Kierkegaard by Josiah Thompson (review)

18~ BOOK REVIEWS JosiAH THOMPSON. Kierkegaard. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1973. Pp. 312. $8.95. Professor Thompson is already known for his study of Kierkegaard's pseudonymous works as well as for his edition of the Kierkegaard volume in the Anchor series, "Modern Studies in Philosophy." In the present work he offers us a well-documented and eminently readable biography of SjiJren Kierkegaard which exhibits Thompson's mastery of the Danish language , his patient research, and, it must be added, his powerful imagination as well. For much of the book is an imaginative reconstruction of scenes and events from Kierkegaard's life, based on memoirs and public documents in addition to Kierkegaard's own papers, many as yet untranslated. The author casts new light on several old Kierkegaardian issues. He points out, for example, that the famous eulogy which Martensen preached at Bishop Mynster's funeral, occasioning Kierkgaard's final and fatal controversy with the state church, actually used, and in Kierkgaard's mind abused, a term "witness to the truth" (Sandhedsvidne) which at that time could be found in no Danish dictionary since it was a recent Kierkegaardian coinage. This gives an added note of poignancy to the ensuing polemic. Regarding Kierkegaard's feud with the satirical journal Corsair, Thompson indicates how Kierkegaard retrospectively turned what had been mainly an accident of timing and at most a literary spat into a heroic crusade against the " plebs." More important than new light on biographical material, however, are Thompson's observations on three general aspects of Kierkegaard's life and work, viz., the use of pseudonyms, the doubleness of consciousness, and the life of imagination-all interrelated. Concerning the use of pseudonyms, in addition to the standard observations as to the significance of their translations and the method of indirect communication, Thompson notes the kind of doubling that characterizes Kierkegaard's relation to his pseudonyms: For precisely in the same way that the pseudonyms maintain their distance from their imaginative creations does Kierkegaard maintain his distance from the pseudonyms. He tells us he is absent from their compositions, that in their works his own voice is silent. And it is true that the views of the pseudonyms are not Kierkegaard's. If anything, they are the views he has outlived or outthought. (p. 145) The central focus of the pseudonymous writings, Thompson tells us, is not ethics or religion or aesthetics, but the dialectic of the life of imagination itself. These works constitute a literature of self-reference, a kind of bad infinity, commenting repeatedly upon the imaginative act involved in their own creation. Their aim is to demonstrate the failure of BOOK REVIEWS 188 all human projects and the particular vanity of philosophy as they manifest the inherent volatility and duplicity of human consciousness. This concept of doubleness is the second general aspect of Kierkegaard's theoretical position which Thompson illuminates. He points out that in Danish the morpheme tvi, "two," appears in the words "doubt" (Tvivl), "despair" (Fortvivlelse), "scepticism" (Tvivlesyg), and "ambiguity" (Tvetydighed)-all indicating a doubling of consciousness, a lack of coincidence of consciousness with itself. Since Kierkegaard considers doubt an essential attribute of consciousness, this basic doubling can never be avoided or consciousness itself would cease. Rather, is must be retained but " put out of circuit " through belief. Thus Johannes Climacus argues that " in the certainty of belief there is always a negated uncertainty." (p. 173) Accordingly, we can highten consciousness by intensifying the " contradiction " which our belief holds together. It is in this manner that Kierkegaard works his way through the contortions of a German idealist analysis of consciousness to Tertullian's credo quia absurdum. To simply write this off as either fideism or criterionless choice is to miss the point. Finally, Thompson offers a particularly valuable discussion of the primacy of the life of imagination in Kierkegaard's work. Throughout his adult years Kierkegaard considered himself to be life's observer who treasured experiences solely for their memories. As he wrote in his diary on a trip to the country: "Greetings to you mighty Nature, with your fleeting beauty. It is not you I desire, it is the memory of you." (79) Always at...