Posted by am-pro climacus on June 15, 1999 at 18:11:32:
Hi, i have been a Kierkegaard fan for 5 years. I read Point of view first. In the intro it said somthing about a 'raving antisemite' After finishing the book i figured he didn't seem to fit the antisemite description. I thought he was cool actually. 5 years later (now) i decided i wanted a ba. in philosophy. I took phil 101 and it seemed to me that a Hegelian dork was using a book written by another Hegelian Dork to teach me I am like a .
"Suprised that it was igned without alternative readings, yes. Today in most places Kierkegaard is actually read the Kaufmann view would be considered eccentric, misshapen even"
-Alistair Hannay, April 1999
I later e-mailed Steve Evans and i seemed to get the impression that Kaufmanns books are still popular in Schools. I encourage people to read my term paper (below) The closest i can find to a Denouncement of Kaufmann in print is in Barrett's 'Irrational Man.' If anyone knows of Writings that denounce Kaufmann please let me know. Also, i think the pot-peeking problem is a strong indication that Kaufmann abandoned reason entirely in his trashing of Kierkegaard.
'NOT' = Sartre's meaning (man of resentment)
In Walter Kaufmann's "Existentialism From Dostoevsky to Sartre" wk includes Sartre's description of mauvaise foi, which can be translated as bad-faith, or self-deception. An excellent example of a man in self-deception is wk himself. The evidence is in his
Existentialism from Dostoevsky to Sartre, and in his From Shakespeare to existentialism. In his presentation of K, WK "creates a positive object, but it has no being other than its nothingness," and
becomes the 'NOT'. By comparing wk's opinions on K's thought with the opinions of other scholars, establishing the fact that he has made little effort to understand K's writings, then showing that he lacks
clarity in some of his charges against K, it becomes apparent that the K which wk presents to the reader is a Straw-Man. When wk's beliefs about intellectual honesty are taken into account, in my opinion it becomes apparent that wk does not know he intends to
deceive himself and the reader, but is deeply under the spell of mauvaise foi.
The K that wk presents to the reader in thirty pages of writing was a “skandelon, a frequently befuddled thinker who attacked the Greek heritage in philosophy and Christianity, failed to distinguish
between responsible and irresponsible decisions, rashly renounced clear and distinct thinking all together, was a man whose literary and intellectual conscience was perhaps lax even for a religious
writer, was one of the foremost leading spokesman for authoritarian religion, whose conception of God and the proper relationship between Father and Son is utterly different and authoritarian through and
through, who wistfully deplored his own intelligence, and extols the incarnation of sancta simplicitas, with no understanding whatsoever of any religious attitude other than his own, is charged with self-importance, had a limited, poor, infinitely pathetic and upsetting
individuality, offers only sundry observations, his psychology is vitiated by uncritical self-projection and sanctimonious self-deception, and being physically deformed, he probably wondered if his own deformity was not a punishment for his fathers sins, he abandoned reason entirely, and persistently deceived himself because he didn't want to know the truth that his broken engagement was caused by all too human motives, and on faith should be compared with Sartre’s
‘Portraite of the Antisemite.’” (WK: S to E 175-199 & S to E 15-20 & 85)
Incredibly, despite these shortcomings he still had the nerve to compare himself to Socrates!
"Being much more modest than Kierkegaard, Jaspers is not in the habit of comparing himself to
Socrates" (WK: S to E 25)
It appears that K's comparison with Socrates is not all that arrogant though:
"What I write here is for orientation. It is a public attestation; not a defense or an apology. In this respect truly if in no other, I have something in common with Socrates. For when he was accused, and
was about to be judged by 'the crowd' his daemon forbade him to defend himself." (PV 6)
For the sake of brevity, two philosophers who hold other opinions on K will be looked at. It must be noted however, that WK is in the minority on his judgement of Kierkegaard and perhaps on his own
entirely. In the introductory essay to Existentialism from Dostoevsky to Sartre Wk claims that K was for the abandoning of reason, but in the Jaspers section of Existentialism from Dostoevsky to Sartre
Jaspers claims that "Never on such a high level had there been such a thorough-going and radical opposition to mere reason. This questioning is never simply hostility to reason; rather (Kierkegaard
and Nietzsche) sought to appropriate limitlessly all modes of rationality." (J: D to S 190) Another charge Kaufmann brings against Kierkegaard that Jaspers sharply disagrees with is Kierkegaard's
desire to know the truth. Jaspers claims that "...their [Kierkegaard and Nietzsche's] whole thought strove toward the genuine truth." (J: D to S 190) Wk seems unaware of Jaspers ideas when he says in the
introductory essay to Existentialism from Dostoevsky to Sartre "...the differences [between K and N] would far outweigh the similarities, which Karl Jaspers has catalogued so carefully." (WK: D to S 19) Alistair Hannay, the editor of Inquiry seems familiar with
ideas like Kaufmann's, and in the Kierkegaard section of The Oxford Companion to Philosophy he says: "The more scandalous views attributed to Kierkegaard [...] often vanish on a closer reading of the texts, which in context lend themselves to more readily
acceptable readings." (Companion 444) Also, he mentions that "Wittgenstein however, once referred to Kierkegaard as by far the most profound thinker of the last century. (Companion 445)
When WK calls Wittgenstein's judgement on spiritual matters into question in one of his (WK's) books, it gives the reader the impression that wk is familiar with Wittgenstein's thought. But it appears that wk has learned little from the ytic philosopher. A
display of wk's dialectical despair can be found in his "from Shakespeare to Existentialism" In response to K's claim that " In response to K's claim that
"Philosophy should take nothing away, and least of all should fool people out of something as if it were nothing."(K: S to E) WK says, "But a training in philosophy MUST fool people out of many childhood
beliefs, religious and non-religious by not attacking them specifically, but incidentally, by developing our critical powers.” (WK: S to E) Critical powers? Nay! i say Principalities and Powers,and sorry to lose my cool, but something smells like stool, is that
silly fool, saying that school MUST fool this Poole? Well i would say its cruel, to use school for a tool, to fool this Mr. Poole, into thinking K's not cool.... man!
There is more dialectical despair to be found in from Shakespeare to Existentialism. Wk seems to have trouble in quoting Nietzsche to make his point. In response to K's claim that:
"After my death no one will find in my papers (this is my comfort) a single explanation of what it was that really filled my life, the secret writing of my inmost parts which explains everything and often
transforms what the world would call bagatelles into events of prodigious importance for me, which I regard as insignificant apart from the secret gloss which explains them" (K: S to E 185-186)
Wk says, "This note should be compared with Nietzsche's observation:"
"The worst readers of aphorisms are the writers friends if they are intent on guessing back from the general to the particular instance to which the aphorism owes its origin: for with this pot-peeking they reduce the whole author's effort to nothing, and they only deserve it when, instead of philosophical outlook or instruction, they gain nothing but-at best, or at worst- the satisfaction of a vulgar curiosity." (N: S to E 186)
Kierkegaard is talking about writing, and Nietzsche is talking about reading, so the quote is not very applicable to what K said. But two paragraphs later WK seems to do some pot-peeking:
"I have said that Kierkegaard's range of experience was narrow; and yet his life was certainly no less interesting than Freud's or Nietzsche's. [...] In the concept of dread for example where he deals
psychologically with original sin and admits that his psychology is based on his own case, he is preoccupied with the relation of his own sin to his father's; and he probably wondered whether his own deformity was not a punishment for his fathers sins." (WK: S to E 186)
Also, wk's charge of self-deception is based on this pot peeking: "...And when we read his books in these terms, his conception of the three stages and the teleological suspension of the ethical are seen
to be in part the desperate attempts of a misshapen man who was as he reveals in other contexts completely dominated by the figure of his father, to convince himself as well as a woman that the strange way
in which he had broken his engagement with her had nothing to do with all-too-human motives? It would be absurd to claim that such a psychological ysis does justice to his work. Of course it does
not. The only reason for as much as mentioning these matters is that the desire not to know the truth was as important element in K’s faith.” (WK: D to S 20)
Is WK’s knowledge of what constitutes all-too-human motives objective or subjective? Does WK ume the objective truth of certain beliefs?
Often Wk lacks clarity in his criticisms of K. In the introductory essay to Existentialism from D to S Wk claims that K is against the wisdom of the Greeks. One may wonder why he would want to compare himself to
Socrates when he is against the wisdom of the Greeks. Perhaps the Greeks did not all agree on what wisdom was. Wk is unclear about Plato's position on the limits of reason, which he seems to use as an
example to show that K was anti-Plato. In Existentialism from Dostoevsky to Sartre wk says "Plato had maintained on the whole that in the things that matter most reason is competent," (WK: D to S 18)
then in Faith of a Heretic he says Plato "had insisted that knowledge was available in regard to {most} of the questions which mattered most." (Heretic p.?) Also, Wk is critical of K's negative attitude
toward science, and then complains that Nietzsche's interest in science has been ignored. But it appears that they are closer on this issue than Wk thinks. According to Nietzsche; "It would be a mistake
to adduce German science here, as well as being proof one had not read a word I had written, for seventeen years I have not wearied of exposing the de-spiritualizing influence of our contemporary
scientific pursuits.” (Twilight 45) To show that K was against science WK uses K’s Concluding Unscientific Postscript as an example, but this is misleading. The Postscript is against the raising of
philosophy to a systematic science, not science itself. Wk seems to imply that K encouraged people to abandon reason entirely. But K seems to disagree here; “I prefer talking with children, with them
one can still hope that they may become rational beings; but those that have become that - Lord save us!” (E/O 43) Also, Wk claims that K rashly renounced clear and distinct thinking altogether. Perhaps he misread this page; "There is also in the intellectual world a glowing sensuality, a dangerous
temptation to cleverness, which precisely by play of multiplicity conceals a total lack of clearness.”
(A&R 17)
The questions WK raises about the Truth is Subjectivity selection raise some interesting questions. WK asks; “does he stick with the
claims made in the first two sentences? Is the second sentence of the third paragraph for example consistent with these claims? Or does Kierkegaard ume the objective truth of certain beliefs?” (WK: D to
S 84-85) The thesis is; "Our treatment of the problem does not raise the question of the truth of Christianity. It merely deals with the
individuals relationship to Christianity." (K: D to S 110) In the second sentence of the third paragraph K claims that "it is surely quite impossible for anyone who has lost a sensibility for his eternal happiness to enjoy eternal happiness," (K: D to S 111) which is compatible with the thesis. However, WK’s question; "Or does Kierkegaard ume the objective truth of certain beliefs?" is not compatible with K’s thesis. Then WK criticizes K for ignoring other religions, but two paragraphs later he is all over Kierkegaard for
his contrast between the false Christian and the pionate idolater. K did not feel it was his calling to explain the doctrines of world religions. Instead he focused on some concrete problems that he saw
in the Christianity of his time. To K there were just people with the knowledge of what he (K) believed was the true God, and those who didn’t. In his contrast he claims that if a non Christian prays in a true spirit he is in fact worshiping the true God, even if he is
mixed-up about who he is praying to, and is therefore more truthful than a Christian who prays in a false spirit. WK does not like K’s contrast because he questions Kierkegaard's knowledge concerning what
constitutes a false spirit, but K's knowledge of what constitutes a false spirit doesn't affect the spirit of other individuals. Wk's criticism is like saying every individual spiritual life is dependent
on K's knowledge of what constitutes a false spirit. Another of WK’s questions that gets him in some trouble is where he asks; "in the second part he makes much of the fact that scholarship cannot firmly
establish faith. Why does he ignore the no less obvious fact that it can, and often does undermine faith? Does the section on authority help us to understand him at this point?" (WK: D to S 85) The
selection Kaufmann includes from Authority and Revelation does little to help us understand Kierkegaard on this, but it does make K look
rather authoritarian. But when this page is read in the context of K’s other works it becomes clear that K is not asking us to submit blindly to the religious authorities, he is promoting a leap of faith
toward spiritual authority. The only authority that K is interested in is spiritual authority, not man's authority, as a look at his exposure of the lack of free-thought in his time seems to indicate;
"Aren't people absurd! They never use the freedoms they do have, but demand those that they don't have. They have freedom of thought, they demand freedom of speech." The section on authority WK sees as being
authoritarian is in fact encouraging the opposite of what WK thinks. K wants people to make up their own minds about Christianity, not let the scholars do it for them. Back to the question; "in the second part
he makes much of the fact that scholarship cannot firmly establish faith. Why does he ignore the no less obvious fact that it can, and often does undermine faith? Does the section on authority help us to
understand him at this point?" There is a rather interesting page in Authority and Revelation:
"A learned twaddler who at the bottom knows nothing can seldom be got to deal with anything concrete; he does not talk of a particular dialogue of Plato, that is too little for him-also it might become
apparent that {he had not read it.} No, he talks about Plato as a whole, or even Greek philosophy as a whole, but especially about the wisdom of the Indians and the Chinese. This Greek philosophy as a whole, the profundity of Oriental philosophy as a whole is the
prodigiously great, the boundless, which advantageously hides his ignorance. So it is much easier to talk about an alteration in the forum of government than discuss a very little concrete problem like sewing a pair of shoes, and the injustice towards a few capable men lies in the fact that by reason of the prodigious greatness of the problem they are apparently an par with every peer, who "also speaks
out" {So it is much easier for a dunce to criticize our Lord than to judge the handiwork of the apprentice in a shop, yea, than to judge a sulfur match.} For if only the problem is concrete, he will, it is
soon to be hoped, soon betray how stupid he is. {But our Lord and his Governance of the world is something so prodigiously great that in a certain giddy abstract sense the most foolish man takes part in gossiping about it as well as the wisest man, because no one understands it."} (A&R 31-32)
One way for scholarship to undermine faith is to criticize the object of faith, so it appears that K did not ignore this problem entirely.
Possibly the main factor in Wk's underestimation of K's intellect stems from his misunderstanding of two words, absurd and pion. When K says; "Nothing could be more absurd than Christianity" Wk seems to think that K is calling his own (K's) religion stupid.
However, paradoxical would be more appropriate. This marble-man is a good example of absurdity:
"The question before us is: What is existentialism? What does existentialism mean? Any answer, regardless of how erudite, is meaningless if the answer is not understood. Let me begin by describing the method I will use to clarify the direction of our inquiry into this matter. We begin with a ton of marbles. Let's say
they were collected from those who lost theirs in trying to understand Kierkegaard. In that pile is a singular marble, an individual marble, which is heavier than the rest. Since the rest of them all weigh the same, we will divide the pile in half and discard the lighter half until we have the heavy one before us. And what can be heavier than a paradox in self-consciousness?"
(Buster P. http://www.webcom.com/kierke/paper3.html
This man later said that he tried losing his marbles a longtime ago, but was never very good at it. The poor guy cannot lose his marbles because he keeps losing his marbles trying to understand K! That is absurd!
Wk seems to think the meaning of pion that Sartre had in mind when he used the word in his Portraite of the Antisemite is the same meaning that K had in mind when he uses the word. But by looking at a couple of quotes and attempting to find the behind them it becomes apparent that K's pion is different than what WK thinks. K's pion is actually two kinds of pion that work together, the momentary and the continual. The momentary is like a flash of insight
that cannot be explained, but is above reason. It is employed when contemplating absurdity. This quote makes it clear that K sees pion as momentary:
"But how does the learner come to realize an understanding with this Paradox? We do not ask that he understand the Paradox but only
that this is the Paradox. How this takes place we have already shown. It comes to p when the reason and the Paradox encounter one another happily in the Moment. When the Reason sets itself aside and
the Paradox bestows itself. The third entity in which this union is realized for it is not realized in the Reason, since it is set aside: nor in the Paradox, which bestows itself--hence it is realized in something is that happy pion to which we will now ign a name, though it is not the name that so much matters. We shall call this pion: Faith. (Fragments, pp. 72-73)
These moments of pion transform the individual in leaps of faith, which can result in the individual losing touch with his/herself, because the transformation is sudden. To keep touch with oneself
requires 'pionate inwardness,' which is a pionate awareness of the present self, in contrast to the past self, whose being isn't the present self's being, because the self has been transformed. The leap
is paradoxical, being both momentary and continual. This quote shows that the leap is continual:
“Every movement of infinity comes about by pion, and no reflection can bring a movement about. This is the continual leap in existence which explains the movement, whereas mediation is a chimera which
according to Hegel is supposed to explain everything.” (F&T fn. 53)
This continual leap nullifies wk's charge that Nietzsche's criticisms of faith are applicable to K, because Nietzsche talked of "Weariness that wants to reach the ultimate with one leap, with one
fatal leap..." (N: D to S 19) Also, in this quote K makes it clear that he doesn't sanction just any pion, as Wk seems to think:
"It is rather odd how men whom I generally regard as good natured and generally not unfriendly toward me, when they get into a pion are then able to lie to the high heaven and scarcely be aware of it
themselves. Pion does have a strange power, and therefore how foolish all this modern thing about systems and systems, as if there were help in them; no, pion must be purified." (K: CC to K 187)
The two pions then combine to keep the individual a being that freely chooses to become, which is to exist authentically, instead of letting life p them by, clothing themselves with false selves as the fashions of the crowd change.
In addition to Wk's misunderstanding of K's pion and absurd, there is another factor that causes wk to dismiss K as a fanatic. K
wrote a book called Fear and Trembling, which invites the reader to ride along with Abraham during his three day journey to Mt. Moriah, where God commanded him to sacrifice Isaac. Wk seems to think that K is teaching us to abandon reason and follow religious authority
blindly, even if atrocious acts are required. Wk fails to tell the reader the whole story though; he brings up this charge against Kierkegaard in at least three of his books, but in every case he fails to tell the reader where Isaac came from:
God said also to Abraham, "As for Sarai your wife, you are no longer to call her Sarai; her name will be Sarah. I will bless her and surely give you a son by her so that she will be the mother of nations; kings of peoples will come from her." Abraham fell facedown;
he laughed and said to himself, "Will a son be born to a man a hundred years old? Will Sarah bear a child at the age of ninety? (Gen. 17: 15-17)
When the story is told in its entirety it is still horrifying when God commands Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, but it is far less horrifying than wk’s condensed version. Kierkegaard seems to ume
his readers are familiar with the whole story when he says that Abraham must get Isaac back in this life on the strength if the absurd, because how else can the promise that a great nation will come from Isaac be fulfilled? When Kierkegaard invites the reader to
ride along with Abraham he is not asking for blind obedience to religious authority, as wk seems to think. He wants the reader to share in Abraham’s struggle with faith and doubt, and experience some
of the anxiety that Abraham would have been bombarded with during his three-day journey. Of course, there is a slight chance that misguided people will kill their children to find favor with God after reading
Fear and Trembling. A good way to see if K creates fanatics who are ready to do violence for their beliefs is to visit a K site on the
internet and see what kind of people read K. It is true, at Kierkegaard on the Internet there is a man who threatens violence, but it is not because he just read Fear and Trembling:
Name: Jack Warden Email: Jackwarden@aol.com> Date: 01/20/99 - 16:43:21 Referred from: A WWW search engine (Yahoo, WebCrawler, etc.) Comments: See Walter Kaufmann's comments on SK in "Faith of a Heretic." One quote: "What Kierkegaard sanctions in effect is
fanaticism: the attitude of those who willingly suffer everything for their unquestioned faith, and who obediently commit atrocities for it, too."
Name: Jack Warden> Email: Jackwarden@aol.com> Date: 01/09/99 - 18:23:37 Referred from: A WWW search engine (Yahoo, WebCrawler, etc.) Comments: SK was a fool. He was logorhetic, not brilliant.He was a fanatic. If I had a time machine I'd travel back to Copenhagen ca
1840 and knock his soft teeth down his throat.
There are at many possible reasons why wk presents a straw-man to the reader but to keep things brief only my personal opinion will be
looked at here. First question; why does WK think that K was so stupid? In my opinion he underestimates K’s intellect because K is a threat to his (wk’s) personal beliefs. When he is forced to take on
the threat, he is consumed by fear, and looses his reason. Second question, why is wk afraid of K? Wk was an anti-Christian Hegelian, K was a Christian, possibly Hegels most effective critic, and had a
formidable intellect. To counter the threat wk takes the easy way out by turning K into a straw-man. In my opinion he does this because part of him knows that he is incapable of holding his own in a battle
of wits with K. After all, who is capable of holding their own in a battle of wits with K?
There is an interesting statement that wk makes in Existentialism from Dostoevsky to Sartre. “Freud’s attack on self-deception is quite apt to lead to self-deception on a different level: we face our repressions and see ourselves as victims of “the censor” or our parents.” In my opinion this throws light on wk’s Straw-man. Wk was raised as a Christian, but lost his faith at eleven years of age. He converted to Judaism at that time, and seems to have slowly become an atheist or very skeptical agnostic. He taught philosophy at a time when openly attacking Christianity was still a no-no in academia, even though few philosophy professors practiced any religion at the time, or for a long time prior to the time. The hypocrisy in this censoring angered wk, so he rebelled by becoming a very pionate
anti-Christian. His will to end the censorship that he saw as being forced upon him by a false religion angered him to the point that he willed extremely pionately to change the system. However, his
pion overtook his reason, and when he had to face perhaps his strongest enemy he pionately makes his enemy vanish nstead of using his reason to fight the enemy. Because he used pion rather then reason he fell victim to Mauvaise foi. By making a straw-man of
the enemy, then mistaking the straw man for the enemy, and presenting the straw man as truth to readers and students, wk abuses his authority as an academic at a prodigious institution. After all, he himself wrote that philosophy must fool, and the chapter he wrote
this in is very foolish. In my opinion he thought K was stupid because he didn’t want to believe that an intelligent human being could be a Christian, because when people see that an intelligent human being can have faith it is reuring to their beliefs, and WK
thought these beliefs were false. So WK proceeded to fool people out of their beliefs indirectly by giving the impression that faith is for fools, and in the process of writing foolish things to fool his
readers he made a Freudian-slip, and wrote that philosophy must fool. His claim that philosophy must fool is not consistent with the beliefs which in my opinion he wanted to believe were his own, but
were not. The beliefs he wanted to believe were his own are the beliefs he claimed as his own when he wrote a whole chapter on honesty in Faith of a Heretic. By abusing his academic authority WK
became a man in rebellion against spiritual authority, which was his own authority as a teacher of truth. Spiritual authority is freely chosen authority, making it your own and nobody else’s. WK chose to become a teacher of truth, but then chose to rebel against his choice by choosing to fool with school, which he could not do without fooling himself first. He fooled himself because he could not believe the fact that he intended to fool with school, as a reading of Faith of a Heretic makes clear.
It is a shame that many people shelled out big dollars to go to Princeton and receive what is ‘NOT’ knowledge from wk, particular because it is presented as a result of critical thinking, making students less likely to challenge what he offers. Wk does not shrink
from throwing criticism at any thinker who offends him, from Heraus to Heidegger. It is outside of the scope of this paper to say how accurate his criticisms of all thinkers are, but in my opinion one thing is certain; When he deals with K, WK is “the man
who wants to be pitiless stone, furious torrent, devastating lightening: in short, everything but a man.” (S: D to S 345)
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