Notes
Notes
. Phalaris, tyrant of Agrigento in Sicily, ca. 570-554 B.C., see Lucian of Samosata, Lucian, Vol. I., pp. 1-31; cf. TC, p. 248. This parable is the first paragraph of the “Diapsalmata” (refrains) that begin Kierkegaard’s first pseudonymous work, E/O.
. Climacus is comparing his Philosophical Fragments to the idle activity of Diogenes; cf. Lucian, Vol. VI, p. 5.
. Louis Adolphe Thiers, 1797-1877, twice premier under Louis Philippe.
. For another version of this same premise, see JP II 266 (V A 85).
. Peder Tordenskjold, 1691-1720, was a Norwegian-Danish folk hero who deceived the Swedish (JP IV, 137f). A year after the events of a disruptive love affair, Quidam, one of Kierkegaard’s most dialectically introspective pseudonyms, is found in his Diary to be reflecting constantly on the meaning of those interpersonal traumas, which pass by like an endless parade in his unsettled mind.
Omission in English translation.
. “Fra det Øieblik” omitted in English translation.
. This parable appears in “the rotation method,” where Kierkegaard caricatures, through his aesthetic pseudonym “A,” the outcome of a constricted aestheticism that despairingly searches for immediate pleasure without ethical reference.
. In his Journal of 1849, Kierkegaard sketched the same theme in this way: “What would one think of a district judge who read an order from his chief not as an order but as a literary production, evaluating it and examining it critically, under the impression that this was his task, and then even submitted his well-written critique to the chief” (JP III 29 [X1 A 465]).
. The Ethics of Aristotle, Book Three, ch. v, p. 75.
. Revision of English translation.
. The legend of Parmeniscus, a Pythagorean, was related by Athenaeus, The Deipnosophists, tr. C. B. Gulick (London: W. Heinemann, 1950), 7 vols., Vol. VI, Book Fourteen, section 614, pp. 306f.
. Franz Theremin, 1780-1846, German pastor, preacher to the court and professor of theology in the University of Berlin.
. “The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.” Adapted from Tertullian, Apology, De Spectaculus, tr. T. R. Glover [with Minucius Felix, Octavius, tr. G. H. Randall] (London: W. Heinemann, 1931), p. 227.
. This parable appears in the last chapter of PF, where Climacus is considering the difficulties experienced by “the disciple at second hand” (as distinguished from the first generation of immediate witnesses to the redemptive event) who may try to secure faith by means of historical inquiry. The immediate context of the parable is this: Suppose one is analyzing the historical knowledge of subsequent generations of disciples. Although one might think that the earlier generation enjoys “the (relative) advantage of being nearer to an immediate certainty,” this parable shows that to be an “illusory advantage: for he who is not so near to immediate certainty as to be immediately certain is absolutely separated from it” (PF, p. 114).
. According to legend, Ptolemy of Egypt secured the Greek translation of the Old Testament by locking up the seventy-two translators for seventy-two days until each had translated the entire Old Testament, whereupon it was discovered that all the translations miraculously were the same.
. For an explanation of “The God,” see PF, pp. ix-xi.
. This parable is not a polemic against historical inquiry, but against the illusory assumption that objective historical investigation can elicit faith.
. Lowrie’s text corrects Kierkegaard’s, which read “East.”
. For the biblical account of Solomon’s succession of David, see I Kings 1-11.
. God’s communication with humanity is indirect in the sense that it confronts the hearer with a fundamental decision about her/himself. By analogy, instead of asking for verbal reassurances of love, the lover in the parable asks for a decision of the beloved.
. This parable is the last paragraph of FT, which by implication points beyond itself to a subsequent clarification of religious existence that would come later in TC and the CD. Cf. W. G. Tennemann, I, p. 220.
. Danish “en ringe Pige” means a maiden of the poorest and most deprived class. This parable of the means by which God overcomes the distance between God and humanity is the center-piece of PF and the most condensed way of capturing that book’s essential argument. No parable of this collection is more important or influential, and none better reveals the central intent of Kierkegaard’s authorship.
. Callicles, not Polos, as Climacus suggests. Cf. Plato, “Gorgias,” section 45, pp. 158-59.
. Plutarch Lives, Vol. 2, p. 79.
. The context in which this parable occurs is immediately following “A Project of Thought,” PF, ch. 1, which asks whether it is possible to base an eternal happiness on a point of departure in time? If the moment in time (an unimportant occasion for Socratic anamnesis) should come to have decisive significance for learning the truth, what would be the consequences? If one supposes that the eternal comes into being in the moment, then the antecedent state of the learner is error and the teacher is God himself, who acting as an occasion prompts the learner to recall that he is in error, restores the lost condition for understanding the truth and gives the learner the truth. Such a teacher one would never be able to forget, and such a moment would be called “the fullness of time.” This is the essence of “A Project of Thought,” which then moves in ch. 2 to this affirmation: “Moved by love, the God is thus eternally resolved to reveal himself.” This is followed by “The King and the Maiden,” which presents a parabolic answer to the essential dilemma: “the difference between them.” It may seem a small matter for the God to overcome this difference, but it cannot be done authentically by “annihilating the unlikeness.” The God’s revelation of his love is made more difficult and more unhappy in its prospect because the means of revealing his love must correspond with its end. For it is only in equality that an understanding can be effected. This is the problem to which the parable speaks, which Climacus warns us (p. 31) not to be too quick to “solve” in a premature way.
. “Kierkegaard consciously writes ‘Platonically’ here,” notes Niels Thulstrup (PF, p. 190n), “and therefore does not say ‘by God’ but ‘by the God.’ ” For a discussion of why Kierkegaard uses the unusual expression Guden (“the God”) rather than Gud (God), see PF, pp. ix-xii. The reader will note that there are a number of omissions in this edition’s rendering of the parable, and the original text should be consulted for the full rendering. Portions omitted are brief excursi and temporary diversions from the parable itself. Furthermore, the three paragraphs beginning “Moved by Love” have been shifted out of their original position in order to begin the parable at its obvious beginning point (“Suppose there was a king. . .”) without having to omit the content of these three crucial paragraphs.
. Contra Docetism which denies Christ’s true humanity.
. Plato, “Symposium,” section 220, pp. 272-73.
. Vigilius Haufniensis in the COD, p. 61.
. Thus, one may, precisely by repeating that which is generally accepted as the objective truth, prove himself to be not yet sane, although the cure does not consist in rejecting objective truth either. “The objective truth as such, is by no means adequate to determine that whoever utters it is sane; on the contrary, it may even betray the fact that he is mad, although what he says may be entirely true, and especially objectively true” (CUP, p. 174).
. In his Journal (V A 45), Kierkegaard indicates that he had been reading the French mystical theologian, François Fénelon (1651-1715). See Fénelon’s Lives of the Ancient Philosophers (New York, 1841).
. “Periander” shows that Kierkegaard had intuited the essential dynamics of the Oedipal complex many decades before Freud. For Periander, like Oedipus, destroys others and finally himself out of an overweening sense of guilt and shame that arose in part from his incestuous relationship with his mother.
. Quoting Diogenes Laertii, De Vitis philosophorum (Leipzig: Sumptibus Ottonis Holtze, 1884), Lib. I, Cap. VII, pp. 45-48.
. Is Quidam himself like Periander? So it seems from his previous entry of April 18, SLW, p. 586, when he speaks of himself as feeling very stupid amid all his shrewdness. Lowrie’s speculation, however (SLW, p. 298n), that “it is his father we must discover in Periander, while he is the exiled son, and the brother is Peter Kierkegaard,” is far-fetched.
. A motto on the shield of Baron Andre Taifel, as reported in Gottfried Wilhelm Liebniz, Opera Philosophica, ed. J. E. Erdmann (Berlin, 1839-40), p. 652.
. This parable, which Kierkegaard entitles “A School Exercise: Periander,” is a seemingly endless sequence of tragic decisions that express a continuing moral dialectic in their inexorable strain of consequences. Having taught classical languages in the Borgerdydskole in Copenhagen, Kierkegaard may have taken his young students through precisely this exercise in moral reflection.
In his Journal of 1854-55 Kierkegaard used the same image with a different effect. See JP III 59 (XI2 A 390), and AC,
. The same pseudonym appears in the last segment of E/O, Vol. I, “Diary of the Seducer,” pp. 249-371. Lest one imagine that this is Kierkegaard’s last word on woman, it should be remembered that other pseudonyms, especially Judge William, vigorously attack Johannes’ views as a misguided and dehumanized conception of woman. For, according to Judge William (E/O II and SLW, pp 94ff), Johannes fails to understand the moral dimension of sexuality, and the promise of combining erotic love and faithful commitment in an enduring choice (marriage).
. “The task of becoming subjective, then, may be presumed to be the highest task, and one that is proposed to every human being. . . . Furthermore . . . the task of becoming subjective furnishes a human being with enough to do to suffice him for his entire life” (CUP, p. 146).
. All three characters in the parable are standing before a mirror in which each sees a melancholy vision of himself reflected: Swift sees the “poor old man”; the father, looking in the son’s face, recognizes his son’s quiet despair and in that his own guilt; the son, looking in the mirror of his father’s face, experiences in his father’s sorrow a curious sense of edification. Quidam reveals through this parable the character of many subtle human interactions that involve unclarified guilt and responsibility for a significant other whose level of understanding is never fully revealed, and yet the gaze is remembered poignantly. In such interactions one experiences this double mirror effect, where each face mirrors the other’s care, responsibility, and pathos toward the beholder. Such a memory may survive the death of the partner, as Kierkegaard’s memory of his father’s awareness of his melancholy remained a real presence to him long after his father’s death.
. Omission in English translation.
. “Nebuchadnezzar” is among the most unusual of all of Kierkegaard’s parables, distinct in its use of the premise that it is written as if it were scripture, with fantasized verse numbers and language saturated with biblical imagery. In fact this parable grows directly out of Daniel 4 and is best interpreted in close correlation with it. Chaldean king Nebuchadnezzar (d. 562 B.C.), living amid luxury, had a dream that terrified him, of a great tree at the center of the earth reaching to the sky under which wild beasts found shelter, and a second dream of a tree hewn down to a stump on which was tethered a beast. After all the king’s diviners failed to explain them, the young exiled Jew Daniel interpreted the dreams as a prophecy that Nebuchadnezzar, whose power was a divine gift, would be banished from the society of mankind and would live as a beast, feeding on grass. All this came to pass, according to Daniel 4, at the end of which time Nebuchadnezzar was restored to his throne, glorifying God. It is this pattern of transmutation and return that Quidam develops on the premise that this parable is a subjective report of the changing consciousness of Nebuchadnezzar. This is the sixth and last of the major parables of Quidam’s Diary, all of them date the fifth of the month at midnight (an indication of their autobiographical character according to Lowrie, since Kierkegaard was born on the fifth day of the fifth month). The others are “The Quiet Despair,” “The Leper’s Soliloquy,” “Solomon’s Dream,” “A Possibility,” and “Periander.” Lowrie views “Nebuchadnezzar” as “a fantastic description of S. K.’s religious conversion, which he persisted in ascribing to his experience with Regina” (SLW, p. 330n).
. Vocation. Cf. Horace, Odes and Epodes, tr. Paul Shorey (New York: Benjamin J. Sanborn & Co., 1919), Book I, Ode xxxii, p. 227.
. In his Journal of 1843 Kierkegaard sketched the essential outline of this parable; see JP V 241 (IV A 147).
. A figure in a story by Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann, Ausgewahlte Schriften, 15 vols., ed. E. Grisebach, 1899, “Die Königsbraut.”
. For an interpretation of this parable as an autobiographical portrayal of SK’s “sexual fall” in May 1836, see Lowrie, Kierkegaard, pp. 132ff.
. In special degree, or “special cousin.”
One of the most penetrating and important of Kierkegaard’s parables, and quite different from all the others (since it is written in the form of a soliloquy), “The Leper’s Soliloquy” requires some unpacking. Painstakingly constructed and economically executed, the parable is clearly divided in three sequential parts that traverse the aesthetic, ethical, and religious modes of consciousness in the persona of Simon the leper.
In the first paragraph the complaint expresses the stage of aesthetic immediacy, of Simon’s experiencing of himself as alienated, despairing over his limitation. In the second paragraph we learn the ethical dilemma implicit in his discovery of the ointment. The choice is clear: the way out is individually liberating, but socially disastrous. The remainder of the parable expresses Simon’s choice and his reflection on it, which is rooted in a religious perspective on his suffering.
The final paragraph is an ironic addendum in which the situation of Simon leprosus, the Jew, is contrasted with the hypocritical situation of civil religion in Christendom. Since Christendom speaks a great deal of redemptive suffering, one might expect it to be wholly sympathetic with the leper, but in Christendom an ironic form of “sympathy” is found: sermons about sacrifice, but avoidance of the typhus epidemic.