1. Existence and Education
© The Author(s) 2018
Søren Harnow KlausenSøren KierkegaardSpringerBriefs in Educationhttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-73186-5_11. Existence and Education
(1)
Department for the Study of Culture, University of Southern Denmark, Odense, Denmark
1.1 Introduction: Why Kierkegaard Matters to Education
Søren Aabye Kierkegaard (1813–1855) is not usually seen as an educational thinker. He is best known for having founded the movement known as existential philosophy, pioneering ideas about absurdity, choice and authenticity that were to become highly influential in the twentieth century. He is also famous as one the great poet-philosophers, as he presented his philosophical thoughts in writings of high sophistication, using a variety of literary genres and forms of expression. None of his works are primarily devoted to education. Still, as will be shown in this book, Kierkegaard was deeply concerned with questions of teaching, learning and personal development.
First, reaching back to the original Socratic understanding of philosophy as the seeking of wisdom, Kierkegaard thought about is really worth knowing, and how knowledge can acquire personal significance. He was deeply concerned about the relationship between the abstract content of teaching and learning and its actual impact on human life. His main objection to the dominant philosophical views of his age was not that they were wrong as such. He acknowledged that according to their own standards, they were both ingenious and impressively coherent. But he noted that for all their internal consistency and scientific rigour, the philosophical theories seemed unable to properly move an actual human being. Their generality, abstractness and purely rational nature made it impossible for them to make sense of the life of an individual person, at least as seen from her own point of view. While Kierkegaard intended this mainly as a criticism of philosophical systems, he thereby raised a more general question about the relationship between items of knowledge, or, put in modern educational terms, ‘learning contents’, and their appropriation by an actual impact on an individual. Put in other contemporary, admittedly un-Kierkegaardian terms, we might say that he was concerned the relationship between knowing that and existential knowing how.
Second, Kierkegaard was acutely aware of what has become known as the ‘pedagogical paradox’. Since the enlightenment, it has been widely assumed that teaching and education should aim at fostering autonomous individuals, making students capable of forming their own beliefs, choosing their own path in life and even criticizing the established order. Enlightenment, and thus education and learning, should serve emancipation and critical thinking. Yet actual teaching and education almost invariably consists in instruction and regulation of students’ behaviour. Students are taught to reproduce, adapt and adjust. This holds even for the allegedly more progressive attempts to foster creativity or intellectual independence. The pedagogical paradox consists in the fact that the student must, apparently, be ‘forced to be free’. Teaching is an asymmetrical relation and a constraining activity.
The paradox was first formulated by Kant, in his late lecture On Education (which was published in 1803):
Kant saw the solution to the apparent paradox in a process of cultivation. The child must be brought to understand that the restraint is not, after all, contrary to its own interest. It must also be made aware that its own actions can interfere with the liberty of others—and that this is not an expression of freedom in the genuine, valuable sense. Genuine freedom involves self-limitation and self-control. Kant’s pedagogical ideal is thus based on his idea of autonomy as rational ‘self-legislation’: becoming a free agent consists in coming to grasp the validity, and thus feel the binding force, of general norms of action—and so being able to consent to them freely, and not perceiving them as being imposed from the outside or contrary to one’s own will.One of the greatest problems of education is how to unite submission to the necessary restraint with the child’s capacity of exercising his free will – for restraint is necessary. How am I to develop the sense of freedom in spite of the restraint? I am to accustom my pupil to endure a restraint of his freedom, and at the same time I am to guide him to use his freedom aright (Kant 1900, 27f.).
The romantics, from whom Kierkegaard took some of his main inspiration, saw the Kantian, ‘classicist’ paradigm as putting too much emphasis on restraint and rational insight. To them, the idea of achieving freedom and maturity by finding one’s place in the larger world and seeing the necessity of self-constraint seemed like a lukewarm compromise. Freedom, they insisted, must involve radical self-expression and passionate engagement. To submit to laws and regulations, however rational and humane these might be, will lead to a restriction of one’s freedom, and also a stifling of one’s sense of life. The romanticists were especially keen to point out that the Kantian notion of freedom is aesthetically and emotionally unsatisfying. This is a pervasive theme already in the writings of Schiller [notably in the essay On Grace and Dignity (1793/2005)], who influenced Kierkegaard strongly.
Yet even for the romanticists, and for later generations of intellectuals, the paradox remained unsolved. If the enlightenment ideals of freedom and autonomy were to be realized, if they should become more than just a noble dream, some kind of adaptation, coordination and even compromise seemed necessary. In the field of education, it was hard to deny that there is something paradoxical, or even hypocritical, about celebrating autonomy, authenticity and the value of open dialogue, while at the same time carefully orchestrating and managing the whole learning process with the predetermined goal of inducing the student to adopt a specific view or attitude.
Kierkegaard grappled with this pedagogical paradox, as well as with the unresolved tension between the ideal of personal freedom as radical self-expression and the practical necessity of coming to terms with the social sphere and the norms governing it. His own use of diverse and sophisticated literary forms, including a variety of pseudonyms, was motivated precisely by a concern not to preach or otherwise force his readers into adopting a specific, preconceived set of ideas. The problem was particularly important to Kierkegaard because he defended an uncompromising view of human freedom. He was critical of the many attempts to somehow assimilate freedom to a kind of higher necessity, or to play down the individuality and subjectivity of human existence. His main concern was that a person should become genuinely authentic and autonomous. This meant that she had to be addressed not just as a rational creature or fellow citizen, but as a concrete, unique ‘existing individual’ (CUP 68; SKS 7, 81). Kierkegaard wanted not to teach general norms, but to literally teach how to become oneself. The kind of education with which he was concerned was an education for authenticity—not just authentic education—and this ruled out any simple solution to the pedagogical paradox. Instead, Kierkegaard devised and advocated a special form of non-coercive teaching, the so-called method of ‘indirect communication’. While Kierkegaard mainly intended this method to be used for existential and religious education, it arguably has much broader significance. Kierkegaard thought that humans should generally be understood and addressed as concrete individuals; it was only that the task of communicating in an appropriately non-coercive way becomes much more difficult when the topic is itself of existential nature. In the last of his pseudonymous, philosophical works, he let the champion of the method of direct communication, Johannes Climacus, say that ‘The secret of […] imparting consists precisely in emancipating the other’ (CUP 63; SKS 7, 74). Even though an ‘all’ that is not found in the Danish original has been added to ‘imparting’ in the English translation, this does sound like a statement about the aim of communication more generally.
It may be argued that Kierkegaard’s thoughts about indirect communication are, at any rate, of more general significance in contemporary societies. The lack of a fixed set of norms and the need to continuously adapt to changing circumstances have lead to a stronger emphasis on self-efficacy and autonomy, as has been emphasized by many sociologists. It may, of course, be argued that education that instrumentalizes autonomy and personal development is not really existential, or not education for genuine authenticity. But then again, Kierkegaard aptly diagnosed precisely this tendency to foster authenticity as a means rather than an end in itself, or to treat the authentic individual as a particular type of individual that may flourish under certain social circumstances. Besides, it is likely that authenticity, even when valued for its own sake, also has some beneficial side effects. This makes it relevant for education under more practical circumstances. It should also be remembered that ‘instrumental’ is a word with a wide range of connotations. It is often associated with economic utility, but may also refer to the fact that something benefits a person on a deeper level, e.g. by contributing to her mastery of life or general well-being. As described by Kierkegaard, becoming oneself does imply something like fostering basic self-efficacy. This is arguably an important educational end that is not restricted to the more exclusive tasks of existential or religious education.
Third, Kierkegaard was deeply inspired by the ideal of Bildung (i.e. personal formation or self-cultivation) championed by Goethe, Humboldt and other German writers. It was widely held during the romantic (and the preceding classic) period that a human being should strive for self-perfection, and that this meant that all its capacities should be developed and integrated into a harmonious whole. One’s personality should be formed in much the same way as a work of art, according to the classicist notion of aesthetic perfection: form and content should be closely unified, the general should be reflected in the particular, and the whole should appear natural rather than artificial. This ideal is clearly visible in Kant’s aforementioned emphasis on cultivation. It was taken over by the romanticists, who further emphasized that the different elements of one’s personality should be closely integrated and animated by a pervasive feeling for life—reason and emotion should not just supplement and constrain each other, but literally merge. They thus attempted to modify Kant’s picture of the autonomous personality as comprising of different faculties and tendencies kept together by the exercise of rational assessment and control should be modified into a more strongly unified vision of the person as an organic, living whole (see e.g. Jamme and Schneider 1984).
The notion of Bildung has played a central role in educational thought and policy ever since (though more explicitly so on the European continent than in the English-speaking world). In contemporary discussions, it is often presented as an alternative to a more instrumental, utilitarian or piecemeal approach to education, which centres on the development of specific, labour-market relevant skills (see Horlacher 2015).
Kierkegaard gave the notion of Bildung a central place in his own thinking. It figures in the title of the most influential of all his texts, the section of Either-Or II entitled ‘Equilibrium between the Aesthetic and the Ethical in the Development of Personality’. But Kierkegaard’s attitude to it and other fashionable ideas of the classic and romantic period was ambivalent. He felt the undeniable force of ideals like Bildung, authenticity and autonomy. But he also noticed that they had a seductive power and could easily turn into idols. It seemed to him that many intellectuals of the romantic age pursued the ideals of self-formation and authenticity not to become themselves, but, paradoxically, to appear unique, remarkable and interesting and thus achieve social recognition, or simply to show off. Moreover, the ideal of Bildung, which had been connected to emancipation from social constraints, was adopted by the educated middle class (as became explicit in the German notion of Bildungsbürgertum) and used to distinguish a certain social group. It came to stand rather for the amassment of knowledge and a certain refined code of conduct.
Part of Kierkegaard’s relevance to education lies, therefore, in his highly nuanced, critical-yet-sympathetic, treatment of the ideal of Bildung. His analysis of the ways in which the ideals of authenticity or self-cultivation can become perverted is of obvious contemporary relevance in an age where continuous self-development and self-exposition on digital media have become part of the social conventions. It is especially significant because it is made not from an external standpoint of general cultural criticism, but based on a much more intimate understanding of the phenomenon in question. It enables us to identify more and less appropriate versions of the classic and romantic ideals which, for good and for bad, still for an integral part of Western culture and self-understanding.
Fourth, both Kierkegaard’s criticism of certain ideals of self-cultivation and his own philosophical practice raise a question about the relevance of very ambitious and idealistic educational aims for practical educational thinking and research. It may be thought that developing one’s personality as if it were a work of art, or communicating about almost unspeakably difficult matters of deep existential concern, are tasks that are simply too far removed from the actual options and challenges in mass education in contemporary schools and universities. Some might even think that it is not only futile, but simply dangerous to pursue these lofty ideals, since they take up resources needed for more realistic and useful educational tasks, and can—as Kierkegaard pointed out himself—very easily be abused or corrupted.
In how far such worries pertain to Kierkegaard’s thinking is a question we shall deal with in Chap. 5. Here it should suffice for maintaining its relevance to point out that it is to a large extent concerned with (and not simply an example of) the risk of pursuing overly lofty ideals. Again, Kierkegaard’s treatment of the ideals of authenticity and self-cultivation is a case in point. It could indeed be argued that Kierkegaard was not concerned with the elementary aspects of education. He has virtually nothing to say about the acquisition of basic skills like reading and calculating, and almost always assumes a situation in which the learner is intellectually on par with the teacher. On the other hand, the fact that Kierkegaard is concerned with the human condition in general, and not with the teaching of specific skills, makes likely that his thinking should have some bearing on education in all its forms and on every level.
There is, however, still a potential barrier to the relevance of Kierkegaard’s thought for contemporary education. This is the fact that Kierkegaard was an avowed Christian thinker. He was, moreover, not just religious in the liberal, accommodative fashion typical of most nineteenth-century thinkers, but subscribed to a rather stern version of Lutheran Christianity. Religious topics are present throughout his works and pervade not least those parts that are most obviously relevant to education. Many scholars have argued that his thinking is essentially Christian; that it can only be adequately understood in this background, and that it is impossible to isolate certain ideas and use them in a purely secular way.
Such an interpretation appears to find considerable justification in Kierkegaard’s own description of his philosophical project (notably in the short intellectual biography The Point of View for My Work as an Author, EK 455-481; SKS 16). I think, however, that it is misguided, and in this book I will assume, quite to the contrary, that central ideas of Kierkegaard’s can be understood and evaluated independently of their religious context. There are two main reasons for this: First, it is generally—and rightly—assumed that authors’ statements about their own work should be taken with caution and not given more weight than those of other interpreters. Authors are naturally inclined to post-rationalize their work. In the case of Kierkegaard, it is obvious that his religious tendency became more pronounced in his later years, and that his self-interpretation was given from a different standpoint than that of the author of his early works.
Second, even if it should be admitted that Kierkegaard’s work is essentially Christian in nature (whatever that means), that does not rule out that parts of it can be appreciated and even adopted without buying into the particular brand of Protestant Christianity that Kierkegaard himself subscribed to. Part of the originality of Kierkegaard’s thinking lies in its explorative character. He outlines and examines a variety of modes of existence, in an experimental manner, without making any definite judgments as to what one should or should not do. This obviously makes it possible to appreciate his work without following in his own footsteps. (As a matter of fact, there is something paradoxical about insisting that one should buy part and parcel the thoughts of a thinker who was so deeply concerned about not coercing or compelling his reader!).
Finally, it should be noted that although Kierkegaard’s understanding of Christianity was indeed stern—i.e. uncompromising—it was also very modern and by no means fanatical or fundamentalist. He objected to assimilating Christianity to liberal, humanist ideas. To be truly religious, he thought, must involve an absolutely unconditional commitment. But he likewise insisted, contrary to typical orthodoxy or fundamentalism, that Christianity is all about faith as an exclusively personal attitude, and had nothing but disdain for religion based on outward rituals, social conventions or moral or legal rules.
It should also be remembered that even in our allegedly secular age religion has not necessarily become obsolete. To see contemporary culture as being dominated by science and reason alone is grossly one-sided. When it comes to the most basic beliefs and attitudes of contemporary Westerners, especially about personal matters, the religious inspiration is easy to discern. There are clear traces of Protestant thinking in contemporary, allegedly secular ideals of personal commitment, conscience, authenticity and the importance of following one’s heart rather than reason. They are ubiquitous themes in commercials, popular novels, Hollywood films and pop tunes.
It could, in fact, be taken as a further mark of its contemporary relevance that Kierkegaard’s educational thinking takes religion seriously. In the multicultural learning environments of today, it may be considered important that students are able to maintain their religious beliefs as such, without being forced to compromise by giving up what is distinctive about them, but in a way that does not prevent them from developing a critical attitude or hamper their social integration. Kierkegaard’s conception of Christianity arguable provides a model for this. I shall not, however, pursue this line of thought further, as I will mostly ignore the religious aspects of Kierkegaard’s thinking.
Finally, it should be stressed that Kierkegaard is in no way an unproblematic role model for educational thinking. He was a radical, provocative thinker. If some of his ideas seem obviously correct or sensible, this is often a sign that one has not grasped their full significance. Kierkegaard’s religious adherence may have been more nuanced than it seems at a first glance, and its significance to his philosophical thinking may have been exaggerated—but it does have implications that can be difficult to stomach for a modern reader. He generally leans towards a form of irrationalism and decisionism that will seem extreme to many. He espouses a form of subjectivism and individualism that became widely rejected in twentieth-century philosophy. As we shall see, his thoughts on education, more specifically, are also far from uncontroversial. But not least because of its challenging, provocative character, Kierkegaard’s thinking remains inspiring and relevant to contemporary educational issues. It is anything but trivial.
1.2 Kierkegaard’s Life and Works: Between Aestheticism, Duty and Faith
From early on, Kierkegaard was torn between a conventional life as a dependable member of society, the life of an artist and boheme, and his devotion to a radical Lutheran Christianity inherited from his father. These three types of orientation are reflected in his doctrine of existential stages. The fact that he maintained a deep respect for all three, and to various degrees embodied them all, not just successively but simultaneously, is further reflected in his doctrine of existential ‘equilibrium’: the idea that the defining qualities of different modes of existence must somehow complement and pervade each other. Kierkegaard despised of the purely conventional life. But he acknowledged the value of taking on social responsibilities and making steady commitments. He deliberately abandoned a conventional life, most vividly expressed in his demonstrative cancelling of the engagement with his fiancé, Regine Olsen, and chose instead to pursue a solitary career as a writer. Yet he took his own case to be an exception and not in any way a role model. And although he eventually came to consider the life of Christian faith as being in some sense superior, he saw himself mainly as an aesthetic character. His advocacy of religion was mixed with an equally strong emphasis on positive freedom and the importance of self-expression. He also maintained that life should be aesthetically satisfying, in all of its forms.
Kierkegaard’s struggle to balance the different tendencies in himself—and different views of human existence—can be seen as an expression of a radical notion of Bildung. He tried to unite very diverse orientations and qualities in the most intimate way. He rejected the popular attempts at a ‘synthesis’, as he thought it robbed the individual elements of their distinctive character. He wanted, in a way, to have it all, without compromise or restriction.
In contrast to most of his contemporaries on the intellectual scene, however, he never came to see human life and thinking as self-sufficient. His religious upbringing installed in him a sense of human weakness and a conviction that if life is to have a foundation at all, it must be something that transcends the human sphere. In his journals, he spoke himself of the ‘dark background which, from the very earliest time, was part of my life’ (PJ 341; SKS 21, 159), probably referring to his father’s strong belief in human sinfulness, sense of guilt and melancholic temper, which he assumed to have inherited and found impossible to shake off. His writings are full of humour, albeit often of a dark kind, and he was keen to emphasize that a religious person should not be overly grave. He championed the ideal of human freedom and; but pursuing a line of thought that came to be typical of modern philosophy, he conceived of this freedom as being nevertheless dependent on, and constrained by, factors not completely within human control.
Kierkegaard studied theology from the age of 17, at first very conscientiously, so that he was expected to take up a clerical career. However, around 1835, he became attracted to the more leisurely sides of student life, adopting a lavish lifestyle he would later label ‘aesthetic’. He began to study for his own curiosity rather than preparing for his exam. While this change may be explained partly by his giving into the attractions of the life of a pleasure-seeking dandy, it seems to have been also motivated by an experience of his university studies as dull and boring. In the earliest of his journal entries, he expressed growing doubts about the importance of the subjects and traditions to which he had been exposed (that is, natural science, orthodox and rationalist theology and law)—indeed, doubts about the very significance of objective knowledge quite generally:
In Sect. 1.4, we shall go deeper into Kierkegaard’s views on the limitations of objective truth and the importance of existentially appropriating or animating knowledge.What I really need is to get clear about what I am to do, not what I must know, except insofar as knowledge must precede every act. What matters is to find my purpose … The crucial thing is to find a truth that is truth for me, to find the idea for which I am willing to live and die. Of what use would it be for me to discover a so-called objective truth, to work through the philosophical systems so that I could, if asked, make critical judgments about them, could point out the fallacies in each system; of what use would it be for me to develop a theory of the state, getting details from various sources and combining them into a whole, and constructing a world I did not live in but merely held up for others to see…? (Journal Entry August 1, 1835; JP 32; EK 8; SKS 17, 24).
Though his studies dragged on for several years, Kierkegaard eventually obtained his degree in theology in 1840, and the following year his masters’ thesis on the concept of irony was accepted. Around the same time, he made a last attempt to embark on a conventional life, by becoming engaged to Regine Olsen, the daughter of a highly placed civil servant. But he almost immediately began to doubt his decision, and in October 1841 finally broke off the engagement, explaining to Regine that both his dark temper and his calling as an independent thinker and writer made him unsuitable as a husband. In Either-Or, he describes a poet’s life as ‘human sacrifice’ (E/O 512; SKS 3, 202), thereby also hinting at his own painful decision to renounce the joys of ordinary life.
A visit to Berlin in the same year had given Kierkegaard the opportunity to reflect on his recent engagement and what to make of his life, as well as to attend lectures by the famous German philosopher Schelling. Though disappointed by his personal appearance and pompous lecturing style, Kierkegaard was sympathetic to Schelling’s criticism of Hegel. Like Schelling, Kierkegaard would oppose Hegel in emphasizing the limitations of conceptual thinking and the priority of actual existence as revealed in concrete experience.
In the years following his decision to wholeheartedly pursue a philosophical career, Kierkegaard was immensely productive. His mature work falls into two distinct phases: The earlier writings, published between 1843 and 1846, are pseudonymous. Kierkegaard referred to this phase in his authorship as ‘aesthetic’, mainly to indicate that it is literary and experimental and not committed to advocating any particular point of view. In contrast, his later works (as well as the Edifying Discourses written simultaneously with the pseudonymous texts, but published later) are of a more explicit and unambiguous religious orientation, and written in a more insisting tone. Some of them, however, are still quite philosophical and explorative, notably the (also pseudonymous) Sickness unto Death from 1849, which contains elaborate analyses of despair, Kierkegaard’s favourite term for self-alienation, and of the structure of the self.
In the last years before his early death in 1855, Kierkegaard mounted a ferocious attack on the Danish State Church, charging it with hypocrisy and insincerity. He had become increasingly mentally unstable, suffering from the public ridicule he had been subjected to due to his eccentric appearance and obstinate behaviour, probably also from constant ruminations over matters of religious faith and what he saw as his personal, important but painful vocation.
1.3 Stages of Existence
Kierkegaard famously distinguished three main existential stages, or ‘spheres of existence’: The aesthetic, the ethical and the religious. The contrast between the former two is set out in Either-Or I-II (1843). The first volume presents a variety of aesthetical characters, whose general attitude to life is then analyzed and criticized in volume two by a self-professed representative of the ethical, Judge Vilhelm. There are hints at a further stage in the closing passages of Either-Or, where the judge turns to quoting a sermon which he apparently takes to support his own position, but which in fact expresses a less self-assuredly humanist and more distinctively Christian view. The particularity of the religious attitude is further emphasized in Fear and Trembling (published later in 1843), which envisages a ‘suspension of the ethical’. It was not, however, until the third section of Stages on Life’s Way (1845) that Kierkegaard explicitly distinguished the religious stage from the ethical and the aesthetical (SKS 6, 439). In the Concluding Unscientific Postscript (1846), Kierkegaard further elaborated his theory of existential spheres. He now added notions of intermediate stages or ‘borderline areas’ (confinia) and subdivided the religious stage into A and B, the latter representing the true, passionate faith, which fully embraces the absurdity of the Christian teachings.
Put very briefly, the idea is behind the doctrine of existential stages is this. A human being can (1) live for the sake of external gratification, very broadly conceived—typically for the sake of pleasure, but this aesthetic form of life can also consist in exploiting one’s inborn talent or a favourable condition of life. She can also, however, (2) base her life on her own choice and commitments, while acknowledging (i.e. consciously affirming) her dependence on and obligations to other people. Such an ethical existence can be manifested in various ways, but must include the establishment of close personal bonds—notably marriage (though from a contemporary perspective, there is no need to see the ethical as requiring some specific kind of relationship, in terms of gender, legal status etc.). The ethical attitude also requires one to have some kind of meaningful occupation (though again, this does not necessarily have to take the form of salaried work or business). This engagement in social affairs must be based on a free decision and not just come from habit or a desire to exploit favourable opportunities. In this way, a person may be said to choose herself and give continuity and meaning to her life as a whole. Yet with time, a person living ethically may come to doubt that her own self-conception, and the human projects and values to which she is committed, can be robust enough to serve as a real basis for her life. Acknowledging her own fundamental limitations, she may finally take a leap of faith and give herself over to something incomparably greater, which she is not able to fathom but nevertheless willing to believe in. This leap into (3) the religious sphere does not mean that the person ceases to live by her own choices and commitments. Rather it means that she now invests her commitment into her religious belief; in return, she may obtain the kind of constancy and fulfilment in her life that the ethical person also wished to achieve, though Kierkegaard does not depict even the religious stage as being free of uncertainty. Much like the ethical stage, it is marked by a constant striving for maintaining the right attitude, with doubt, anxiety and despair now being kept in check, but never eliminated.
The details of the various existential stages and sub-stages are not crucial to Kierkegaard’s educational thinking. But the very idea of a range of distinctive existential stages is significance. It is not, it should be noted, a theory of gradual personal development. While Kierkegaard did see, or come to see, the religious stage as being in some sense superior to the others, he did not deny that aesthetic or ethical existence constitute serious alternatives, and that a person can remain at each of these stages for the whole of her life.
Thus Kierkegaard’s own preferred expression, ‘spheres of existence’, is actually more apt: They are spheres in the sense of being complete, ‘rounded’ and autonomous existential attitudes. They might be compared to the notion of a paradigm famously introduced by Kuhn (1962) into the philosophy of science: they form a comprehensive system of norms, habits and assumptions, which determines what counts as meaningful and meaningless questions and tasks to the person in question. They ‘colour’ her particular thoughts and experiences and confer on them a particular significance, directing her attention to certain matters and away from others—and so they are, in a way, ‘incommensurable’.
The spheres of existence are not incommensurable in being equally ‘good’ or completely beyond criticism. Kierkegaard’s whole work is full of such criticism. But the criticism has inevitable limitations, which should always be taken into account. It can be given from the standpoint of another stage, formulated in its particular terminology and based on its fundamental premises. This does not disqualify it but makes it more of an open question how fitting it really is. A superficial reading of Either/Or may give one the impression that the ethical sphere is flatly superior to the aesthetic, because Judge Vilhelm mounts an impressive case against the latter, apparently showing it to be shallow and unsatisfying. Yet it should be borne in mind that the critical standards by which he measures the aesthetic sphere, for example when objecting that it allows for no real development or is marked by indifference, are simply not shared by the aesthetic character. According to the latter, there simply is no convincing alternative to indifference and no possibility of real development. The best one can do is to try to cope with this predicament by seeking and cultivating various kinds of pleasures and diversions.
More important is, therefore, perhaps, the internal criticism of the stages found in and between the lines of Kierkegaard’s work. Kierkegaard lets the existential attitudes play out in ways that reveal, often implicitly, doubts and tensions that put into question their adequacy and point beyond them. These are so to speak existential anomalies that are officially played down or explained away, but which linger and reoccur and might eventually trigger a real existential crisis. For example, the aesthetic character advocates a life marked by constant change of perspective, wit and ingenuity, but at times makes it appear repetitive and pointless. The ethical character occasionally indulges, or boasts of, his happiness and mastery of life, in effect succumbing to aesthetic temptation. He is also repeatedly unable to live up to his high ethical ideals; and his favourite remedy for coping with this problem, to express remorse, does not really seem sufficient to come to terms with this aspect of the human condition.
Moreover, while there is some kind of hierarchical order among the stages, it is not necessarily the same as the order in which they are presented. The aesthetic stage is seemingly presented as the lowest and—in a sense—most primitive, yet it is also superior to the ethical stage in some respects; for example, by being marked less marked by exaggerated self-confidence, and possibly also by allowing for the kind of unconstrained passion that Kierkegaard takes to be the essence of the religious stage.
The most significant difference to a conventional notion of personal development is the discontinuous nature of the range of existential stages. For Kierkegaard there can be no question of a stepwise accumulation of traits and virtues, leading gradually into a new a superior mode of existence. He does admit that one can develop oneself gradually within a particular stage, perfecting its peculiar qualities (e.g. cultivating one’s capacity for gaining and enjoying sensory pleasure, developing strategies for fighting off boredom within the aesthetic sphere). But there is no comparable way of gradually approaching a new existential stage. Every improvement of one’s qualities is constrained by the defining features of the stage. The move into another sphere of existence must take the form of a leap. This means both that it cannot be brought about by any amount of intellectual insight. (We shall see below—in 1.4—how Kierkegaard is generally sceptical of the power of knowledge to effect deep personal changes). It also means that it has to be accomplished by the person herself. A forced or induced change of attitude cannot amount to a entering a new existential stage. If a person should, apparently, be talked into adopting something like the ethical mode of life, she would per definition not really have done so; for she would then still base her life on external circumstances.
This has obvious consequences for education. For one thing, it points to the limits of educational efforts—in particular, the limits of instruction-based education. One cannot, at least in any straightforward sense, be taught to live e.g. the ethical or religious life. No completely independent reason can be given for adopting it. Besides, the doctrine of existential stages highlights the organic nature of personal development and learning. You may learn this or that; but according to Kierkegaard, it will take on a completely different significance depending on the larger sphere of existence within which it becomes embedded. Really significant learning, learning that has a personal or impact, must consist not of adding new skills or items of knowledge to one’s repertoire, but in effecting a more fundamental change in outlook. This points towards an ambitious notion of cultivation or Bildung, according to which what is learned must form an organic whole and to be animated by the student’s existential attitude and self-understanding.
The doctrine of stages can thus be said to anticipate something like the contemporary idea of transformative learning that has been developed by Mezirow (2000). Transformative learning focuses on general changes in the student’s worldview and self-understanding. The theory, moreover, assumes that such changes are usually difficult to bring about, but may be triggered by life crises or major life transitions. There are, however, notable differences between the two views. The theory of transformative learning emphasizes the role of reflective assessment in bringing about a change in fundamental outlook. It thus gives greater priority to rationality, deliberation and knowledge. It also recognizes the possibility of transformation through an accumulation of experiences, thus suggesting a stepwise development that is ruled out by Kierkegaard’s more radical view of the process as fundamentally discontinuous. Nevertheless, it is hardly wrong to say that Kierkegaard did put forward a doctrine that not just resembles, but also provides a philosophical foundation for, contemporary notions of transformative learning.
A further important consequence of Kierkegaard’s doctrine of stages for education is that it prompts us to look for that on which a person bases—or might base—her life. The stages do have typical manifestations. The libertine or romantic bohemian and the dutiful, bourgeois judge are obvious representatives of aesthetic and ethical existence, respectively. However, the existential stages are matters of attitude rather than outward appearance or external actions. Two people can be very alike in their outward doings, yet embody a different stage. In educational contexts, acknowledging something like the idea of existential stages urges us not—as one might initially assume—to categorise students into different social or personality types, but rather to gauge and respond to their fundamental self-understanding.
The fact that two persons can be alike in their outward appearance and actions, yet on a different existential stage, points to a last notable, educationally relevant feature of Kierkegaard’s doctrine of stages. While the stages are defined as fundamentally different, and more or less incommensurable, Kierkegaard nevertheless describes them as in many respects similar and even overlapping. This is because their essential difference is one of fundamental attitude and not of content or outward expression. The aesthetic person can be concerned with duties and obligations, with moral and even religious matters. The ethical person can be engaged in artistic pursuits or love and passionate lovemaking. But the aesthetic person will primarily take pleasure in fulfilling her obligations or performing her religious worship—and doing it for the sake of this pleasure—whereas the ethical character will engage in artistic practice or sensual pleasures mainly for the sake of realizing herself and fulfilling her general human obligations. It is thus striking that all of Kierkegaard’s characters employ roughly the same battery of notions and ideas, for example, that life should be aesthetically satisfying—this is affirmed by Judge Vilhelm no less than by the aesthetic characters—or that what matters is the attitude rather than the content of one’s doings and experiences, something which the aesthetic character is also prone to emphasize (e.g. in the manifesto-like essay Crop Rotation, E/O 223ff.; SKS 2, 271ff.). The difference is, in itself, merely one of attitude; the representatives of the different stages accentuate different parts of their apparently shared views or interpret them differently. Hence we may speak of an ethical aesthetics, or an aesthetical ethics (as even the aesthetic character cannot but subscribe to certain social rules of conduct).
The educational significance in this idea of a kind of mutual interpenetration of the stages—or an ‘equilibrium’ between the various elements, as Kierkegaard calls it (E/O 475ff; SKS 3, 153ff.)—lies in the implication that a fundamental transformation in outlook and attitude need not require the student to absolutely give up anything which has hitherto meant something to her. Kierkegaard actually urged one to endorse one’s former habits and pleasures. He was not concerned with lifestyle-changing measures. He assumed that adopting a certain existential attitude would inform one’s actions and choices, generally making them more appropriate. But he did not, however, expect or demand that it should lead one to restrict one’s range of interests or activities.
That the same elements can be present in different existential spheres does not, according to Kierkegaard, make them any less different. It should not be seen as a compromise or an instance of ‘mediation’, a notion Kierkegaard regarded with contempt. The apparently ‘aesthetic’ elements take on completely new significance when they become part of the ethical sphere, he insisted; they become subjugated to the ethical outlook and endowed with a profoundly ethical quality. This has consequences for Kierkegaard’s very ambitious notion of self-cultivation or Bildung: Activities and elements of knowledge should not merely be integrated into a comprehensive whole, they should be infused by, and made dependent of, the fundamental attitude of the person in question.
It should be noted that some interpreters reject the very idea of different stages or spheres of existence. They see it as inconsistent with the overall tendency of Kierkegaard’s philosophy. In one place he says, famously, that ‘there can be no system for life itself’ (CUP 92; SKS 7, 105; in Danish ‘tilværelsens system’, i.e. literally ‘system of existence’). This has been taken as evidence that he did not put forward any kind of existential theory. The notion of different stages of existence has been seen as normative—prescriptive and hierarchical—in a way that also seems to clash with Kierkegaard’s open, dialogical, experimental and apparently descriptive approach to matters of human existence.
It should, however, be clear from what has been said above that such a dismissive attitude is mistaken, or at least grossly exaggerated. Kierkegaard distinguished consistently and elaborately between different stages throughout his pseudonymous—that is, philosophical—work. Hardly any of his central notions make sense independently of this framework. The critics are on to something. But it is a matter of understanding the doctrine of stages in a sufficiently nuanced way, rather than simply dismissing it. As noticed above, the doctrine does not purport to show how one ought to live, or even how one ought to live as an aesthetic, ethical or religious person. The decisive impulse, which might move the individual to adopt a certain mode of existence (but can never be predicted with certainty to do so), must come from the person herself.
Hence the doctrine of stages is no system in Hegel’s sense, which, by contrast, shows what must happen by necessity. Yet it is still a theory in that it describes certain general patterns and their implications. It also posits various conditionally necessary relationships: If you should choose to live aesthetically, then your life cannot but have this or that fundamental character. The doctrine of stages also is normative and even hierarchical in a certain sense. The stages are depicted as inferior or superior to each other in various, often complex, ways. But as already noticed, the descriptions are not, given from an independent standpoint: They are always given for the standpoint of one or another of the stages in question. This relativizes what is said to a certain degree, but not so much as to undermine is claim to being objectively correct. It is conditional or hypothetical, but that is something else, and a feature of a great many claims commonly regarded as both theoretical and valid.
To conclude my discussion of Kierkegaard’s doctrine of stages, let me notice that it does, in a way, combine all the three modes of life between which Kierkegaard himself was torn. In sum, it requires that existence must be pleasant and aesthetically satisfying; that it must involve stable commitments and universal obligations; and it must be based on unrestricted passion and a will to embrace the absurdity of existence. As a fitting response to his own quest and experience, the doctrine does envisage such a combination as a possibility, but also as a task of almost heroic proportions.
1.4 The Limits of Systematic Knowledge
An important task in the philosophy of education is to assess the value of different kinds of knowledge and compare them to other values and aspects of life. This is necessary in order to balance different learning goals and as a guide to content and method selection. Kierkegaard did not provide any detailed analyses of specific forms of knowledge. But he did assess the benefits, drawbacks and limitations of particular forms of knowledge and belief. Moreover, in his attempt to the show limitations of systematic or objective knowledge, he also came to highlight certain important forms of knowledge that have generally attracted little attention, viz. various forms of subjective and existential-practical knowledge. There was much focus on practical knowledge in general in twentieth-century philosophy, under the headings of ‘knowing how’ (Ryle 1949) and tacit knowledge (Polanyi 1966), and also as ‘embodied’ or ‘situated’ knowledge (e.g. Haraway 1988). But until this day, relatively little has been written about what might be called existential knowledge (and which probably comprises several distinctive forms of knowledge). Kierkegaard was the first to describe this in any detail, and remains one of the few to have done so.
Kierkegaard points to three basic shortcomings of objective knowledge of the kind produced by science: (1) It is knowledge from a purely third-person perspective—which is, in effect, knowledge from no particular perspective whatsoever. (2) For this reason, it has insufficient motivational power; in fact, by itself it is virtually powerless. (3) It is conditional and uncertain, at least inasmuch as it pertains to reality (and not just logical relationships), and so cannot provide a real foundation for human life.
The impotence of pure knowledge was one of the very first philosophical ideas Kierkegaard articulated clearly. It is a central theme of his earliest journal entries. He came to think that what really matters cannot be any kind of knowledge content as such. The crucial factor is how the content is taken up and animated. Truth, understood as a correct representation of a state of affairs, is in itself a matter of indifference:
Later, in Either/Or, Kierkegaard criticizes objective knowledge for ‘its helplessness at getting a man to act’ (EO 489; SKS 3, 171)What good what it do me if truth stood before me, cold and naked, not caring whether I recognized her or not? (EK 8; JP 33; SKS 17, 25)
It might seem that Kierkegaard is merely repeating a point made, most famously, by David Hume: A mere belief that something is so-and-so is insufficient to motivate an action. In order to be genuinely motivated, one also needs a desire to achieve a certain object. Only in conjunction with such a desire can a belief—for example the belief that I am presented with a plate of food—motivate an action (e.g. eating the food), Hume claimed. In his Treatise of Human Nature, he asserted that ‘reason alone can never be a motive to any action of the will’ and ‘never oppose passion in the direction of the will’ (Hume 1978, 413).
Kierkegaard did broadly share Hume’s view. He went even further in the same direction, holding not only that action has to be based on a desire—which, as Hume understands it, may amount to nothing more than a mere preference—but that it must flow from genuine passion (e.g. CUP 171). But Kierkegaard also noticed another deficiency of systematic or theoretical knowledge. Systematic knowledge, he pointed out, is concerned with ‘outward’ work and is unable to grasp the individual’s ‘inward work’ as such. For it is essentially objective and impersonal:
The events of world history are described with a ‘lack of concern’ (sorgløshed, perhaps better translated as carelessness), that is, without ever adopting or taking seriously the point of view of the individual, who at each instance is required to act and so choose a particular path of action and leave other possibilities unrealized. The basic contingency at the root of the historical process is abstracted away. That, moreover, has ramifications for the epistemological status of historical knowledge as such; even granted that it can lay claim to necessity, it is only necessary relative to what actually happens in history.Philosophy looks at the outward work and sees it […] as it is absorbed into and transformed by the world-historical process. It is this process that really forms philosophy’s object and philosophy looks at it under the category of necessity. Therefore it keeps at a distance the reflection which would point out that everything might have been otherwise. It looks at world history in a way in which there can be no question of an either/or […] though it cannot occur to any philosopher to deny there is one for the acting individual. Hence the lack of concern … with which philosophy regards history and its heroes, for it considers them under the category of necessity (EO 489; SKS 3, 70f.).
This is part of a polemic against Hegelian idealism, which need not concern us here. But although much of Kierkegaard’s talk of ‘science’ and ‘systematic knowledge’ seems to refer, in the first place, to Hegelian philosophy, most of what he says applies to theoretical knowledge in a much broader sense as well. He argues that theoretical knowledge is essentially incapable of grasping the primary task that confronts the acting individual, and so cannot adequately grasp her basic situation and what it really means to be her. One need not buy into Hegel’s peculiar view of a philosophical knowledge as consisting in a ‘mediation’ of opposites to appreciate Kierkegaard’s point that theoretical knowledge generally tends to relativize and so render insignificant its object. It does so by placing it in a larger scheme of things, by seeing it from a broader, impersonal perspective; something which is generally considered an epistemic virtue, but makes it unable to deal with human existence as such. For from the point of view of the individual, possibilities of action present themselves as having absolute significance, and as being significantly different from each other. As long as these possibilities are mere objects of contemplation, their value may be tempered by other concerns; action, by contrast, requires a wholehearted, indivisible commitment.
The situation confronting an acting individual should not be conceived as a mere ‘option space’. When shopping in the supermarket, I am presented with a variety of products with various apparent qualities. My choice is not, however, a genuine choice as Kierkegaard understands it. The shopper’s attitude is more similar to the theoretical, scientific perspective. The products and their qualities belong to the same general kind. Their differences are merely relative; and I am likely to make my choice simply by reacting to the available information and choosing what appears cheapest and/or most attractive. Moreover, even though it will probably turn out that I prefer some of the products to the others, it does not follow that I really care much about them. It is unlikely that I will invest my personality in the act of choosing or identify with my choice. Therefore, it is arguably not really made by me. I am merely effecting a certain action that has already been determined by the circumstances. This is true regardless of whether I just grab something out of habit or deliberate quite extensively. For even in the latter case, I will still let myself be moved by the objects and principles that present themselves to me. This foreshadows Kierkegaard’s notion of authenticity, which differs from standard notions of autonomy in not involving reflection or deliberation (see Chap. 2).
Kierkegaard regards scientific knowledge as being both too compelling and not compelling enough. It is intellectually compelling to such a degree that it leaves no room for genuine freedom. Demanding that one should act from necessity, Kierkegaard notes, is nothing less than a contradiction (E/O 489; SKS 3, 171). On the other hand, scientific knowledge is very far from emotionally compelling. Since it is also unable to deal with the fundamental contingency and individuality that, according to Kierkegaard, are basic aspects of reality as revealed by experience, its necessitating character turns out to be a double-edged sword: It actually deprives it of any power not only to motivate, but also to truly understand human action. Hence Kierkegaard contends that the tendency to accumulate scientific knowledge has hindered and obscured the attempt to come to terms with existence. True, there had been an increase also in psychological knowledge, and an apparent recognition of the role of subjectivity. After all, German Idealism, the romantic movement and even the empiricist countermovement had been preoccupied with questions of self-consciousness and self-awareness, the moral and epistemic significance of emotions and the like. Their efforts had, however, led to the production of theoretical knowledge of such subjective matters, and thus objectified them.
Inwardness (inderlighed), as Kierkegaard understands it, is not just a kind of internal, mental reality complementary to physical reality. Nor does it describe a state of introversion. The Danish inderlighed has a strong emotional connotation; it expresses a state or process in which one unreservedly, passionately and exclusively commits oneself to something, like when one really and fully hopes or loves. It denotes a kind of essentially subjective, that is, non-objectifiable, subjectivity. But it differs essentially from an objective perspective not so much by being private or exclusive as by characterised by involvement and affection rather than by indifference.My main thought was that in our time, due to the quantity of knowledge, one has forgotten what it is to exist and what inwardness means (CUP 209; SKS 7, 226)
A further limitation of theoretical knowledge is that in so far as science is able to deal with empirical, historical realities, it can at most justify its claim to the extent of making them highly probable. But this, again, is both too much and too little (CUP 13; SKS 7, 21). It is too much in that it circles in on the historical events, leaving no room for an appreciation of the element of free choice or personal experience and outlook that has, presumably, also been a crucial factor in history. It is too little in that it still does not provide the individual with any real certainty. Kierkegaard does not generally require that one’s actions should be based on an indubitable foundation. Quite to the contrary, he urges that one should dare act on beliefs that seem highly doubtful from a rational standpoint. But he does acknowledge a need for something that can prompt and sustain a categorical, unreserved attitude (cf. his notion of inwardness), and theoretical knowledge is unsuited for this role both because of its neutral, detached character but also because it deals in mere probabilities.
Put in contemporary terms, Kierkegaard seems to argue that science merely provides reasons for accepting certain views. What is needed in order to have a sufficiently robust foundation for action is more than mere acceptance, namely genuine belief, which is categorical and essentially connected to our emotional responses (Cohen 1992).
In contrast to scientific or theoretical knowledge, Kierkegaard speaks of ‘essential knowing’ as knowing that concerns existence and is ‘inwardly’:
The English translation ‘knowing’ (rather than ‘knowledge’) nicely captures the active character of such essential knowing. It is not an abstract knowledge content, but rather a way of being in which one is present to oneself as an acting individual.All essential knowing concerns existence, or only such knowing as has an essential relation to existence is essential, is essential knowing. Knowing that does not concern existence, inwardly in the reflection of inwardness, is from an essential point of view accidental knowing, its degree and scope from an essential point of view indifferent (CUP 166; SKS 7, 181).
Kierkegaard’s point, or various aspects of it, has since been made in a number of instructive ways. Contemporary philosophers of mind and language have emphasized the essential difference between the first-person and third-person perspective. One cannot derive a first-person description of a situation from a third-person description. But neither is a third-person description sufficient to explain everything that goes on in the world—in particular, it is not able to able to explain the beliefs and actions of human beings. For they seem to depend crucially on the perspective of the person whose beliefs and actions they are, on her understanding of herself and her place in the world.
The knowledge that ‘someone is in hungry’ cannot motivate me to eat. Even the knowledge that ‘Søren is hungry’, or that ‘the person who is at latitude 54.786554 and longitude 9.423555, 1 PM, January 22, 2017, is hungry’, cannot motivate me, as long as it has not dawned upon me that I am the person concerned. In order to really explain people’s actions, we need to take into account their unique subjective perspective. We must, in a way, base our explanations on a kind of subjective knowledge—knowledge that we, as individuals, have certain interests, beliefs or experiences, and that we are situated in specific circumstances (Perry 1979; Baker 2013).
A more striking illustration of Kierkegaard’s point can be found in a short story by the Argentine author Jorge Louis Borges. In the story The Writing of the God, Borges tells—in the first person—of an Aztec priest, Tzinacán, who has been tortured and incarcerated by the Spanish conquistadors. Tzinacán searches desperately for a magic formula, which, if said aloud, will make his prison disappear, cause the leader of the conquistadors to be killed by a Jaguar, rendering himself effectively omnipotent. He does find the formula—fourteen ‘apparently random’ words—but eventually decides not to say it aloud. By coming to know the formula, he has come to view himself and his predicament as insignificant, as a mere part of an immensely larger picture. Since he has obtained the allegedly precious knowledge, he is no longer able to make sense of the particular situation he is in, or the particular person he is; they have become relativized to the point of virtually disappearing. So the knowledge renders itself practically irrelevant. Borges story vividly illustrates Kierkegaard’s point: An absolute knowledge of the world is supposedly all-powerful, but actually impotent; absoluteness and objectivity go hand in hand with indifference.
It should be noted, however, that Kierkegaard does not deny the immense value of theoretical knowledge. Not all knowing has to be essential knowing; essential knowing is essential to existential matters, but completely inadequate for all other sorts of issues. There is, however, a connection, which makes the notion of essential knowing more widely relevant (and turns out to be of consequence to Kierkegaard’s notion of Bildung or self-cultivation, cf. Sect. 2.4). Kierkegaard considers essential knowing a prerequisite for the sound appropriation and enactment of knowledge in general. In his journal, he noticed that
Without essential knowing, all other knowledge one may have remains insignificant. Again, this does not mean that it cannot be useful. Furthering knowledge in the absence of existential knowledge can make perfect sense as long as it is done for the sake of society, welfare, employability or the like. Yet Kierkegaard assumes that there is a more fundamental, and in some sense overriding, objective. Only knowledge that becomes integrated into and pervaded by the student’s self-understanding and contributes to her personal development is really valuable.I certainly do not deny that I still accept an imperative of knowledge and that through it men must be influenced, but then it must come alive in me … (JP 33; EK 8; SKS 33).
What is the specific relevance of Kierkegaard’s thoughts about knowledge to education? It lies partly in his demonstration that there is important knowledge which must, in some sense, be learned, even though it cannot be taught by instruction or acquired from books or other learning materials. This motivates—and foreshadows—his notion of indirect communication, which shall occupy us in Chap. 4. It points to the shortcomings of an overly didactical approach to education, which focuses one-sidedly to relations between knowledge contents and learning goals and pay too little attention to the mode of communication and appropriation.
In essence, the important knowledge in question is simply that one is a subject in a strong, irrelative and irreducible sense; that this confronts one with a task that can neither be solved nor evaded by any theoretical knowledge; and that in order to really know that this is so and act accordingly, one has to commit wholeheartedly to it—knowing oneself in the relevant sense is inextricably bound up with becoming and caring about oneself (more about this in Chap. 2).
Kierkegaard thus points out how different modes of knowing are important to education. Were it only a matter of coming to believe the proposition that one is a subject in a strong and existentially obligating sense, this could be easily conveyed by conventional means (for example, like I have just done it; by expressing the point in an indicative sentence). The difficulty arises because is predominantly a matter of knowing what it is like to be such a subject and reacting appropriately to it, that is, adopting the appropriate emotional and volitional stance.
No doubt this problem is both more important and more difficult when it comes to distinctively existential knowledge. Still, Kierkegaard’s observation that the mode of knowledge matters no less (and sometimes more) to learning than the content is capable of generalization. There is a strong focus on deep versus superficial learning in contemporary educational research. But deep learning is usually considered mainly as a matter of achieving a comprehensive and coherent understanding, that is, of embedding items of knowledge in a larger knowledge structure. Important though this undoubtedly is, it hardly qualifies as deep learning in a more profound sense, since the process is described as operating on a qualitatively uniform level. At most, first-order knowledge is combined with higher order knowledge, as when experiential or testimony-based factual knowledge is connected with knowledge of laws and principles.
By contrast, Kierkegaard shows how another, complementary kind of depth may be achieved by adopting a more appropriate mode of knowledge of the same facts or matters (typically by transforming propositional knowledge into a more practical format) and by attaching it to the right pattern of emotional and volitional response.
Still, more generally, it can be said that Kierkegaard champions the unity of passion and reason. He emphasizes the importance of students’ emotional reactions to learning. Yet in contrast to much contemporary educational thinking, and most philosophy, he does not treat emotions as a separate factor having to do with students’ overall well-being or functioning as an independent motivating factor. He suggests a more integrated view, according to which knowledge contents have to be realized emotionally and personally in order to be genuinely learned at all. He contends that coherence and systematicity of a body of knowledge is not enough, and may even be a hindrance to the kind of existential integration he considers essential to genuine learning. It is an open question whether such a notion of essential and existential knowledge is too exclusive or ambitious to be relevant to contemporary educational concerns (see Chap. 4). It also remains debatable in how far the content of knowledge is really inessential to motivation and action. But there can be no question that these are important issues, which have been mostly neglected in educational theorizing, or that Kierkegaard’s views deserve to be taken seriously, is spite—or rather because—of their radical nature.