Category: 17 – upbuilding discourses in various spirits

Upbuilding as unedifying

Well it was a fairly quick tear through Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits.  Overall, as I mentioned in my last post, I was not impressed.  It was piece of simple and thoroughgoing introspection.  The basic thrust was that every individual is able to live joyously, but joy comes through suffering because suffering is the teacher of obedience and obedience of all things is necessary for joy.  I continue to grant Kierkegaard some margin on this stream of his thinking because it seems apparent that our contemporary subjective constitutions remain relatively flaccid.  However, where I see a necessary and critical rejection is in how this plays out in some of his examples.  Kierkegaard typically wants to drive a qualitative distinction between external influences and internal formation.  It is important for him that there is nothing external that can overcome an appropriate internal orientation (alone before God).

There are many assumptions inherent to this position.  It assumes a form of suffering based on recognition (i.e. people knew Kierkegaard was a genius, but perhaps also insane).  This assumes a rejection.  It does not explore the enmeshed relationship of abuse in which the very form of relating (and identity) can create a double-bind in the experience of the abused (an abusive spouse can express absolute need and revulsion in almost the same moments).  Kierkegaard concedes, in good Pauline literalist fashion, that if someone can choose their freedom then they should do so but then goes on and uses the actual example of a woman who bears “all the difficulties and caprices and insults of her husband” (I think you mean “shit” Kierkegaard . . . although I don’t know the original Danish) so that on the outside it looks like “a happy marriage”.  There is no redeeming the direction Kierkegaard takes this and in fact I would argue it goes against his very premise of individuality.  To “suffer meekly” in this instance is bind herself perversely to her husband and not “stand alone before God”.

Next is Works of Love.  I have read through it twice already.  I remember the second half holding the most engaging portion.  I am feeling the first signs of real lag in this reading schedule.  My pace is great but this last volume took a little wind out of my sails.  It did, however, raise an interesting conflict in my mind.  To what extent should I skim those works I am not interested in or agree with?  I know that is up to me and doesn’t really matter.  However, I have often given up reading something because it somehow attained lower worth.  Given that I have invested so much time in Kierkegaard (and have a thesis project with him on the horizon) it seemed important to practice the discipline of reading ‘unedifying discourses’ for the very purposes of understanding the logic that reacts against my thinking.

Kierkegaard’s privileged individual

I am about halfway through Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits (UDiVS)and I have to say it is one of the least enjoyable reads so far.  Now perhaps the fault is my own and perhaps I should not even bother reading it.  Kierkegaard knew well that his ‘religious’ writings were not interesting and were not intended to be.  Most of them were written with the hope that perhaps an individual who was suffering might read them and through reading find some joy.  This is not my interest or posture in reading.  I am precisely looking for the interesting and innovative.

Now it is becoming clear to me that when Kierkegaard speaks of suffering he means very explicitly existential suffering.  The suffering people experience when they find themselves pulled and torn by paradoxes of life that result from humans being a synthesis of body and spirit.  There is a certain heaviness that hangs over humanity with some experiencing a greater darkness.  This suffering may be due to actual experiences of rejection or injustice but this sort of suffering comes to any who seek eternity in the midst of the temporal.  This is all sort of a paraphrase of how Kierkegaard talks about suffering.

I am also becoming more convinced that Kierkegaard probably really did suffer whether in some form of a clinical depression or just basic anxiety over life.  I read his ‘upbuilding’ discourses, like many of his other writings, as his own processing of belief and experience.  Faith speaks both of joy and suffering.  What could that mean?  This is the content of much of UDiVS.  Part of my increasing trouble with these discourses is the manner in which they are not interested and in fact reject any primacy in effecting change in external conditions.  So for instance,

Thus is one who is born a slave, in compliance with Apostle’s heartfelt admonition (for Christ did not come in order to abolish slavery, although this will follow and be a result of His coming), he is not concerned about it, and merely chooses freedom if it is offered: then he bears the heavy burden lightly.  How heavy this burden is, the unhappy slave knows best, and human sympathy understands it with him.  If he groans under the burden, as humanity groans with him, then he bears the burden heavily.  If he patiently submits to his fate, and patiently hopes for freedom, then he still does bear the burden lightly.  But the meek, who has had the courage really to believe in spiritual freedom, bear the heavy burden lightly: he neither relinquishes the hope of freedom, nor does he expect it (The Gospel of Suffering, 37).

What I can appreciate is that there may be a way of living in the midst of suffering that can actually alleviate the experience of suffering (that is, without changing conditions).  What I do not understand is why this can only be attained through the posture of resignation.  Isn’t the image of Christ one of resolute orientation (setting his face towards Jerusalem to encounter the crux of powers) towards the possibility of freedom?

So what I wonder about is the extent to which Kierkegaard’s message in his upbuilding discourses would offer comfort to those who already have a level of freedom and need to deal only with existential suffering or whether this message could actually help bring joy to someone in the midst of material and social bondage.  And if it did bring joy would this joy actually be an illusion?  For instance, would it teach the wife suffering domestic abuse to bear her burden with joy and patience?  Or would it create a strong base of individuality (that is a presence of being differentiated from the abuser) that could actually see the possibility of freedom that is before her and empower her to take it?  If the latter is not the case then I think Kierkegaard’s notion of the individual in these expressions needs further development.  I sense that the ‘individual’ is still a privileged individual who can be a ‘slave’ or ‘depressed’ (not to diminish these states) but who still carries a basic ‘ontological’ sense of their individuality as universal and valid.  Kierkegaard’s individual in these discourses still strikes me as basically a privileged individual.  And this would be in keeping with his biography as one who certainly suffered (internally and externally) but was always able to function with a certain autonomy and social power.

I don’t see this observation so much rejecting Kierkegaard’s overall aims but, as it is increasingly customary these days, it may be necessary to read Kierkegaard against himself and expose his ‘individual’ as not so much standing alone before God but as standing with a sort of minimum social power by which one is able to endure a level of psychological anguish.  The shift must be in making explicit the seizing of freedom that is available as the person enters into differentiated and empowered individuality.

And so with a great number of other readers I would have to say that Kierkegaard’s religious writings are certainly not among my favourite.