
April 7, 2022
Kierkegaard on the Present (Passionless) Age | Jacob Howland on The Art of Manliness with Brett McKay
- Check out The Art of Manliness Episode Page & Show Notes
Key Takeaways
- Kierkegaard’s writing is like Mozart’s Don Giovanni – light and playful with tragic doubts and religious heights
- “I don’t think anything had ever been written like that before.” – Jacob Howland talking about Kierkegaard’s Either/Or
- He is a late-modern Plato – his books are full of different characters (same as in Plato’s writings) pondering the essential matters of human existence
- Nietzsche made it fashionable to “go back” to the earliest Greek thought
- But it was Kierkegaard who really set the stage for this
- He was an “archeologist” of the original forms of philosophy (Plato’s Socrates) and biblical faith (Abraham and Jesus Christ)
- “Kierkegaard stands out, especially for his understanding of the task of individual human existence and the passion that is required to discharge it.” – Jacob Howland
- The human being, i.e the self is the synthesis of the temporal and eternal
- Kierkegaard believes that the reason we experience conditions like anxiety and despair is because of the misrelation of oneself to oneself
- What Kierkegaard calls “the present age” is categorized by reflection
- Reflection is thought that is stripped of passion, unfocused and idle, wandering in the realm of possibility
- It never translates into action, decision, or commitment of the soul and it drains life of its vibrancy and immediacy
- “The passion that makes great things possible has been replaced in our age by reliance on expertise and skill.” – Jacob Howland
Key Books Mentioned
- Works by Kierkegaard:
- Two Ages: A Literary Review
- The beginning of the book is a critique of the novel “Two Ages” by Thomasine Gyllembourg
- The part that deals with the contrast between the mentality of the age of the revolution with that of rationalism has been published separately as “The Present Age”
- Either/Or
- Howland’s recommendation for anyone interested in literature
- “I don’t think anything had ever been written like that before.” – Jacob Howland
- Fear and Trembling
- The Sickness Unto Death
- Two Ages: A Literary Review
- Jacob Howland’s most recent book:
Intro
- Jacob Howland is McFarlin Professor of Philosophy and past Chair of the Department of Philosophy and Religion at the University of Tulsa, where he taught from 1988 to 2020.
- He published five books and roughly sixty articles and review essays on the work of Plato, Aristotle, Xenophon, Kierkegaard, and other subjects
- In this episode, Jacob Howland explains some of the key concepts of the philosophy of Søren Kierkegaard (anxiety and despair, faith as a passion, individual responsibility) and delves deep into Kierkegaard’s comments about the mentality of “Two Ages” (the revolutionary and the reflective)
- Check out Howland’s website
- Host – Brett McKay (@brettmckay)
A Literary Genius of the First Order
- Howland compares Kierkegaard to Mozart
- Incredible lightness and a sense of humor
- Mozart’s Don Giovanni is a light and playful opera with tragic doubts and religious heights
- It’s like a musical equivalent to Kierkegaard’s writing, according to Howland
- Kierkegaard is a late-modern Plato – his books are full of different characters (same as in Plato’s writings) pondering the essential matters of human existence
- His books are pseudonymous, written by multiple personalities
- Unlike Plato, he produced the authors who wrote his books
- Either/Or, Howland’s recommendation for anyone interested in literature
- “I don’t think anything had ever been written like that before.” – Jacob Howland talking about Kierkegaard’s Either/Or
What Was Kierkegaard Trying to Accomplish With His Philosophy?
- Nietzsche made it fashionable to “go back” to the earliest Greek thought
- But it was Kierkegaard who really set the stage for this
- He was an archeologist of the original forms of philosophy (Plato’s Socrates) and biblical faith (Abraham and Jesus Christ)
- Both Socrates and the Bibble emphasize the freedom and dignity of the individual
- Kierkegaard was writing in an age of conformity and uniformity
- Within this context, Kierkegaard shifts the focus back onto the category of “the single individual”
- “Kierkegaard stands out, especially for his understanding of the task of individual human existence and the passion that is required to discharge it.” – Jacob Howland
- Because of his focus on the existence and the quality of one’s life, he is considered to have been the first existentialist philosopher
- Indirect communication
- What matters for Kierkegaard is the inner communication of the truth
- It’s a zone of silence; what does it mean to say “God is love”?
- It is not a question of objective correctness, we can’t ever understand this “correctly”, and it’s not even clear what that would mean
- This kind of question is a question for each individual to answer via the life they lead
- There is an objective truth for Kierkegaard but his focus is on each individuals relationship with that truth
Kierkegaard’s Philosophical Anthropology and Psychology
- The roots of his ideas can be traced back to Plato
- The human being is body + soul
- Embodied soul exists in a particular time and place, but it relates to a transcendent truth
- It’s a synthesis of the temporal and eternal, particular and universal, freedom and necessity
- Holding these elements of the synthesis together is the task of human existence
- For Socrates, it was not enough to know about the universal ideas (Plato’s Idea) e.g. justice, but to practice them in real life (being here and now)
- Kierkegaard’s conception of the truth is the living infinite God or what is revealed as a god to human beings
- The human being, i.e the self is also a synthesis of the temporal and eternal
- Kierkegaard believes that the reason we experience conditions like anxiety and despair is because of the misrelation of oneself to oneself
- Both anxiety and despair reflect the misrelation that arises in the self when the temporal and eternal do not come into proper relation to each other
- Anxiety and despair are not solely psychological states
- Kierkegaard moves beyond the mental-emotional level to the spiritual level
- Howland calls it “metaphysical discontent”
- Because we are human, we are implicated in ultimate questions (e.g. why is there something rather than nothing, why are we here?)
- The idea is that the human soul is not complete until it relates to the ultimate reality
- For Socrates, salvation is ethical salvation via committing to truth, justice, and virtue
“The Age of Revolution” and “The Present Age”
- Two Ages: The Age of Revolution and the Present Age: A Literary Review
- The book begins with a review of the novel “Two Ages” by Thomasine Gyllembourg
- Kierkegaard also presents a thesis that deals with the contrast between the mentality of the age of the French Revolution with that of rationalism (the present age)
- That part has been published separately as “The Present Age”
- The contrast between the two ages brings out what we’ve lost in the present age
- Kirkegaard is not praising radical revolutionary action or mob violence, but he does believe that the period of revolution is characterized by passion
- What he calls “the present age” is categorized by reflection
- Passion vs reflection
- Passion is humanly essential
- The inward motion of the soul
- A focusing of one’s energies on an ethical or religious ideal
- Personal commitment unifies the individual and is the source of individual character
- It gives form to life
- It is immediate and concrete
- Reveals who we are
- Only with passion do we become definite
- The passionate soul has a sort of inward tension and resilience associated with culture
- “For Kierkegaard, the soul is like a bow that can aim and shoot its arrows of action at any target it chooses, but the soul without passion is like an unstrung bow” – Jacob Howland
- Without passion, the soul lacks unity, character, energy
- Thinking is a passionate activity, a response of a single individual whose soul is open to the mysteries of life
- Reflection is thought that is stripped of passion, unfocused and idle, wandering in the realm of possibility
- It never translates into action, decision, or commitment of the soul
- Reflection is also associated with abstraction; it drains life of its vibrancy and immediacy
- “There is nothing more unproductive for the human mind than an abstract idea.” – Alexis de Tocqueville quoted by Jacob Howland
- E.g. reflection in the water; the image is observable but unsubstantial, two-dimensional, it abstracts from the concrete reality of the individual
- Imagination and abstraction (characteristics of reflection) generate a virtual reality that eventually replaces actual reality
- Kierkegaard is pointing to the danger of getting lost in thought and never committing to anything
- Passion is humanly essential
There Is No App for Life
- “Who am I, What do I want?”
- This kind of thinking requires boldness, faith in life’s possibilities
- “One of the hardest things to communicate to young people is that things are going to work out.” – Jacob Howland
- Howland is not suggesting you go into the world unprepared and incompetent
- However, he does encourage everyone to follow their inward calling, figure out what they love, excel at, and want to do with their lives
- You gotta have faith that it’s going to work out
- Brett McKay reminisces about young adults asking him for life advice
- You can major in anything and figure it out
- “I went to law school thinking I was going to be an attorney, and now I’m talking to Jacob Howland about Kierkegaard.” – Brett McKay
- You can’t ever know the end of your life; there is no system to teach you
- People love self-help books because they want to follow a system, but even if there is a system for life, you can’t know it
- Be passionate, find something, and follow it
Kierkegaard’s Parable of the Treasure
- Taking the plunge into the waters of existence
- Even if it’s a rash leap, decisiveness counts
- The parable of the treasure extends the idea of taking the plunge into the water to an ultimate degree
- The water is life-threateningly cold, but the treasure (located on thin ice) is extremely valuable
- In the passionate age, people would cheer and admire the skater who goes on thin ice to get the treasure
- In the reflective age, everyone would agree that it’s foolish and ridiculous to take risks to obtain treasure
- A trained skater would skate right to the edge of the thin ice and turn away at the last moment
- “Thus an uninspired venture would be turned into an acrobatic stunt, and actuality would be turned into a theater.” – Jacob Howland quoting Kierkegaard
- The audience would cheer for the skater but secretly suppose that they could’ve done the same
- According to Howland, this parable captures some essential things about our age
- Cowardly slow-mindedness (“safeism”)
- Everyone must be protected (even from harmful emotions)
- “The passion that makes great things possible has been replaced in our age by reliance on expertise and skill.” – Jacob Howland
- But also the exhibitionism; the skater who wants to be admired more than he wants the treasure
- Phenomenon of hypocrisy
- The crowd that pretends to admire socially what everyone individually secretly despises
- This is an increasing feature of our lives today
- For E.g. students are scared to speak their minds
- They agree with what is politically correct but beneath the surface, they disagree
The Envy of Reflection
- Envy is dissatisfaction at the sight of other’s good fortune
- It wants to tear down the good to make sure the other person doesn’t enjoy it
- That’s the effect of reflection; it’s critical and deconstructive – negative
- It disillusions and disenchants, and that destroys action
- Reflection raises doubt, doubt paralysis, and blocks our energies
- It always gives the individual an excuse for not deciding according to Kierkegaard
- The envy of reflection turns into ethical envy – meanness directed at other people
- Those who are paralyzed by reflection are unhappy and when they encounter individuals who are active and flourishing, they experience it as an insult
- They criticize far too much
- The effect of this phenomenon is to make people fear the judgment of others even more than death (just because of being an individual)
The Present Age “Levels” the Individual
- In modernity everything is relativized, there are no absolutes, no fixed standards
- Today, not even nature provides those standards; not even our biological characteristics ( we can change our sex)
- The possibility is elevated over actuality
- This is a characteristic of the modern world
- The consideration of abstract possibilities is exhausting and even nauseating
- Modern philosophy (with Descartes) begins by doubting everything
- Kierkegaard’s age and our age are critical, negative, and ironic
- This was always one side of the though
- But today it often seems like it’s the only side; it tears down what it builds up
- Don’t evade being an individual
- Don’t always abide by the laws of the mob
- Things you believe in and which are important to you should not be buried under cowardly submission to group thinking
- For both Socrates and Kierkegaard, the individual is an active, thoughtful, passionate center of responsibility
“There is a sense in which the ultimate outcome of this age of reflection and lack of passion and self-worth, and centralization, and the abstraction of the modern age is that there aren’t any selves.” – Jacob Howland