Introduction to Part Two
The second part of this volume is dedicated to the theme of creation and, more specifically, to writings in which Kierkegaard focuses on the spiritual significance of creation. In theological terms, “creation” can denote, on the one hand, the process by which God brings about and sustains all existing things. Here the emphasis traditionally falls on questions about whether or not God needs anything in order to create or about God’s reasons for creating. On the other hand, “creation” also can refer to that which has been created by God—in other words, “creatures” that are not God and, indeed, are dependent upon God in order to exist. Here the emphasis traditionally falls upon the degree to which created things are able to interact with God and, in turn, fulfill their divinely ordained purposes. As a whole, then, theological reflection on creation engages matters that are both deeply theoretical and immediately practicable, relying on philosophical and, perhaps above all, biblical claims about God in order to understand and to guide creaturely life, especially the life of human beings.
This twofold emphasis is certainly not foreign to Kierkegaard’s authorship, though he tends to approach creation in the second sense. In other words, much like his reflections on the nature of God, he is generally willing to assume the veracity of traditional Christian teaching about God’s creative activity, so that, instead, he can focus and expound on what this teaching means for the ways in which human beings are to relate to God and to one another. Even his denser philosophical treatises regarding creation—above all, The Concept of Anxiety (1844), which explores how human freedom fosters an ambivalent anxiety (Angest) within the individual, thereby imparting a precondition for either ethical or sinful action—make clear that they are not attempting to encroach upon Christian “dogmatics.” Indeed, Kierkegaard’s pseudonym, Vigilius Haufniensis, notes that his task is “the psychological treatment of the concept of ‘anxiety,’” which concerns “persistent observation” rather than the dogmatic stress on resisting and overcoming sin.
As a pseudonymous work of philosophical psychology, The Concept of Anxiety stands in contrast, both in form and in tone, to the four pieces included here. And yet, its fundamental interest in theological anthropology indicates the crimson thread running through part 2. The first selection, “To Need God Is the Human Being’s Highest Perfection,” is the opening chapter of Four Upbuilding Discourses, published in August 1844 during a striking period of productivity, even by Kierkegaard’s lofty standards. Roughly two months earlier, Kierkegaard had issued a trio of pseudonymous works—Philosophical Fragments, The Concept of Anxiety, and Prefaces. These were accompanied by two signed collections, Three Upbuilding Discourses, published in early June 1844, and the aforementioned Four Upbuilding Discourses. All told, then, Kierkegaard put out five books during the summer of 1844, two of which are now widely counted among his finest and most influential efforts, Philosophical Fragments and The Concept of Anxiety.
It is understandable, then, that a discourse such as “To Need God” might be overlooked amid such literary abundance; however, it stands as an important addendum to The Concept of Anxiety and as a clear precursor to The Sickness unto Death (1849). Kierkegaard’s fundamental task in the discourse is to explore the inner dynamics of the human being, particularly in terms of the self’s quest for fulfillment. There is, he posits, an interplay of selves within the human being—a “first self” that seeks gratification in and through earthly goods, and a “deeper self” that recognizes the impermanence of phenomenal things and thus seeks to orient the person to that which is eternal. The tension between these two ways of relating to reality effectively cripples the person, especially if the deeper self assumes that it has overwhelmed the first self, thereby giving the deeper self a sense of mastery that belies its intrinsic fragility. No, says Kierkegaard, the solution to the self’s quandary is not strength but weakness, not a self-confident autonomy but a humble reliance on God—a point that at once hints at the Dane’s indebtedness to mystics such as Johannes Tauler and establishes one of the key themes of his oeuvre.
Indeed, part 2’s second selection arrives at a similar conclusion, though it is distinguished by how it gets there. Entitled What We Learn from the Lilies in the Field and from the Birds of the Air, this short treatise makes up the second section of Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits, which Kierkegaard published in March 1847. The word Spirits here is taken from the Danish noun Ånd, which indeed can refer to the immaterial aspect of a human being, but also connotes a way of thinking or a mindset. Thus each treatise in Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits exemplifies a certain way of contemplating the world, and What We Learn in particular demonstrates an attitude of humble disponibilité toward creation. The prayer that opens the discourse establishes this outlook from the start:
Father in heaven! From you come only good and perfect gifts. It must also be beneficial to follow the guidance and teaching of whomever you appoint as a teacher to human beings, as a guide to the worried. So, then, grant that the worried may truly learn from the divinely appointed teachers: the lilies in the field and the birds of the air! Amen.
Here, again, Kierkegaard’s indebtedness to classical Christian doctrine is manifest: God is the unchangeably benevolent Creator who creates all things good and whose gifts are offered to human beings for their own well-being. And yet, Kierkegaard especially wants to focus on creation’s own capacity to teach human beings, and What We Learn—the longest selection in the present volume—develops this point over three substantial sections. Drawing on a pericope from Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount (Matt 6:24–34), and employing some of the richest and most poetic writing in his entire corpus, Kierkegaard argues that created things such as lilies and birds can show human beings that it is good to be a part of creation, that the glory of human life is to share in God’s life, and that what dignifies human beings is that they are granted the freedom to receive this glory.
If Kierkegaard, by way of the lilies and the birds, calls persons to come to participate in the divine life, one still might ask, What, exactly, is the nature of this divine life, and what would it mean for human beings to involve themselves with it? Kierkegaard addresses these questions in the third piece included in this section, namely, “Love Upbuilds.” Also stemming from 1847, “Love Upbuilds” opens the second sequence of Works of Love, which arguably is Kierkegaard’s most popular collection of signed writings, though it is hardly unique in its focus on the question of “love.” As M. Jamie Ferreira puts it,
The bulk of Kierkegaard’s authorship provokes us to ask ourselves “Am I loving rightly and well?” precisely because he complicates the story of love. The figure of the lover winds its way throughout his authorship, clothed in aesthetic, ethical, and religious categories.
Unsurprisingly, “Love Upbuilds,” like the rest of Works of Love, tends to focus on the religious aspect of love. Indeed, the volume itself starts with a prayer, one that invokes the Holy Trinity, the “God of love,” the one who is “Eternal Love,” from whom love originates and through whom it is redeemed and strengthened. It is this “love”—Kierkegaard uses the term Kjerlighed, which, like the Latin caritas, refers to a self-giving benevolence toward the other—that Kierkegaard principally identifies with the Christian life. Indeed, “Love Upbuilds” expands on this very point, maintaining that what distinguishes Kjerlighed is not a given action or a certain turn of phrase but an inner commitment to edifying other persons, not through force or through manipulation but, rather, through always trusting that love is present in them.
In contrast to its predecessors, the fourth and final piece in this section is neither mellifluous nor obviously spiritual. It warrants inclusion here, however, because it expounds, albeit in a thick philosophical idiom, the core of Kierkegaard’s theological anthropology. The piece in question is the first section of The Sickness unto Death—one of two texts attributed to the pseudonym Anti-Climacus, who aims to delineate “the summit of Christianity in ethical rigor.” Indeed, according to Kierkegaard, what distinguishes Anti-Climacus among Kierkegaard’s pseudonyms is his acute “exposition of ideality,” so much so that he risks confusing “himself with ideality.” Despite this danger, however, Kierkegaard insists that Anti-Climacus’s “account of ideality can be absolutely true, and I bow to it.”
But what, exactly, does Kierkegaard mean by “ideality” (Idealiteten)? Derived from the Latin idealis (“existing as an archetype”), the word itself refers to the quality of being or of expressing a standard of perfection, an ideal. Anti-Climacus emphasizes distinct but complementary ideals in his two books, The Sickness unto Death and Practice in Christianity (1850). For example, in the latter text (selections from which are included in this volume), Anti-Climacus tends to focus on how Christ’s life of humility and suffering is archetypal for the ordinary Christian believer, even for one who lives in Christendom. The Sickness unto Death, however, takes a more methodical and thereby less hortatory approach, attending to the nature of the human self and its concomitant need to overcome despair and sin and to arrive at perfection—a state that, for Anti-Climacus, is synonymous with the harmonization of the self’s dialectical elements, which can only occur when the self properly relates to itself and to God.
The portion from The Sickness unto Death included here, entitled “The Sickness unto Death Is Despair,” sets forth precisely this argument. Again, it is a challenging read, though one worth the effort. As one commentator has put it, The Sickness unto Death not only represents “the unifying focus of all of Kierkegaard’s writings,” but it endures as Kierkegaard’s “most mature work, his masterpiece.”