Selected Entries from Kierkegaard’s Journals and Papers Pertaining to Armed Neutrality
SELECTED ENTRIES FROM KIERKEGAARD’S JOURNALS AND PAPERS PERTAINING TO ARMED NEUTRALITY
See 129:1:
My position is armed neutrality.
—JP V 5341 (Pap. II A 770) n.d., 1838
In margin: See this journal, p. 18 [IX A 212 108]
[Pap. IX A 171, 172 (pp. 222–24)].
Surely it would be the right thing at some time to give my contemporaries a definite and nonreduplicated208 idea of what I say I am, of what I want, etc. This was what I had in mind as the program of Armed Neutrality, a periodical. It was to come out simultaneously with the second edition of Either/Or. In it I would scrutinize Christianity piece by piece and get the coiled spring set in place.
From the very first I have dedicated myself to and belonged to the cause of Christianity. It will always be important to Christianity to have such a figure who logs the course to see where we are and whether the whole thing has not run aground in an illusion, one who presents Christianity quite uninhibitedly, yet without attacking Tom, Dick, or Harry, but leaving it up to each [IX A 212 109] one to test himself.
The trouble, however, is that by using direct communication I win people—and consequently weaken the truth. The confusion in Christendom is so great at this point (that is, Christianity has been abolished) that in order to open people’s eyes it is necessary for one publicly to be put to death for the sake of the cause.
But as soon as I use direct communication my own circumstances will be eased, and, on the other hand, where will I find anyone to serve the truth in the most severe circumstances? I know of no one, literally no one. This is not arrogance, but it is an awkward matter for me; I am a penitent who in fear and trembling must be willing to humble myself under everything.
Oh, how easy it must be to place oneself at the head of a few people, and then thousands, and make a big noise—and then leave the truth in the lurch, although one fancies oneself to be serving it and is honored for doing so. My method is slower.
What makes it so difficult is the torment that my future may make it necessary for me to throw everything overboard in order to make a living. I can see my way out of all the other pressures—but to have this worry on top of everything else!
Yet it is good for me that I do nothing rash but really need God in every way.
The minute I use direct communication, the truth loses in intensity and I to some extent escape martyrdom: is this permissible, is this not deceiving God? If it is thinkable that after my death the indirect communication will give a quite different momentum to the truth I have had the honor to serve, is it not my duty to stand firm? On the other hand, may it not be pride and [IX A 212 110] arrogance not to want to communicate directly? But is there not enough in what I have done to make any earnest person understand who is willing to understand? Yes, before God I dare to affirm this.
This is where the matter stands, now that I have been shaken a little by the thought that I would die very soon and that the crucial works will be published after my death.
In truth, I am heavily armed, but with all this I cannot thank God sufficiently for all the good he has done for me, so indescribably much more than I had expected.
Now under God I shall calmly do further work with the book about offense209 that I am working on, in the confidence that God will give me a certain spirit. My personal life also requires its time—that in all this enormous work I do not forget the one thing needful—to sorrow over my own sins. This thought can clear the air immediately—and drive out all self-importance.
—Pap. IX A 212 n.d., 1848
“Armed Neutrality” can best be published as an appendix when the three works210 are published as one (“Practice in Christianity, an Attempt”), but of course pseudonymously under the same pseudonym.
A pseudonym is excellent for accentuating a point, a stance, a position. It creates a poetical person. Therefore it is not as if I personally said: This is what I am fighting for—which indeed could become a duty for almost my entire life but which external conditions could make it impossible for me to fulfill, if, for example, I find it necessary to use most of my time to work for a living.—JP VI 6421 (Pap. X1 A 450) n.d., 1849
Armed Neutrality
See Journal NB11 [Pap. X1 A 450211] p. 157.
If the three works212 remain together under the title Practice in Christianity, An Attempt, this [Armed Neutrality] can follow as an appendix, but of course pseudonymously and under the same pseudonym [Anti-Climacus]; in any case it must be published pseudonymously.
Written at the end of ’48 and the beginning of ’49. If I remember rightly, this piece was written in ’49 just after “From on High He Will Draw All to Himself.”213—Pap. X5 B 105 n.d., 1849
From draft of Armed Neutrality; see 129:1–4:
Armed Neutrality [X5 B 108 301]
or
My Position as a Christian
Author in Christendom.
Appendix to “The Point of View for My Work as an Author” [X5 B 108 302]
by
S. Kierkegaard
Draft
—Pap. X5 B 108 n.d., 1849
From final draft of Armed Neutrality; see 130:29:
[Deleted in margin: It is said, for example, that to remain in worldly life is a higher form than to enter a monastery, but does it follow from this that everyone who remains in worldly life has made the monastic movement?]
[Deleted in margin: but if this dialectic is not true, what it amounts to is not a return to secular life but to outright worldly-mindedness; the dialectic is so far from being resolved that it has not even been started.]
[Deleted in text:] But through science and scholarship, the whole dialectical element in connection with being a Christian has confusingly been made into something annulled also in life, and thus being a Christian has been abolished. For example, the monastic movement (actual renunciation of the world) has thus been made a merely annulled movement; one lies in saying that everyone has done this in secret, in his inner being—and then one returns to worldliness.—Pap. X5 B 109:2 n.d., 1849
From final draft of Armed Neutrality:
?
The title could be: Armed Neutrality, My Standpoint as the Editor of Some Pseudonymous Writings, of Which I Am the Stated Editor. (Then this pertains both to “The Sickness unto Death” and to Joh. Climacus.)
The work
“Armed Neutrality”
could perhaps be added to Anti-Climacus’s “Practice in Christianity,” but as an appendix by the editor, therefore by me.
Then it would have to be reworked. At the very beginning it would have to read:
Although I am only the editor of these writings, I perceive well enough that I do have a responsibility and that it is quite in order for me to give an account of my standpoint.
All the tenses would then have to be in the past, nothing about the future with regard to what I intend to do etc.—Pap. X5 B 110 n.d., 1849