Category: hegel

I do not dance

I just finished Philosophical Fragments (PF).  I wanted to get a few observations down while they are fresh in my mind.

First, while I get Kierkegaard’s pseudonymous authorship this is the first one where it makes real sense to me.  Either/Or is also blatantly clear but it strikes me as too much of an abstract experiment.   PF still comes as an experiment.  The experiment being whether it is possible to go beyond Socrates and what that might look like in philosophical discourse.  However, Kierkegaard comes off as more invested in this venture, more curious about how this will actually play out.

Second, it is important to note that these are fragments.  In his original manuscripts they were actually called ‘pamphlets’ which he also refers to them as within the book.  The significance of this is brought fully to bear in the final section.  Here he talks about the possibility of a ‘second pamphlet’.  He writes,

If I ever do write a second section – because a pamphlet writer such as I am has no seriousness, as you presumably will hear about me – why, then, should I now in conclusion pretend to seriousness in order to please people by making a rather big promise?  In other words, to write a pamphlet is frivolity – but to promise the system, that is seriousness and has made many a man a supremely serious man both in his own eyes and in the eyes of others. (109)

The ‘system’ of course is Hegelianism.  What I find intriguing about this passage is  the notion that perhaps the more ‘serious’, thoroughgoing, complete even social and political approach can actually end up being the most individualistic and self-serving.  This is partially a critique of academia as well as what could now be termed an ideological centralizing of power by ‘men who talk about important stuff’ as I have heard it put.  This final section really bookends well the intro to PF, which did not make a great deal of sense to me originally.  The preface begins,

What is offered here is only a pamphlet, by one’s own hand, on one’s own behalf, at one’s own expense, without any claim to being a part of the scientific-scholarly endeavor in which one acquires legitimacy. (5).

Kierkegaard goes on in the Preface to consider what it might mean to have social (world-historical as he puts it) significance.  No one would consider a pamphlet to have such significance.  So what is Kierkegaard’s opinion on the matter?

Do not ask me about that.  Next to the question of whether or not I have an opinion, nothing can be of less interest to someone else than what my opinion is.  To have an opinion is to me both too much and too little; it presupposes a security and well-being in existence akin to having a wife and children in this mortal life, something not granted to a person who has to be up and about night and day and yet has no fixed income. (7)

There is a certain tone of liberation thought in the Preface and conclusion to PF (which hardly alludes to the book’s actual content in many ways!).  The critique is of those wielding socially constructed and maintained forms of power who believe that they can function as the benefactors of truth.  The framing of this book, which has just dawned on me, is making me rethink how I interpreted the bulk of the work.  Hopefully I can post a reading of PF that reflects its preface and conclusion.  Here are the final words of the preface.  I thought they were pretty.

I can stake my own life, I can in all earnestness trifle with my own life – not with another’s.  I am capable of this, the only thing I am able to do for thought, I who have no learning to offer it, ‘scarcely enough for the one-drachma course, to say nothing of the big fifty-drachma course’ (Cratylus).  All I have is my life, which I promptly stake every time a difficulty appears.  Then it is easy to dance, for the thought of death is a good dancing partner, my dancing partner.  Every human being is too heavy for me, and there I plead per deos obsecro [I swear by the gods]: Let no one invite me, for I do not dance. (9).

Irony and Change; Or, Why Porn is F**king Boring (Or is that Other Way Around?)

Kierkegaard begins the second part of The Concept of Irony exploring the place of irony in shifting or changing of historical eras.

Catholicism was the given actuality for the generation living at the time of the Reformation, and yet it was also the actuality that no longer had validity as such.  Consequently, one actuality collides here with another actuality. (260)

Kierkegaard goes on to explore the difference between the ironist on one hand and the prophet and hero on the other.  The prophet articulates presentiments and the hero battles for the new over the old but the ironist perceives the old “in all its imperfection” (261).

For the ironic subject, the given actuality has lost its validity entirely; it has become for him an imperfect form that is a hindrance everywhere.  But on the other hand, he does not possess the new. . . . He is the one who must pass judgment.  In one sense the ironist is certainly prophetic, because he is continually pointing to something impending, but what it is he does not know.  He is prophetic, but his position and situation are the reverse of the prophet’s. The prophet walks arm in arm with his age, and from this position he glimpses what is coming. . . . The ironist, however, has stepped out of line with his age, has turned around and faced it.  That which is hidden from him, lies behind his back, but the actuality he so antagonistically confronts is what he must destroy; upon this he focuses his burning gaze (261).

The negative work of irony here is not of particular phenomena but of the whole, infinite absolute negativity.  Here Kierkegaard begins to drawn heavily on Hegel noting that the ‘negative’ in Hegel’s system is ‘irony’ in actual history.  He then moves on to articulate a position that sounds very much like the Hegel/Kierkegaard synthesis that Zizek promotes.

[S]ince the ironist does not have the new in his power, we might ask how, then, does he destroy the old, and the answer to that must be: he destroys the given actuality by the given actuality itself; but it should be remembered nevertheless that the new principle is present within him [potentially], as possibility.  But by destroying actuality by means of actuality itself, he enlists in the service of world irony.  In his Geschichte der Philosophie, Hegel says: “All dialectic allows as valid that which is to be valid as if it were valid, allows inner destruction to develop in it – the universal irony of the world” (262). [emphasis mine]

The means of destruction are provided by what is to be destroyed.  Let me take an example that may be more or less controversial depending on my reader.  I grew up with pornography being a dark, shrouded and heinous sin.  In my evangelical youth I remember various works emerging to deal with this problem.  Pornography was treated like acid.  To even inadvertently cast a less-than-pure glance over a cheerleader as you (religiously) watched football was to risk being splashed with its scarring spew.  Eye poison.

Now I can appreciate the need to address pornography on a number of levels but I began to see this approach heaping supernatural power on nearly every form of possible sexual expression.  Now for any of you wander off the straight and narrow path of internet browsing (perhaps finding less-than-legal sites for sampling music or whatever) it does not take much to come across some pretty hardcore stuff.  First glances raise all that historical baggage but then I actually looked at what was being promoted.  How incredibly unattractive and downright boring this stuff is.  I can see why the industry has to be the fastest evolving in terms of technology and expression because it plays out so quickly.  In other words the seeds of its destruction are within.  I am not looking to downplay the reality of addictions.  I mean getting drunk becomes pretty boring as well.  The question may be to help people into a space where they can see clearly what is at play and name it for themselves as opposed to having someone else name it for them.  Or at least to understand where these names come from and who is invested in them.

Now perhaps we can move on to economics . . .