Sören Aaybye Kierkegaard was born on May 5, 1813, in Copenhagen,
Denmark. He was a merchant's son, married in second nuptialses with
a maidservant. Of this second marriage, seven children were born, of which
Sören was the last being already relatively its parents senior. Five
of its siblings died before him and own Sören he/she just lived 42
years. The siblings' only survivor became Lutheran bishop.
In its family, above all in relation to the father's illustration, Kierkegaard
judged to see the mark of a tragic and mysterious destiny. He spoke
that its father possessed an obscure blame, and it went to discovery
from this that, according to Kierkegaard, it was constituted in the "
great earthquake " of its life. We are not sure than it has been this
paternal blame, but, be there what it went, when determining a more complex
relationship and hurted with its father, it would end for representing
a type of lamp in the darkness, allowing to develop it an existentialist
" understanding " of its life.
Heir of an almost feeble religious melancholy that it impregnated its family,
this " thorn in the meat " , that search of surrendering
to the true divine sense of the existence, it took Kierkegaard to renounce
the accomplishment of its ethical ideal and human of getting married with
beautiful and sweet Regina Olsen. Same passionate, Kierkegaard thought
that " a penitent like me, with my life in the face of acta and
my melancholy... it should already be enough ", that is to say, he
didn't want to expose its lover to it her of its spiritual search, nor
he/she wanted that the marriage went impecilho to this, what didn't impede
it of suffering bitterly to the end of the life the loss of its passion:
" I will be yours or it will be you allowed to hurt me so deeply,
in the more close friend of my melancholy and of my relationship with God
that, although of you separate, I continue I sit down yours ". For
him, a penitent, somebody that surrenders to the ideal Christian
of the life, with all to radical seriousness that this implies, he
could not live the a married man's serene existence. He could not accept
its registration in the constituted order. It could not be more a man among
so many other men. He wanted to be, before everything, Christian. Regina,
later, married other person, but Kierkegaard never forgot it, and it nurtured
the candid hope that the opposition ferrenha of the world to its philosophy
could check to Regina's eyes a new value to its life, and it could not,
like this, to forgive him for the current sufferings of the breaking of
the engagement that, ademais, went enough for for almost the whole bourgeoisie
of Copenhagen against him.
From very early, Kierkegaard was chacotas victim and all lucky of aggressiveness.
All this because of its critical ferrenha of the whole European culture
and of the philosophy hegeliana, as well as of the romantic philosophy,
in that in that they demonstrated to be excessively partial: the emphasis
almost that exclusive in the universal and in the bus in detriment of the
individual. This seemed to remove - and, in fact, it formed an ideal pretext
to remove even - the individual responsibility before the own life, responsibility
that that also influences in the social. Kierkegaard say that its time
was characterized by a frank acceptance of the bourgeois premises and of
ideas comings from top to bottom, without questionamento. Time in that
didn't see him almost any passion and engajamento in values spiritually
significant, criticizing, that, the lazy and accommodated attitude of the
Church. To be Christian, for him, it had meant to proceed, really, in the
practice, the whole práxis left by Jesus:
" The Christianity is of a much seriousness (...). To be Christian
is to be it in the spirit, it is the elevated restlessness of the spirit
(...)" . However, after two thousand years, " everything
became superficiality in the current " Christendom. What there
is it is a dispute calculated to stay the power of consciences, and Kierkegaard
he/she/it collides due to the last reality that, whole dentre the calls
heresies, nobody gives him bill of the most dangerous and subtle of everybody:
the one of " to fake or to play of Christianity ", as they make
it the Catholic and Protestant churches.
Kierkegaard was granted a doctorate to the twenty-eight years with the
thesis THE irony concept in Sócrates. For Kierkegaard, So;crates
was an existential thinker, a person that whole focalizava its existence
inside of its philosophical reflection. Its critic to the romantic ones
was exactly in this point: they didn't contemplate sufficiently on being
while unit or individual totality , existent and original entity, responsible
individual for its own life. Of equal it forms, Kierkegaard turned
against the philosophy of Hegel while " system " that was used
as a species of certain paradigm that would tend to explain everything.
For Kierkegaard, the " objective " truths and the " philosophy
especulativa ", when returned to the external - as in the hegelian philosophy
- they were very not very significant for the man's existential
quality while individual. More important than the search of a, or some,
verdade(s) geral(is), it was the search for " truths "
that were significant for each individual's life, for each one. Usually
the people that stick rigidamente to a theory, and they are proud of they
be " objective ", they forget that are also people and that yours
the adhesion to a theoretical system is more a choice subject and preference
than of objectivity. Using us of a modern example , a psychoanalyst,
for example, frequently it fills the mouth for speaking of Freud's theory
as " the truth ": or else the total truth (to admit that would
be to seem frank), with certainty he/she comes as the most rational
to explain the world of the human behaviors. Now, this premise aprioristica
that a theory is the correct to explain things it already places
it, implicitamente, for the subject that he/she chooses it, with him even
for to choose, in an illusory and vain landing of intellectual superiority,
and he/she settles the dispute among " my theory - the correct - and
the others ". The fact is not ventilated that the theory is accepted
by a subject of personal preference, for an idenditificação
between the the psychoanalyst's man's conception and the
man's of the theory freudiana vision. The objectivity ends up being an
imaginative subject. The primacy of the best interpretative argument is
disputed. In that the person forgets about the own aspirations, dreams,
desires, aspirations that not if enquadram perfetiamente well in the theory,
unless it is used of rhetoric artifices. He/she forgets that is a much
more complex person than it can be understood in some lines writings in
a book or in half dozen of paragraphs rationally well elaborated. Besides,
when harnessed in rigid way to the theory, the person is in the expectation
of observing expected " behaviors ", and you/he/she ends for
inducing other person, one way or another, to act accordingly the expected. The
" other " stops being the other per itself, to be a puppet
that acts sutilmente in agreement with an intrigue preset by the theory,
in the case, the theory psicanalítica. The doctor psychoanalyst
introduces to the " patient " as somebody that went more than
a person as any other one: he/she is the " DOCTOR " capable to
explain, or of understanding, better than the own patient, its own problems
and the mysteries of the human psyche.
I eat well it stressed Jostein Gaarder, Kierkegaard it is not interested
in building a theory or a generic description of the human being.
What interests it it is existing, the fact of there being a person here
and now, with everything that can try to its turn. Nobody existence the
life fully he/she/it to be locked inside of a library, speculating or discussing
on what says that is the life. To be reduced to this can give the intelectualidade
impression, but it will be a superficial intelectualidade and, a lot of
times, it makes bitter. Just when vivenciamos, when we act, when we make
choices and we dared to try it is that we linked with the own existence,
therefore going besides a mere mental project than it is the existence.
Returning to the example of the psychoanalysis, when somebody is suffering
a pain in the soul he doesn't want to know that it is the result of a complex
of not well resolved édipo, or if its pulsões enters in conflict
with a supergo that presses the ego to control the longings of an id, in
the same way as a person that is hurt by a poisoned arrow doesn't have
any interest of knowing that type is the poison that threatens him. He
wants the relief and the cure that facilitate it to exist, he/she wants
somebody that extracts it the poisoned arrow and help him to live. And
it is that that is essentially important: to live, to live so much
as it can be possible in the short period of time that we passed in the
earth. He/she doesn't give for losing time speculating or just building
a theoretical model with the objective of being more acceptable and better
than any other one on the energy mechanism of the human psyche fed by an
energy of nature sexual called libido, etc, working as if it was a hydraulic
apparel. That is simply a model, or a map, not the territory, and nevertheless
just gone back to an aspect of the complex psychic human, therefore it
cannot be a description acurada of the reality. Freud's contribution for
the understanding of the human psyche, notedly with relationship to the
unconscious, it is unquestionable, but he also left in its work
a pessimistic vision of man and of world that has been conditioning and
reinforced a lot of the negative aspect of our civilization through the
one that today he/she/it suits to call the psychoanalysis as an ethics,
very expensive concept to the lacanianos.
Kierkegaard also postulated that the truth is subjective, because what
is really important it is personal. Is the Christianity true? That is a
great example that subjects that cannot be faced of the cold and mechanic
theoretical or academic point of view, eivado of prejudices exist. "
For somebody that to understand each other as something that exists, is
a life subject or death here. And that doesn't discuss him simply because
it is liked to discuss ". (Gaarder, 1995). In other words, and
using another example, when you drop in the water, it is not speculating
about its composition, or he/she is leaving or not to drown. You dropped
in the water and in this instant you have to do some thing for staying
I live. He/she has to face the moment and to try a way of using it in own
profit. With relationship to the subject of the Christianity, it is precise
distiguir among the philosophical subject of knowing God it exists and
the individual's relationship to that same subject. Each
one will have to face, or not to face, alone such subjects. It is besides,
we have our emotions and our faiths. Kierkegaard doesn't consider essential
that that we are capable to understand just with the reason. In spite of
being an universal truth that three times four are twelve, which more it
imports us the life it is been he/she has some sense, he/she/it exists
a God, etc. they are not true generic and you ration the one that more
it interests us, but what is significant existencilamente. To know somebody
that we esteemed also likes us it is something significant and envolvente.
To know that the sum of the angles of a triangle is of hundred and eighty
degrees is just an information that can be something practical, but not
essential mainly front to a beautiful one for of the sun.
A lot of people tried to prove the existence of God rationally. But with
rational arguments, we lost our religious fevor in the same way as a poem
loses its charm when analyzed sintaticamente. The fundamental is not to
know the Christianity it is globally true, the fundamental is to know if
he is true for me. If it is valid at least for me, what does import
me if others say that is not it? Why should accept something negative just
because another one said that is or it is not like this? What does know
in fact that other one about me to tell the one what he/she it is or not
valid for me? Although the Christianity is a subject of faith, and not
of reason, nevertheless I can say that he is important, because he plays
a side that is going besides a decanted reason that, the man was taken
to the moon, it also built the atomic bomb and the relationships of economic
dependence between people and nations, moving away the man's man and of
the nature and taking it to forget of its subjective reality. For Kierkegaard
the urban and bourgeois society reduced the man to a point lost in the
crowd, a the same João other Joões, a to be amorphous, conformist
" and conformed in being the same to all the others. Everybody seems
to be doing and defending similar things, but without if they really give
the anything. He aimed the fact that most is always influenced easily.
Most will almost always tend to choose Barrabás. Thus, today we
have several people smoking such a cigarette mark that takes " to
the success ", or to accept that the best employment is it of being
medical or engineer for the status that advém front to the society,
etc.
Kierkegaard, with indescutível courage and frankness, and on behalf
of the reality of being Existential, it attacks of front the philosophy
especulativa: " The existence corresponds to the individual's singular
reality (the one that Aristotle had already spoken): she stays out and
in any way that tries it inside compartimentalizar of concepts (...). A
singular man cannot simply be reducible to a conceptual " existence.
For Kierkegaard, the philosophy seems interested just in the concepts:
she doesn't worry about the existent conrcreto, with what we can be in
fact, at once of acting in our singularity; to the opposite, soaked of
the model Cartesian-mechanic of the classic science, she wants to be in
charge of in general with the man, with man's concept. But our existence
is not at all a concept. Before, the conceio is a by-product of the existence.
We frequently changed the territory for the map. When they asked Buda that
was a flower, he simply gave a flower to its speaker. For what to speculate
on something what does exist and is it in our front? Now, as Milan Kundera
says in " THE Unsustainable Lightness of being ": They exist
universities more and more and more and more students. To obtain the diploma,
it is necessary that they find dissertation themes. A number infinto of
themes exists, because it can be spoken about everything and on anything.
Piles of yellowed paper accumulate in the files, that are sadder than the
cemeteries, because we are not going to them not even in the day of Deads.
The culture disappears in a crowd of productions, in the madness of the
amount (...). And Kierkegaard says: " That happens with most of the
theoretical ones in relation to its systems, as if somebody built an enormous
castle and later it will live at a barn. They don't live personally inside
of its enormous systematic " buildings. It is that that when the system
is embarrassing for who creates it.... a cigar is " sometimes just
a cigar " (Freud)...
The one that Kierkegaard attacks firmente is the pretense of certain theoretical
ones they have to explain everything and to demonstrate the causal need
inside and in agreement with a theory. That serves more than ever, allow
you tell it to me, to the psychoanalysts that don't remember that own Freud
reviewed all its theory until the last days, and they conceive the psychoanalysis
as something finish and respresentativo of the psychic totality But the
system doesn't get engaiolar the existence, that is much richer than the
vision of world of the theoretical, and the one that she evidences is so
alone a part of something much more complex, something that is besides
the universe bidimensional that is written in a paper piece. For Kierkegaard
it is comic that somebody can believe in a theoretical system as being
the absolute truth, in the same way as it is comic a geographer that just
believes in what they say the maps and it doesn't dare to go to the highest
mountains. It is comic the situation of the " systematic spirit, that
believes to say everything and it is persuaded that the incomprehensible
is something false and secondary ". Even so this comedian can become
something dramatic when inducing a world vision that ends for solemnity-validating.
The world vision will always end for creating the means of solemnity-financing.
It was what happened in the last three centuries with the success of the
Cartesian paradigm in science.
If the cientist wants to understand God through its field, he will tend
to the estrondoso failure, and there is not larger failure than to place
in the place of God. Myths as the one of he/she Promised or the one of
Frankenstein seems to expose that. It is he/she will also see him in an
embarrassing situation if he/she wants to take the cientificidade for the
sphere of the spirit. The ethical problems and of the legitimate religiosity
he/she/it doesn't let to negotiate with the methods of the natural sciences.
Who wants that tries to do that it is probably a to be dangerously safe
of its experiments. As Kierkegaard says, it is arrogant the naturalists'
" class that you/they want to liquidate God completely, as superfluous,
subsituindo-the for the natural " laws. In the fund, that is alone
a foolish substitution. It is the substitution of an idea initeligível
for other equivalent one, with the difference that this last one gives
a certain control presumption and of very human compreensibilidade on the
nature. The cientists' presumption is expressed in the passionate fight
against God and it tends to create " an entire crowd of men that will
do its religion " of the natural sciences. In the fund that one wants
it is to have the certainty that the nature is a machine that it can be
dominated completely by the man, and nothing else.
For Kierkegaard, the truth is subjectivity: nobody cannot if for in my
place. I am me who should make the choice of to be that can be or of being
a copy than it is waited that I am, in agreement with them references that
are we given by outrem or for the culture. The existence is the kingdom
of coming to be, it is the kingdom of the freedom: the man is what he chooses
to be when it gets to reach a certain lucidity degree, he is what becomes.
That implies that the way of being of the existence is not the reality
or the need, but yes the possibility and that brings the anguish, that
is the sign that a " existential " situation was reached. The
person cannot or not to decide will give a jump for an elevated apprenticeship
of existence. All transformation is a renaissance and whole renaissance
is also a death. He/she leaves an apprenticeship for another. The person
decides she wants or not to go ahead, and the fear of the new brings the
anguish. " The anguish is the possibility of freedom: only the anguish,
through the faith, has the capacity to form, while it destroys all the
finitudes ". Nobody can give that jump for you. After all, whole knowledge
comes from within, as Sócrates said. The anguish is the pure feeling
of the possible, it is the sense of that that can happen. " If somebody
knows how to remove profit of the experience of the anguish, if he/she
has COURAGE of going beyond, then he/she will give to the reality other
explanation: it will exalt the reality and, until when she weighs hardly
on him, he/she will remember that she is much lighter than it was the possibility
". And the great jump, the most difficult, is it of " dropping
in the hands of God ", of giving the great jump heading for the "
seventy thousand braces of water ", of entering in a level besides
the conventional, in a level, I dare to say, Transpessoal.
Soren Kierkegaard died on November 11, 1855, amid the attacks against its
ideas.
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