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2 Johannes Climacus: Spiritual Existence Intensified by Reflection The ideal of personhood, of the strong spiritual evaluator, runs throughout Kierkegaard’s authorship. I think that much of this ideal is found in the Judge’s letter entitled “The Balance between the Esthetic and the Ethical in the Development of the Personality” examined in the last chapter; even the religious dimension of the ideal is found in nascent form in the Judge’s writings. But the later pseudonymous authorship adds to the vision of selfhood by making it even more strenuous, and much of the increase is related to the role of reflection. At this point I want to consider Kierkegaard’s thought as it unfolds in the reflections of Johannes Climacus , especially in Concluding Unscientific Postscript. Kierkegaard’s pseudonym Johannes Climacus makes his first appearance in a recently translated and previously unpublished work that Kierkegaard probably worked on shortly after Either/Or, but before his major Philosophical Fragments and Concluding Unscientific Postscript, that bears the title Johannes Climacus or De Omnibus Dubitandum Est (Everything must be doubted).1 Kierkegaard’s pseudonym Climacus is an intensely reflective yet existentially interested individual; his thinking is an effort to find spiritual meaning, existential identity. In the work Johannes Climacus, Kierkegaard tells the story of Johannes Climacus, a character somewhat similar to A in Either/Or, but more philosophical, more of a thinker, who takes to heart the thesis that everything must be doubted. Kierkegaard tells us 03.ch2.41-77/Mehl 2/14/05 2:08 PM Page 41 in a note appended to a draft of the work that he intends to “strike a blow at philosophy” (JC xiii). He will portray Johannes Climacus, an individual who doubts everything, but “in order to hold on to this extreme position of doubting everything, he has engaged all his mental and spiritual powers. If he abandons this position he may very well arrive at something, but in doing that he would have also abandoned his doubt about everything ” (xiii). And since he spent some time on the project, by the time he reaches the conclusion that doubting everything is impossible, his life is wasted: “Life does not acquire any meaning for him, and it is the fault of philosophy” (xiii). There are obvious parallels to the position of “choosing despair” that finally shipwrecks the existential efforts of Judge William. Both doubt and despair are efforts to overcome the dichotomy of existence, but the purely reflective posture and the more advanced volitional position are flawed efforts to win through to spiritual meaning. Doubt, belief, skepticism, volition , and faith are crucial elements in the reflections of Climacus. Climacus , as we encounter him in Concluding Unscientific Postscript is also a doubter, but with an interest in existence: “The youth is an existing doubter; continually suspended in doubt, he grasps for the truth—so that he can exist in it” (CUP 310). Much of modern philosophy, especially the Hegelian speculative effort, positively confuses things for the existing doubter, for the question is always, How do I come to actualize the truth, that is, to live within it? The Concluding Unscientific Postscript is a meditation on human existence framed by a conviction that Christianity will make little sense if the issue of becoming a person, or ethically engaging life as the Judge has posed the matter, is not foremost for the individual. Christianity is an “existence-communication”; it is for subjectivity and not a doctrine about objective matters external to the person. Rather than becoming a self, Climacus refers to becoming subjective and asserts that “subjectivity is the truth.” In less than 40 pages the effort to approach Christianity from the “objective” side is disposed of, and part 2 begins, “The Subjective Issue,” and continues for the next 550 pages.The subjective issue is nothing other than the issue of becoming a Kierkegaardian self, of becoming a strong spiritual evaluator who craves existence in the truth, where truth means bringing himself together, becoming a unity of subject and object.The objective issue approaches existential matters from either the historical-critical approximation process or the “speculative” theological effort to bring God to light objectively. Both efforts, if seen as efforts to establish ethical attitudes , religious faith, or Christian commitment—matters of spiritual identity —are misguided. They are fine as scholarship, but the existing person 42 Thinking through Kierkegaard 03.ch2.41-77/Mehl 2/14/05 2:08 PM Page 42 [3.138.105.124] Project MUSE (2024-04-26...

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