention and contents. Atheistic existentialism (which can found its origin in the Danish philosopher only through a deep misappropriation of the latter) is a meticulous lament in the form of a masochistic analysis of the misery and vanity of human existence without eternal truths, an enterprise which goes nowhere but ending eating itself up, a godlessly mutilated version of Solomon's Ecclesiastes which adamantly rejects Solomon's inspired conclusion.
"Further, by these, my son, be admonished: of making many books there is no end; and much study is a weariness of the flesh. Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God, and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man. For God shall bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing, whether it be good, or whether it be evil" ~ Ecclesiastes, 12:12-14.
It is true that also the Danish philosopher carefully expounded, on the basis of his life experience and through philosophical reflections, some of the logical conclusions of the consideration of human sinfulness and existence without God: anxiety, anguish, and dread.
"No Grand Inquisitor has in readiness such terrible tortures as has dread, and no spy knows how to attack more artfully the man he suspects, choosing the instant when he is weakest, nor knows how to lay traps where he will be caught and ensnared, as dread knows how, and no sharp- witted judge knows how to interrogate, to examine the accused, as dread does, which never lets him escape, neither by diversion nor by noise, neither at work nor at play, neither by day nor by night." ~ The Concept of Dread, 139.
This dread "is not affirmed in the sense in which men commonly understand dread, as related to something outside a man, but in the sense that man himself produces dread" (Ivi.) through the consideration of the condition of sinful humanity and of oneself. However, contrarily to atheistic existentialism, Kierkeegard admitted that the only hope for humanity is faith, and not any faith, but faith in Christ. Within the sphere of faith, dread even becomes helpful and formative.
"Dread is the possibility of freedom. Only this dread is by the aid of faith absolutely educative, consuming as it does all finite aims and discovering all their deceptions." ~ Ivi.
I am not a Kierkegaardian scholar, and, although I think I understand what Kierkegaard means with "possibility of freedom," I prefer not to offer my explanation in case I might be wrong (a full understanding of this concept is not essential for the goal of this blog post). Therefore, I will only report here its most extended definition that I have found in The Concept of Dread.
"Dread is a qualification of the dreaming spirit, and as such it has its place in psychology. When awake, the difference between myself and my other is posited; sleeping, it is suspended; dreaming, it is a nothing vaguely hinted at. The reality of the spirit constantly shows itself in a form which entices its possibility, but it is away as soon as one grasps after it, and it is a nothing which is able only to alarm. More it cannot do so long as it only shows itself . One almost never sees the concept dread dealt with in psychology, and I must therefore call attention to the fact that it is different from fear and similar concepts which refer to something definite, whereas dread is freedom's reality as possibility for possibility. One does not therefore find dread in the beast, precisely for the reason that by nature the beast is not qualified by spirit." ~ Ibid, 38
Now, since only faith makes this dread educative, I find Kierkegaard's words quite helpful, especially for the thinking Christian particularly inclined to inner struggles. The Christian should not be "deceived" by the dread that he or she experiences.
"The dread of possibility holds him as its prey, until it can deliver him saved into the hands of faith. In no other place does he find repose, for every other point of rest is mere nonsense, even though in men's eyes it is shrewdness. This is the reason why possibility is so absolutely educative. No man has ever become so unfortunate in reality that there was not some little residue left to him, and, as common sense observes quite truly, if a man is canny, he will find a way. But he who went through the curriculum of misfortune offered by possibility lost everything, absolutely everything, in a way that no one has lost it in reality. If in this situation he did not behave falsely towards possibility, if he did not attempt to talk around the dread which would save him, then he received everything back again, as in reality no one ever did even if he received everything tenfold, for the pupil of possibility received infinity, whereas the soul of the other expired in the finite." ~ Ibid, 141-142.
Kierkegaard is also aware of an issue that is at the same time delicate and tragic, that is, suicide.
"I do not deny that he who is educated by possibility is exposed, not to the danger of bad company and dissoluteness of various sorts, as are those who are educated by the finite, but to one danger of downfall, and that is self-slaughter." ~ (Ibid, 142).
The Danish philosopher considers such extreme decision as a misunderstanding of the purpose of anguish and dread that happens "if at the beginning of his education he misunderstands the anguish of dread" (Ivi). These words may appear insensitive to the strugglers and to those who mourn a loved one. However, it has to be remembered that Kierkeegard also suffered from extreme spiritual and mental anguish throughout all his life. Therefore, he is not talking from the comfortable chair of an untouched professor, but from the battlefield of a fellow struggler. I think that what Kierkeegard immediately adds help clarifying this.
"He who is educated by possibility remains with dread, does not allow himself to be deceived by its countless counterfeits, he recalls the past precisely; then at last the attacks of dread, though they are fearful, are not such that he flees from them. For him dread becomes a serviceable spirit which against its will leads him whither he would go. Then when it announces itself, when it craftily insinuates that it has invented a new instrument of torture far more terrible than anything employed before, he does not recoil, still less does he attempt to hold it off with clamor and noise, but he bids it welcome, he hails it solemnly, as Socrates solemnly flourished the poisoned goblet, he shuts himself up with it, he says, as a patient says to the surgeon when a painful operation is about to begin, 'Now I am ready.'" ~ Ibid, 142.
For Kierkeegard, therefore, dread is something that God uses and that we should interpret as a means to teach us to abandon ourselves to Providence and to trust in that God who, even through hellish anguish, is forming us and changing us.
"When such a person, therefore, goes out from the school of possibility, and knows more thoroughly than a child knows the alphabet that he can demand of life absolutely nothing, and that terror, perdition, annihilation, dwell next door to every man, and has learned the profitable lesson that every dread which alarms may the next instant become a fact, he will then interpret reality differently, he will extol reality, and even when it rests upon him heavily he will remember that after all it is far, far lighter than the possibility was. Only thus can possibility educate; for finiteness and the finite relationships in which the individual is assigned a place, whether it be small and commonplace or world-historical, educate only finitely." ~ Ibid, 140.
However, such educative side of dread is possible only by faith: "With the help of faith dread trains the individual to find repose in Providence" (Ibid, 144). Kierkeegard adds that the same is true "with regard to guilt, which is the second thing dread discovers" (Ivi). Dread points us to redemption in Christ since "he who with respect to guilt is educated by dread will, therefore repose only in atonement" (Ivi).
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| "Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof." ~ Matthew 6:34. |
"He who truly has learned to be in dread will tread as in a dance when the dreads of finiteness strike up their tune, and the disciples of finiteness lose their wits and their courage." ~ (Ibid, 144).
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