I’ve had it with Kierkegaard.
You too?
Kierkegaard (1813-1855), the Danish intellectual wild man, has occupied eight inches of my shelves for more than half a century. The spines of the pastel paperbacks have cracked they’ve sat so long. I was always about to get around to him – and I tried – half-heartedly – only my intellect like its owner is allergic to exhausting exertion. Any card-carrying egghead in my college years knew his Kierkegaard and I longed to carry such a card (without doing the work). Besides, wasn’t Kierkegaard a “philosopher” – very different from a philosopher uncaged by quotes – and wasn’t I allergic to systematic postulating on the nature of truth? I cast my lot with writers who enlivened us with accounts of what life felt like, not with the hellish Hegelians whose abstraction-riddled prose rattled like dry bones. I’d dipped into Kierkegaard and stubbed against the likes of
When we consider the dialectical determinants in dread, it appears that they have precisely the characteristic ambiguity of psychology. Dread is a sympathetic antipathy and an antipathetic sympathy. One easily sees, I think, that this is much more truly a psychological subject than it is a concupiscence. Language confirms this completely.
No thanks.
Yet here in hand was a slender volume assembled by the poet Auden on The Living Thoughts of Kierkegaard – less than two hundred and fifty pages (with airy type) instead of my eight inches, perfect for thought-dabblers, why not give it a whirl? Besides, at my age, I can assert my opinion about any prose, unintimidated by professors or smarty-pants peers. This is among the glories of personal antiquity: you can be an eccentric old spouter and nobody cares.
I got through the little book, underscoring a few passages, but mostly by skipping, glossing over, turning pages with incomprehension and irritation. Isn’t the purpose of thinking to help us live? Maybe I’m not the brightest bulb in the box but comparatively I’m pretty literate, especially these dese-and-dose days. Is thinking thinking if it cannot be pleasurably read? En garde, Kiekegaard! my journal skewered the obfuscator with rapier wit.
Yet wasn’t Kierkegaard a memorable aphorist? Auden’s volume recalled a few:
People hardly ever make use of the freedom which they have, for example, freedom of thought; instead, they demand freedom of speech as compensation.
The supreme paradox of all thoughts is the attempt to discover something that thought cannot think.
Right on, brother – these were soundbites I could chew on. Then I opened my precious quote compendium to double-check. Yikes.
Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.
The function of prayer is not to influence God, but rather to change the nature of the one who prays.
Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.
Life is not a problem to be solved but a reality to be experienced.
People understand me so poorly that they don’t even understand my complaint about them not understanding me.
… and so on, page after page of dizzying giddying aphoristic gems extracted from the thick muck of his impenetrable prose.
Grrrr, as Henry would say.
Our minds seek to tidy ignorance into certainties the way we stuff disorder into closets and drawers, so neatness seems to reign. With so little time remaining, I want to “wrap my mind,” as the saying goes, around the best that’s been thought and said so I can console myself I haven’t missed much in my earthly trek. No such luck. The more I think the less I know.
En regard, Kierkegaard: I may have had it with him, but he with me not yet.