Kierkegaard's Relations with Postmodernism
and Feminism
Introduction
The Problem Stated - Post-Modern Christianity:
Don Cupitt Kierkegaard and Postmodernism
I: Methodology Kierkegaard and Postmodernism
II: The Relational Self
The Relational Self In Practice Kierkegaard
and Postmodernism
III: The Transcendent Relation Kierkegaard
and Feminism
I: "That Individual" Kierkegaard
and Feminism
II: Relational Ethics Kierkegaard and
Feminism
III: Women's Experience Envoi Notes
Introduction There are intriguing congruities
between Kierkegaard and some recent
tendencies
in feminism and post-modern thought.
1 Neither
Kierkegaard, feminists, nor post-modernism
are systematic (that's one congruity
right
there!), so the common points can't
be neatly
tabulated. But (again typically of
all the
parties concerned) they tend to lie
in three
areas: methodology, communicative strategy,
and the rejection of procrustean metaphysics.
In what follows I will try to assemble
some
fragments which point out these congruities.
The Problem Stated What happens to
'person'
in a 'post-modern' era? At one level
the
answer to this question is plain. From
the
medieval synthesis through modern times,
the search for understanding has been
the
search for an essence, a metaphysical
construct.
Within this paradigm, the quest for
'person'
has focused on the quality of a metaphysical
essence: Are persons primarily body
or mind,
thought or feeling, material or spiritual?
Postmodern paradigms of the nature
of understanding
shift the terms of this search. The
"loss
of the transcendental signified"
deconstructs
the notion of essence, for selves as
for
other things. Spiritual reality, understood
as metaphysical, has no place in these
paradigms.
Feminist paradigms yield a related
transformation
of the notion of selfhood. In the language
of postmodernism, a key feminist claim
might
be that the "transcendental signified"
has been determined patriarchally.
The loss
of the metaphysical self allows a focus
on
experience, particularly the social
experience
of women. Attention to such experience
grounds
challenges to traditional categories
in various
fields, notably ethics. Christian ethics,
unabashedly determined through patriarchal
authority, appears a prime target for
such
a challenge.
Post-Modern Christianity: Don Cupitt
Before
looking at how Kierkegaard's ideas
relate
to these issues, it would be helpful
to see
how Christianity looks to one who wholeheartedly
embraces the "post-modern"
worldview.
This new face of Christianity is manifest
in the work of Don Cupitt, theologian
and
Anglican cleric. His project is incarnate
in a variety of works. In what follows
I
will focus on The New Christian Ethics,
which
is a wide-ranging theological investigation
of the status of Christian practice
in light
of the 'death' of the realist frame
of reference
for Christian belief.
Cupitt begins by asserting that theological
realism has been gradually demythologized
since the Enlightenment. He claims
that the
increasing human consciousness of the
social
construction of reality has led to
the impossibility
of maintaining such a realism. Given
that
meaning is pure social construction,
theological
realism is rendered a dead option.
Yet Christian
ethics (if not other ethical systems
as well)
is still stated in the 'residually-theological'
terms of a platonic-realist framework.
2
Cupitt asserts that "all modern
philosophies
of language" agree that the world
is
a human creation, the human world a
communication
network in and by language. 3 He consistently
fleshes out this claim with reference
to
structuralist and post-structuralist
ideas,
even remarking that French structuralism
is much the most advanced tradition
in carrying
the ideal of 'world-as-language' to
its utmost
conclusions. 4 Thus he cites structuralist
theories of language and meaning-creation
as furnishing the description and effecting
the culminating result of the process
of
demythologizing realism.
Structuralism insists on the social
construction
of meaning - that there is no reality
beyond
what is said in language. The Saussurian
term langue refers to the total linguistic
framework within which utterances take
place.
Language does not express or point
to an
external reality; it actually forms
this
reality. Different linguistic constructions
thus name and hence 'create' a different
reality.
Cupitt uses this framework to mount
a general
attack on the concept of private experience.
I cannot experience a thing unless
I have
been pre- programmed by culture to
be capable
of experiencing it. . . . If a meaning
is
not already imprinted upon my constitution,
it cannot become excited. There is
no experience
which is not the firing of a meaning,
and
therefore, . . . all mystical ideas
about
extraordinary experiences about the
ineffable
and about pure unconditioned awareness
are
dead. 5
One might of course participate in
a culture
which has mystical ideas as part of
its framework.
Such ideas would merely be human constructions,
with a natural history like any other
concepts.
But to those who claim to have private
unsocialized
experiences of the ineffable, Cupitt
replies:
What makes it seem so important to
you is
just what makes it mean nothing at
all to
me. For, necessarily, the only common
meaning
is linguistic meaning. Experience does
not
exist; can you understand that? Only
the
public is real, and experience is not
public.
6
Given the death of realism and experience
as a basis, Christian ethics is challenged
to invent a new decision-structure
not dependent
on them. But to do so requires rooting
out
the residual theological realism inherent
in a host of Christian practices and
beliefs,
replacing this with forms tenable in
the
face of a self-conscious social construction.
Consistent with his denials of realism
as
regards the external world and of private
experience, Cupitt goes on to claim
that
the metaphysical self is a necessary
casualty
of this rooting out of realism, and
with
it the idea of internal action and
thought
as a locus of 'truth.' From this it
follows
among other things that
In religion . . . we have to give up
the
old Augustinian idea that the real
me is
the me at private prayer. My reality
is first
and foremost relational and linguistic.
I
am the sum of all my communicative
interactions
with other people. 7
Private prayer, construed as the ultimate
metaphysical connection between the
metaphysical
self and the real though hidden God,
is essentially
an ontologically impossible practice.
Kierkegaard and Postmodernism I: Methodology
What kind of relations obtain between
Kierkegaard
and postmodernism? It is common to
suggest
that Kierkegaard's position always
already
comprises the postmodern analysis of
knowing
and language. The anti-metaphysical
strands
running through such works as the Fragments
and the Postscript, together with the
entire
project of the pseudonymous authorship,
are
taken as forerunners of the postmodern
emphasis
on constructed truth and plural readings.
Thus Kierkegaard has been a central
resource
for such postmodern writers as Mark
C. Taylor.
Kierkegaard's most direct address to
the
issue of postmodern reading is contained
in his Book on Adler. This essay has
not
been much considered by postmodern
thinkers,
perhaps because it is a minor and topical
work, which was occasioned by the case
of
a clergyman hopelessly confused between
Hegelianism
and Christianity. Nevertheless, this
little
work is of great help in clarifying
Kierkegaard's
relation to postmodernist ideas. In
it Kierkegaard
discusses two "confusions of the
age"
which are particularly important in
this
context: the confusions between the
'genius'
and the 'apostle', and between the
'premise-author'
and the 'essential author'.8
In Kierkegaard's formulation the central
distinction between the categories
'genius'
and 'apostle' is in the dimension of
communicative
authority. The contribution of the
genius
must be judged on its own internal
evidence,
and such qualities as profundity and
cleverness
are potentially important. The apostle's
contribution, on the other hand, stands
or
falls on the quality of authority associated
with it. Even if I understand the content
communicated by the apostle to the
fullest,
I have not appropriated it fully unless
I
also accept the authority under which
it
is promulgated. 9 Kierkegaard consistently
maintained that he himself was "without
authority." One of his main criticisms
of Adler is that he confuses these
categories,
believing that he can support a claim
to
revelation through argumentation concerning
the content revealed.
The premise-author has "premises
for
living but no conclusions"; although
he may write and even be published,
he cannot
write the essential final part of the
treatise.
What the premise-author lacks is an
essential
life-view. He is outwardly directed,
whereas
the essential author is inwardly directed.
The premise-author thinks that everything
will be all right if only a loud enough
outcry
is made. 10
The essential author, on the other
hand,
always has a conclusion in hand and
never
makes a move through uncertainty. His
work
is nourishing where the premise-author
is
devouring. 11
It is one thing to be a physician .
. . ,
and another thing to be a sick man
who .
. . communicate[s] bluntly the symptoms
of
his disease. Perhaps he may be able
to express
and expound the symptoms in far more
glowing
colors . . . . But in spite of that
there
remains the decisive qualitative difference
between a sick man and a physician.
And this
difference is precisely the same decisive
qualitative difference between being
a premise-author
and an essential author. 12
Kierkegaard views Adler under the category
of premise-author, especially in light
of
his willingness to alter and ultimately
retract
his "revelation" under official
pressure.
The distinction between essential and
premise
authorship gets to the heart of the
split
between Kierkegaard and postmodernism.
The
postmodern outcry "vive la Differance!"
is avowedly meaning-devouring. To be
a postmodernist
is to be a premise-author, a reincarnate
Adler, an invalid posing as a physician.
Clearly Kierkegaard wishes to count
himself
an essential author, self-contained
and upbuilding.
In this respect, perhaps even more
than in
his refusal of apostolic authority,
he distinguishes
himself from Adler. It is his claim
to a
self-consistent and edifying "project"
which distinguishes Kierkegaard's methodology
from that of postmodernism.
Kierkegaard and Postmodernism II: The
Relational
Self Like Cupitt, Kierkegaard discusses
the
grammar of the self and the relation
of religious
inwardness and outwardness. His position
on this subject reflects a certain
tension.
But before considering how this tension
is
played out in specific examples it
will be
useful to understand how he thinks
of the
self in general.
Given that Cupitt's reflections on
prayer
are part of a chapter entitled 'Remaking
the Christian Self,' it is worth noting
that
Kierkegaard also has a theory of the
self
which is fundamentally epistemological
and
relational rather than metaphysical.
However,
he stresses the internal relating ability
of the self.
A human being is spirit. But what is
spirit?
Spirit is the self. But what is the
self?
The self is a relation that relates
itself
to itself or is the relation's relating
itself
to itself in the relation; the self
is not
the relation but is the relation's
relating
itself to itself. 13
Cupitt rejects the 'inner' mental and
soulish
self in favor of the 'outer' and relational
self. But attention to Kierkegaard
suggests
that this is a false dichotomy. If
Cupitt
wants to reject metaphysical realism,
his
reliance on the inner/outer distinction
is
untenable. 'Inner' and 'outer' are
metaphysical
terms which imperfectly name two fuzzy
classes
of relations.
Kierkegaard's construction of the self
as
relational stresses this point. As
language
users we are constantly involved in
the process
of relation; and while the world around
us
controls what kinds of selves we are
to some
extent, by its relation to us, we are
at
the very least not passive observers
of this
process. We may choose how to value
and integrate
the various relations in which we are
involved;
we may even seek new relations.
Kierkegaard deepens his relational
analysis
by denying that the self is self-constituted,
claiming instead that it is constituted
by
another, on which it is thus dependent.
Inevitably
then the question arises of the self's
relation
to this constituting other. In The
Sickness
Unto Death Kierkegaard runs through
the typology
of possible relationships between the
self
and its constitutive other. He finally
defines
the state of spiritual health thus:
"In
relating itself to itself and in willing
to be itself, the self rests transparently
in the power that established it."14
So much might be said simply as a matter
of philosophical psychology. Even Cupitt's
structural-social account of the self
might
be phrased in these terms, if the constituting
power were understood to be the language-using
community as a whole. But Kierkegaard
of
course claims that the establishing
power
is God.
A reliance on God as establishing power
certainly
appears metaphysical. But in this context
it is significant that God comes into
Kierkegaard's
discourse as a necessary postulate
of relationality,
rather than as a metaphysical idea.
As D.
Z. Phillips points out, in the everyday
grammar
of religion, the relation between the
believer
and God is primary, and theological
or philosophical
attempts to take as foundational the
project
of 'proving God's existence' metaphysically
tend to ignore actual religious practice.
15 Kierkegaard's existential method
at least
has the merit of not ignoring practice.
The Relational Self In Practice Kierkegaard's
understanding of what is implied by
the transparent
relation of outward relations to the
inward
(and where it can go wrong) can be
seen at
work in four distinct contexts: in
his imaginative
construction and theological category
of
the 'Knight of Faith,' in his critical
remarks
on 'hidden inwardness' in Christianity,
in
his self-evaluation of his own maieutic
project,
and most directly in his comments on
the
relation between hidden and visible
'works
of love.'
The best known of these contexts is
that
of the 'Knight of Faith,' who represents
the ideal of Christianity in Fear and
Trembling.
The Knight of Faith represents a stage
beyond
that of the Knight of Infinite Resignation,
who has visibly given up the world.
The Knight
of Faith, having given up the world,
nevertheless
acts 'by virtue of the absurd' as though
the world were his.
He resigned everything infinitely,
and then
he grasped everything again by virtue
of
the absurd. He is continually making
the
movement of infinity, but he does it
with
such precision and assurance that he
continually
gets finitude out of it, and no one
ever
suspects anything else. 16
Kierkegaard's two paradigmatic examples
of
this stage are Abraham and an invented
modern
figure who is to all outward appearances
a tradesman or a tax collector. What
they
share is a faith so 'inward,' so subjective,
that it does not show at all in their
everyday
lives. Thus it is impossible to determine
what they are: whether the contemporary
Knight
is not perhaps actually the perfect
philistine
he appears, whether Abraham is not
perhaps
the heartless automaton the narrative
allows.
But while stressing this inwardness
as the
essence of Christianity, Kierkegaard
is also
acutely aware of the potential problems
of
hiddenness. He makes fun of the 'starred
and beribboned' personage who declares
that
he is ready to give all if it should
be required
of him, but in 70 years he has found
no challenge
requiring him to give all.
This amounts to making a fool of God;
it
is like a child playing a game of hide-and-seek
so that no one shall find him. One
says aloud
- if it is required, etc. - and then
says
very softly - look, not even Satan
himself
will be able to get hold of me - so
cleverly
shall I hide. 17
Kierkegaard, always sensitive to the
use
of language and its relation to other
actions,
in one passage from his journals makes
outward
context the test of spiritual sincerity:
. . . all speaking with the mouth is
a kind
of ventriloquism, an indeterminate
something.
The deception is that there is, after
all,
a definite visible figure who uses
his mouth.
But take care. Language is an abstraction.
In order for speaking actually to become
human speech in a deeper sense, or
in a spiritual
sense, something else is required with
respect
to being the one who speaks, two points
must
be determined: the one is the speech,
the
words spoken, the other is the situation.
The situation determines decisively
whether
or not the speaker is in character
with what
he says, or the situation determines
whether
or not the words are spoken at random,
a
talking which is unattached. 18
Thus geographical or cultural 'Christendom'
is composed of those who claim 'inwardness'
but do not ever show it outwardly,
who effectively
avoid ever being put to the test. Kierkegaard
claims that both inwardness and its
expression
are needed: neither will suffice alone.
Kierkegaard's rejection of hidden inwardness
might seem to be at odds with his own
case,
in which he admits to having hidden
his inward
Christianity. Indeed he confesses that
this
"is and continues to be an awkward
matter."
But he notes that he has not remained
hidden
in order to avoid the 'Christian collisions,'
nor has he in fact been spared them.
Furthermore,
he claims that the task which he took
on,
that of prodding others' false 'hidden
inwardness,'
could only be achieved by the method
of indirect
communication, which requires its author
to hide his purposes. 19
Finally, the first section of Works
of Love
addresses the problem at hand straight
on
in dealing with "love's hidden
life
and its recognizability by its fruits."
Here Kierkegaard maintains that the
spring
of Christian love and action is to
be found
in God's unseen love. Yet "if
it were
so, as conceited sagacity, proud of
not being
deceived, thinks, that we should believe
nothing that we cannot see with our
physical
eyes, then we first and foremost ought
to
give up believing in love."20
If one
did so then one would lose faith in
the internal
relation which grounds those external
relations
which are conventional works of love.
Religious
inwardness and social outwardness are
here
seen as intimately connected, so much
so
that the spring of the individual's
outward
relations is to be found in inwardness.
More
than that, in speaking of the primary
importance
of looking toward one's own fruits,
rather
than those of others, Kierkegaard is
foreshadowing
Cupitt's exhortation to "meditatively
question ourselves, read quietly and
think
about our lives, our friends, our values
. . . if they help us with our real
life,
which is our life with others."21
But
he goes beyond Cupitt in suggesting
a touchstone
by which one might actually determine
something
about values, a relation which is valued
above all others and in turn serves
as a
standard of valuation for all others
- in
short, a transcendent relation.
Kierkegaard and Postmodernism III:
The Transcendent
Relation This notion of transcendent
relation,
which arises naturally from Kierkegaard's
understanding of the self as relational,
in both "inward" and "outward"
aspects, is the foundation of an analysis
of personal religious practices (such
as
private prayer) which does not depend
on
a substance-metaphysics. Of course,
religious
believers often refer to these practices
using an expression which has the surface
grammar of substance- metaphysics,
speaking
of relations between individuals and
'the
transcendent.' But Kierkegaard for
one consistently
tries to subvert this surface grammar
and
center his work on the deep grammar
of relation,
as in the following passage:
When the question about truth is asked
subjectively,
the individual's relation is reflected
upon
subjectively. If only the how of this
relation
is in truth, the individual is in truth,
even if he in this way were to relate
himself
to untruth. 22
Yet, as Kierkegaard claims in a gloss
on
this passage found in his journals,
this
emphasis on relation does not give
the believer
a blank check. The tendency which he
exhibits
in his more theoretical works to keep
from
direct talk of Divine reality is driven
by
his "epistemological modesty"23
and does not arise out of any doubt
on his
part about the truth of God. He believes
that there is such a truth, but this
truth
can only be grasped in the course of
transcendent
relations; it cannot be established
ahead
of time. For
the remarkable thing is that there
is a How
with the characteristic that when the
How
is scrupulously rendered the What is
also
given, that this is the How of faith.
Right
here, at its very maximum, inwardness
is
shown to be objectivity. 24
In short, the only person with whom
one can
have a God- relationship is God, and
the
only way to the truth of God is through
God-relationship.
Back once more to the Book on Adler.
Kierkegaard
speaks of "an erring Wissenschaft"
which confuses Christianity. "Esprit
and spirit, revelation and originality,
a
calling from God and ingeniousness,
an apostle
and a genius, all coalesce in one and
the
same thing".25 Even so does postmodern
reading, the Wissenschaft of normative
erring,
confuse Christianity in our age. Theologians
like Cupitt, and philosophers like
Mark C.
Taylor, take Derrida - who in Kierkegaardian
categories is the ultimate premise-genius,
at play in the field of the signifier
- Derrida
of all people, as a prophet of Absolute
Truth.
But Kierkegaard's substitution of existential
epistemology for substance-metaphysics,
and
his ironic and dialectical use of serious
philosophy and theology, are proof
against
Derridean mis/reading. Kierkegaard
had already
shown this in his unfinished student
work
Johannes Climacus, or De Omnibus Dubitandum
Est. The text is a travesty on the
theme
of the existential impossibility of
philosophical
reading: Johannes is a student of philosophy
who goes mad in the attempt to existentially
appropriate Descartes' universal doubt.
26
Were Johannes around today his trouble
would
clearly be with Derrida not Descartes.
But
it would be the same problem, with
the same
result. The semeiotic sense demonstrated
in that work shows that Kierkegaard
will
not mistake Derrida's shop for a tailor's,
despite the sign in the window: "Pressing
Done Here".27
Kierkegaard and Feminism I: "That
Individual"
At first glance Kierkegaard's relations
with
feminism are even more tenuous than
his connection
to postmodernism. To the extent that
he comments
on the "woman question,"
Kierkegaard
adopts a patronizing patriarchal point
of
view. Indeed, Kierkegaard's implied
'individual'
(the audience of his books) is masculine
and bourgeois. But this fact raises
a dialectical
puzzle. For the origin of Kierkegaard's
category
lies in his need to communicate with
his
ex-fiancée, Regine Olson. In short
'that
individual' was a woman, a particular
woman.
Thus much of the time, at least in
the early
pseudonymous works, Kierkegaard's intended
audience is a woman - although of course
she is not the explicit audience of
the pseudonymous
authors. Yet both historical and textual
evidence shows that, in relation to
this
particular audience, Kierkegaard signally
fails at the task of communication
as he
sets it for himself ex post facto in
The
Point of View: to find the reader where
[she]
is, and begin there. 28
Despite this irony, Kierkegaard's focus
on
the individual, his reader, is very
important.
As Kierkegaard came to appropriate
the category
of the individual in his writing, he
redefined
the notion of audience. Indeed he redefined
this concept in a way which has some
connection
with the framework of contemporary
feminism.
Virginia Held speaks of feminist ethics
as
addressing the domain "between
the self
and the universal."
What feminist moral theory will emphasize,
in contrast, will be the domain of
particular
others in relations with one another.
The region of "particular others"
is a distinct domain, where it can
be seen
that what becomes artificial and problematic
are the very "self" and "all
others" of standard moral theory.
In
the domain of particular others, the
self
is already closely entwined in relations
with others, and the relation may be
much
more real, salient, and important than
the
interests of any individual self in
isolation.
29
Thus feminism implicitly rejects the
two
frameworks of classical ethics, 'individual
rights' and 'universal duties'. For
all his
stress on individual existential appropriation,
Kierkegaard too places his focus "between
the self and the universal" by
stressing
the mode of personal Socratic dialectic.
In so doing he rejects the philosophical
modes of communication which were dominant
in his time: solipsistic reflection
(Descartes)
and didactic systematization (Hegel).
In
short, Kierkegaard talks like a feminist:
from his own experience, or praxis,
to individual
others, and without attempting to make
any
individual's experience normative for
others
with different stories. (I can't review
the
arguments here, but many Kierkegaard
scholars
have recently questioned the reading
of Kierkegaard's
"stages" as normative and
developmental.)
Kierkegaard's project is maieutic,
and we
would do well to recall the philosophical
differences between midwives and obstetricians.
Kierkegaard and Feminism II: Relational
Ethics
Another important key to the feminist
side
of Kierkegaard is his category of the
'teleological
suspension of the ethical,' which forms
the
framework for his reading of the Abraham
story. Ironically, this is the passage
in
all Kierkegaard's work which feminists,
indeed
women generally, unite in rejecting.
But
before taking offense, it is worth
clarifying
the reasons for this offense.
It is common to take the call for a
teleological
suspension of the ethical as a demand
for
the metaphysical rejection of the world
in
the interest of obtaining unchanging
Truth.
Such an interpretation is in danger
of forgetting
that the Truth involved is not a humanly
constructed thesis, but a revelation.
Here it is important to remember Kierkegaard's
formulation of the categories 'genius'
and
'apostle' in terms of communicative
authority.
What is essential in the command to
Abraham
is not the content, but the authority
behind
it. What is essential about it for
us is
our relation to that authority, a person,
God. If we bemoan the unfairness and
injustice
of the Divine request, we have missed
the
transformation that has occurred before
our
very eyes. In his teleological suspension
of the ethical, Abraham has sacrificed
abstract
rational justice (Kantian patriarchal
ethics)
and received back an ethics of relation.
Or rather, since the earlier history
of Abraham
implies that he already lives an ethics
of
relation, it is Johannes de Silentio
and
his Kantian readers who are challenged
to
undergo this transformation. In Fear
and
Trembling Kantian universal ethics,
the bourgeois
ethics of Either/Or's Judge William,
is slain
once and for all. What replaces it
should
look familiar to readers of Held and
Gilligan:
it is an ethics of relation, an ethics
of
care.
Feminists may still be outraged at
the Abraham
story. But their offense at the particular
lesson about relation which this story
suggests
should not blind them to the fact that
Kierkegaard
is here a fellow traveler. And of course
he too is offended. The dialectical
question
is what happens after that.
It may be worth pursuing this story
further.
Kierkegaard's idea of an absolute relation,
which is the touchstone for all other
relations,
does not make other relations "less
important" in some universalistic
sense.
Indeed it may provide a needed corrective
to an ethic of caring. Nell Noddings
suggests
that one need not care for those one
doesn't
know. 30 Virginia Held rebels against
this,
and resolves the problem by admitting
a mixture
of universal rational laws and relational
caring. 31 But if there is a touchstone
relation,
an absolute relation, and one which
is by
its very nature only possible with
regard
to one Other, then a pure ethic of
relation
may be possible. Then Kierkegaard may
have
a serious contribution to make to feminist
ethics.
Kierkegaard and Feminism III: Women's
Experience
It is worth noting in this context
that Kierkegaard
is not completely oblivious to women's
experience.
In a footnote, he reminds us of a woman
whose
experience parallels Abraham's: Mary.
Far
from being an empty receptacle (as
some feminists
have claimed), Mary also receives a
revelation
which forces a radical choice and demands
a teleological suspension of the ethical
- a rethinking of what relationships
are
really important.
When the angel had announced to Mary
that
by the Spirit she should give birth
to a
child - no, this whole thing was a
miracle,
why then did this child need nine months
like other children? O what a test
for faith
and humility! That this is the divine
will,
to need the slowness of time! Behold,
this
was the cross. 32
Abraham's ordeal is quickly over. But
Mary's
endures for nine months, and longer.
And
while we don't hear about what Abraham
(or
Isaac) thought about the ordeal afterward
(and as far we know Sarah never learned
of
it), we do know that "Mary kept
all
these things, pondering them in her
heart."
At first glance this appears as "hidden
inwardness." But it is precisely
this
kind of pondering about the Incarnation
which
can so easily lead - has often led
- to a
theology of liberation.
Can Kierkegaard be a resource for feminist
Christianity? Consider:
Kierkegaard's God rejects the rational
universal
in favor of an ethic of relation. Is
not
this a feminist God? Kierkegaard's
God asks
that we be prepared to make sacrifices
for
the sake of personal relation. Is not
this
asking true to the facts of human relationality?
Kierkegaard's God provokes us to consider
which relations are dearest to us.
Is not
this a God speaking to women's experience?
Kierkegaard's God speaks only to individuals,
and demands that our faith arise out
of individual
experience. Is not this a feminist
God?
Envoi I hope to have shown that various
echoes
of postmodern and feminist positions
are
present in Kierkegaard. Like many postmodern
and feminist writers, he proposes and
uses
a model of the self which is founded
on relation
rather than metaphysical essence. His
unique
contribution lies in his emphasis that
relations
are personal, and grounded in a transcendent
relation. These key features of Kierkegaard's
theocentric Christianity make it a
valuable
point of departure for Christian analysis
of selfhood in the present age.
Yet for Kierkegaard analysis, however
abstruse,
is only useful in the context of lived
resolution.
This, I think, is the reason for the
initially
surprising fact that Kierkegaard is
in many
ways more closely related to feminist
praxis
than to postmodern play. It also requires
his serious readers to be more interested
in praxis than play. To make this point
I
want to end with a famous passage from
Kierkegaard's
Journals.
What I really need is to get clear
about
what I must do, not what I must know,
except
insofar as knowledge must precede every
act.
. . . the crucial thing is to find
a truth
which is truth for me, to find the
idea for
which I am willing to live and die.
Of what
use would it be to me to discover a
so-called
objective truth . . . if it had no
deeper
meaning for me and for my life? 33
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Notes
1. This paper began as a response to
a session
on "Kierkegaard, Indirection and
Misdirection,"
sponsored by the Kierkegaard Group
of the
American Academy of Religion, November,
1995.
I owe thanks to the presenters on that
occasion:
Laura Lyn Inglis and Peter Steinfeld
of Buena
Vista University, David Kangas of Yale
Graduate
School, and Helene Russell of Claremont
Graduate
School.
2. Don Cupitt, The New Christian Ethics
(London:
SCM Press, 1988), 1.
3. Ibid., 6.
4. Ibid., 85.
5. Ibid., 87.
6. Ibid., 82.
7. Ibid., 91.
8. Søren Kierkegaard, On Authority
and Revelation,
trans. Walter Lowrie (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1955), 3-12.
9. Ibid., 110.
10. Ibid., 3-6.
11. Ibid., 6-10.
12. Ibid., 11.
13. Søren Kierkegaard, The Sickness
Unto
Death, Kierkegaard's Writings, no.
XIX, ed.
and trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna
H. Hong
(Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1980), 13.
14. Ibid., 14.
15. D. Z. Phillips, The Concept of
Prayer
(London: Routledge and Kegan Paul,
1965),
12.
16. Søren Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling;
Repetition, Kierkegaard's Writings,
no. VI,
ed. and trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna
H.
Hong (Princeton: Princeton University
Press,
1983), 41.
17. Søren Kierkegaard, Søren Kierkegaard's
Journals and Papers, ed. and trans.
Howard
V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Bloomington:
Indiana
University Press, 1967-1978), sec.
2123.
18. Ibid., sec. 4056.
19. Ibid., sec. 2125.
20. Søren Kierkegaard, Works of Love,
Kierkegaard's
Writings, no. XVI, ed. and trans. Howard
V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton:
Princeton
University Press, 1995), 5.
21. Cupitt, 91.
22. Søren Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific
Postscript to "Philosophical Fragments",
Kierkegaard's Writings, no. XII, ed.
and
trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong
(Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1992),
I: 199.
23. A term I first encountered in C.
Stephen
Evans, "Kierkegaard on Subjective
Truth:
Is God an Ethical Fiction?," International
Journal for Philosophy of Religion
7 (1976),
288-99.
24. Kierkegaard, Journals, sec. 4550.
25. Kierkegaard, On Authority, 104.
26. Søren Kierkegaard, Philosophical
Fragments;
Johannes Climacus, Kierkegaard's Writings,
no. VII, ed. and trans. Howard V. Hong
and
Edna H. Hong (Princeton: Princeton
University
Press, 1985), 264.
27. See Kierkegaard's dismissal of
philosophy
on these grounds in Søren Kierkegaard,
Either/Or,
Kierkegaard's Writings, no. III-IV,
ed. and
trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong
(Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1987),
I: 32.
28. Søren Kierkegaard, The Point of
View
for My Work As an Author: A Report
to History,
ed. Benjamin Nelson, trans. Walter
Lowrie
(New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1962),
27.
29. Virginia Held, "Feminism and
Moral
Theory," in Women and Moral Theory,
eds. Eva Feder Kittay and Diana T.
Meyers
(Savage, MD: Rowman & Littlefield,
1987),
117.
30. Nell Noddings, Caring (Berkeley:
University
of California Press, 1984), 91-94.
31. Held, 119-20.
32. Kierkegaard, On Authority, 50n.
33. Kierkegaard, Journals sec. 5100.
|
Evans Experientialism 
