Errant Affirmations: On the Philosophical Meaning of Kierkegaard's Religious Discourses by David J. Kangas (review)

In this unique book, one that should interest all fans of Kierkegaard's discourses, the author sizes up the famous statement by Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) that there is "more to be learned philosophically" from Kierkegaard's edifying books than from his theoretical ones. Heidegger, however, "never redeemed this insight" with a close reading of the texts, and so his comment rings hollow (173). Kangas wants to rectify that. He does this by going beyond Heidegger—arguing that "a philosophical reading" of the discourses is the only correct one because to read them "within an ethical or theological register . . . would be to retreat to the horizon of authority that these discourses disavow" (2–3). Notoriously Kierkegaard thought that he, though seminary-trained, was without any authority to preach—or publish discourses—because he was not an ordained minister of the church. But Kangas insists that the authority disavowed concerns "not merely the speaker but also the content spoken about" in the discourses (2).

Take God, for instance. "Kierkegaard's discourses constantly invoke God" and think of humans as essentially standing before him (9). But not, according to Kangas, with some sort of "nominal" formula (39). No, God is instead being "under the inescapable, absolute pressure of a choice concerning the fundamental attunement of the human being" (9). Kangas doesn't believe this leads to a reductionism in the vein of Ludwig Feuerbach (1804–1872) (10). But one still wonders how this pressure squares with Kierkegaard's more orthodox view that for the Christian God is "a guide in all his activity, a quiet joy in his devout contemplation" (Three Discourses on Imagined Occasions, trans. Hongs, 72). But again, Kangas sees Kierkegaard disavowing the orthodox content of Christianity in his discourses (or in at least the eight that he examines).

On the matter of confession, Kangas says Kierkegaard's view is bereft of verbiage. "It is certainly a strange discourse that links confessing, not to a speech-act, but to becoming still" (95). But maybe not, this reviewer thinks, if becoming still is a preparation for the speech-act of confession. That seems to be the case since Kierkegaard notes that whoever dwells on sin "knows that there is a difference between sins. This, of course, he knows from what he learned from his catechism, and everyone thinks best about this by himself" (TDIO, 35). Kierkegaard, however, names a few sins to be confessed verbally—"religious debauchery" (the mixing of folly with the ultimate); "the indulgence of light-mindedness"; and "the ungodly imposition of dark passion" (TDIO, 30, 35).

Regarding death, Kangas argues that Kierkegaard doesn't hold the orthodox views of "death as sleep, as relief from hardship, as great equalizer, as the transition to another life, as the wages of sin, as the great transformation" (97). Kierkegaard instead has, according to Kangas, a philosophical replacement for heaven—as "seriousness, facing up to pure annihilation, grasps the present in its precise quality as reminder, as what still persists and can be used, even if, and after, all is over" (111). This reviewer notes that the problem with this persistence of the present is that the one who is living "does not," Kierkegaard argues, "have it in his power to stop time, to find rest outside time in the perfect conclusion, in a conclusion of joy as if there were no tomorrow" (78).

If Kangas had stuck with Heidegger, and not ventured beyond him, he would have written a more compelling book. As it is, could Kierkegaard have had a book in mind like this one when he wrote: "But, my listener, if anyone, attacked by that fashionable sickness, had a loathing for existence and in intellectual pride disdained the simple and feared lest there not be tasks enough for his many thoughts, do you think then that the wondrousness of truth is that the simple person understands it and the...