Becoming a Self

Chapter Three. Placing Postscript in the Theory of the Stages

CHAPTERI T H R E E Placing Postscript in the Theory of the Stages The pseudonymous authorship finds its penultimate conclusion in the works ofJohannes Climacus, Philosophical Fragments and Concluding Unscientific Postscript, and its ultimate conclusion in the works ofAnti-Climacus, Sickness unto Death and Practice in Christianity. In either its shorter or its longer form it has the theory of the stages at its center. In its simplest form it distinguishes the aesthetic, the ethical, and the religious as stages on life's way; but, as we shall see, that simple schema gets complicated by refinements, especially in Postscript. In the background of the theory of the stages (or existence spheres, as they are called, even in Stages on Life's Way), is Hegel's Phenomenology ofSpirit. In its preface Hegel speaks of "the stage [Stufe] which self-conscious Spirit has presently reached." Speaking of the "new era" or the "new world" that he believes to be dawning, he makes it clear that spirit's journey is a historical journey.1 But just as ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny, so the individual whose substance would be the spirit in its present mode must "also pass through the formative stages [Bildungsstufen ] of universal Spirit so far as their content is concerned , but as shapes which Spirit has already left behind, as stages on a way that has been made level with toil." The Phenomenology thematizes both the abstract, structural stages of consciousness up to the level of spirit and the historical stages ofthe development of the spirit that Hegel here calls "the WorldSpirit ."2 In a passage that the commentators regularly treat as an allusion to the stations of the cross, Hegel describes the individual's journey through these shapes ofconsciousness and of spirit as "the way ofthe Soul which journeys through the series of its own configurations as though they were the stations [StatioI 20 21 I Placing Postscript, in the Theory of the Stages nen] appointed for it by its own nature, so that it may purify itself for the life of the Spirit, and achieve finally, through a completed experience of itself, the awareness of what it really is in itself."3 As the theory of the stages emerges through the entirety of the pseudonymous authorship, it embodies this double claim that the journey is grounded in human nature and that its goal is simultaneously the discovery and realization of one's true self.4 But on another point it is sharply anti-Hegelian. Hegel speaks of the "necessary progression" through this "necessary sequence" and makes it clear that "Because ofthis necessity, the way to Science is itself already Science," so that "when consciousness itself grasps this its own essence, it will signify the nature of absolute knowledge itself."5 Hegel regularly symbolizes this necessity with organic metaphors, describing the journey as that from bud to blossom to fruit, from acorn to oak, and from embryo to birth.6 These metaphors and the necessity they signify are repudiated in the theory ofthe stages. Neither developmentally nor conceptually is there any necessity to the movement from one stage to the next. The absence ofboth psychological and logical inevitability means that the stages are not part of "a way that has been made level with toil." Properly understood, the tasks set for the individual by the ethical and the religious are not made easier by the fact that others may have made them before. This is why Climacus will emphasize that his goal is not to make things easier for people but harder (not harder than they actually are, but harder than they often seem in a Christendom saturated with Hegelianism). In his letter to the reader of Stages on Life's Way, Frater Taciturnus summarizes the stages as follows: There are three existence-spheres: the esthetic, the ethical, the religious.... The ethical sphere is only a transition sphere, and therefore its highest expression is repentance as a negative action. The esthetic sphere is the sphere ofimmediacy , the ethical the sphere of requirement (and this requirement is so infinite that the individual always goes bankrupt), the religious the sphere of fulfillment, but please note, not a fulfillment such as when one fills an alms box or a sack with gold, for repentance has specifically created a boundless space, and as a consequence the religious contradiction : simultaneously to be out on 70,000 fathoms ofwater and yet be joyful. (SLW 476) The first step in unpacking this account is to get clear...