A Mind to Himself

Another one hits my desk from the estimable Justin, who has moved seamlessly into the realm of philosophy with this look at Soren Kierkegaard's Purity of Heart is to Will One Thing. - RD

As I delved into this volume, a sense of disappointment overcame me. The words had so much width and breadth to them, and I felt as if I could never truly understand what Kierkegaard was trying to say (maybe because he did not know exactly what he was saying). Purity of Heart is a fantastic adventure into the mind of a Danish aristocrat/self-appointed genius, who over the years wearied of the Danish Church and its “stark contrast” to the early primitive church. Kierkegaard opens up the caverns of his mind and heart, and investigates the very bedrock of human existence. The volume is mostly stream of consciousness, in which Kierkegaard – at times haphazardly – unveils his most devotional and honest attempts to grasp the Divine occasion. His translator Douglas Steere notes that “nothing that he has written has sprung so directly out of his relationship with God as this address. Anyone who wishes to understand Kierkegaard properly will do well to begin with it.” It can safely be said that this introspective account borders on the edge of the comprehensive. Kierkegaard, through his presentation, leaves no rock unturned, and speaks so eloquently about detailed life through incisive generalities, that at times I felt as if he were speaking to my own experience.

Literarily, as Steere suggests, Danish doesn’t translate very well into English. Because of this, Kierkegaard went unnoticed, outside his immediate community, for several decades. However, when he was finally uncovered his musings catapulted into popularity, finding relevance and potency in the hearts and minds of the gradually progressing post-Christian West. His renunciation of the masses and his desire to expose us through our “solitary self” (hiin Enkelte) speaks profoundly to the plight of the human condition. Urging us to reconsider ourselves “alone with God,” Kierkegaard promotes a faith in which every human soul relies solely on the existence of the Eternal. Seeking to be stripped of everything except that which “can be grasped under every change,” Kierkegaard urges us to reconsider our faith as a private (existential) relationship between the individual and the Creator. Only once we eradicate our reliance upon the infatuation we all have with the crowd – where we find temporal shelter and security – can we truly become wholly devoted to God.

His brilliance is astounding as he takes both orthodox and liberal theology to their logical ends. He declares, “The all-knowing One does not get to know something about the maker of the confession, rather the maker of confession gets to know about himself.” He challenges both the orthodox understanding of confession and its fixation on mortals altering the Divine, while calling into check the liberal insistence upon the goodness of humanity. His somber, yet passionate desire to open up the individual to his or her potential is both refreshing and cumbersome, particularly due to the tension that Kierkegaard suggests between the past and the future.

I do find contention with his statement about social salvation. For Kierkegaard, “to speak of social salvation, of salvation by group, by tribe, by race, by class, by nation” is truly an act of spiritual betrayal. I rather suggest that social salvation is the result of Kierkegaard’s emphasis on the actualization of the individual in relationship to God. His preclusion of this approach, I believe, undermines his entire goal as a self-appointed prophet. Although I admit I may be reading him wrong, to isolate the individual and reduce salvation to a private endeavor can (and has) resulted in spiritual narcissism. It could be argued that the modern Western (American) Church has succumbed to the “bad tract” of Kierkegaard’s thinking; as we meet every Sunday for an hour and half, having little or nothing to do with each other. The pews have turned into private partitions, and our small groups have become amalgamations of private agendas and competing biases. Steere notes that Purity of Heart’s central theme is the “isolation of man from the flock, from the mass, from the crowd and the heightening of his consciousness as an individual which the Eternal accomplishes.” The goal of this isolation is to pursue “true identity” apart from generalized schemas. From a sociologist’s perspective, Kierkegaard’s thought is birthed out of a reaction to the overwhelming conformity of Danish civility. Not to mention that he was a natural isolationist, who was awarded all the benefits of a wealthy industrialized society.

Kierkegaard’s one thing: the Good. I see this conclusion as fantastically wild and possibly superfluous. How might I strictly will the Good, and only the Good? It is dangerous because it has few constraints, and exotic because it is so rarely perceived. He poses the question of Good in relationship to self-centeredness. So often Good is sought for the good of the self, with little or no regard for the other. Kierkegaard challenges us to allow Good to triumph in us, which is often unprofitable and hazardous. He finds despair in the unsettling separation between those who truly will the Good. “Why should the solitary ‘individuals,’ who sincerely will the Good, be so scattered, so separated, that they can scarcely call out to one another, scarcely catch sight of one another?” I too have often wondered this same thing, and found that Good’s greatest triumph is found during isolation. The private life is where Good and Evil ultimately find their rest, and it is here that one may be conquered and the other allowed. And this is where Kierkegaard comes full circle, and his call may be connected ultimately to the call of discipleship given by Jesus. The exchange of private influence is, for Kierkegaard, the playground where one can truly will One Thing, namely the selfless Good.

I used to think that words themselves were the gateway to truth and understanding. I can remember earnestly praying prayers, making sure to select the correct words so that the Divine could be made aware. But Kierkegaard is saying something else. He calls into question the act of speech itself. He is proposing more of a conversational type of prayer, vis-à-vis a monologue addressed God. As Kierkegaard sees it, vocalized prayer is a way to orient our heart and mind. The point of listening is not the reception of knowledge or information, but to induce us to think about ourselves. Kierkegaard believes that nearly all prayer should pose the question, how are you living? Prayer acts as a constant self reminder to will one thing. The role we have as Christians when listening to what Kierkegaard calls a “devotional address” is that we would allow the words being spoken to engage us in a sort of Divine reality. When a pastor gives a sermon, it is up to the listener to make it meaningful. Ultimately, it is an act of the listener to discover any sort of truth proposed in a sermon or devotional address.

This concept is directly correlated to Kierkegaard’s idea of the individual. A third party should never be involved in the accounting that takes place between God and a person. Kierkegaard believes that we hide from God in the form of crowds. We trick ourselves into thinking that God will shift the blame off us and onto the group. This is why prayer is such an important part of Kierkegaard’s individual. It isolates the human soul and calls it to account for its intentions. The human conscience is never shared by two people. It is the voice that God has implanted in each one of us and becomes unique to every individual. Kierkegaard holds that the most intimate relationship is the one in which “you as an individual, are related to yourself before God.” Prayer’s most powerful accomplishment is to enable us to know thyself. For you carry no responsibility more important than the responsibility to yourself. When we worship God in a corporate setting, we are united in unity of thought which connects and establishes a community of individuals. And Kierkegaard does not see isolation as being apart from others, but apart from our own self. In our conscience, there exists either a “lonely prison” or a “chamber of salvation.”

It is in this proposal that we find the birth of existentialism. Kierkegaard, without intending to, creates a clear distinction between the group and the individual. Of course, this cannot be a comprehensive understanding of the human condition. The social and cultural factors that play into our own consciences are irretrievable. It must be assumed that Kierkegaard’s time and setting compelled him to seek isolation of thought and heart. Living in an industrialized northern European society must have drawn Kierkegaard further away from communal living and thinking. The establishment of capitalistic tendencies and the powerful middle class structure were both contributing factors here. The autonomy of the individual was a new concept and it become more and more accepted as society progressed and flourished. Kierkegaard, because of the inheritance he received from his father, relied on practically no one. We see this even in his lifelong romantic relationship, in which he alienated himself from his lover because of his need for individualism. There is no doubt that Kierkegaard’s account of the individual is an accurate one, but only partially so. Regrettably, it does not address holistically the human condition.

“And what a puzzling arrangement the army of stars presents! Yet there seems to be an agreement between them that they shall arrange themselves in this fashion. But the stars are so far away that they cannot see the wanderer. It is only the wanderer who can see the stars, hence there may come no agreement between him and the stars. So this melancholy of poetical longing is grounded in a deep misunderstanding, because the lonely wanderer is everywhere surrounded in nature by that which does not understand him, even though it always seems as if an understanding must be arrived at.”

- Justin D'Agostino