Kierkegaard and the Longing for God
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KIERKEGAARD AND THE LONGING FOR GOD KIERKEGAARD AND THE LONGING FOR GOD By Glen Graham, B.A., M.A. A Thesis Submitted to the School of Graduate Studies In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree Doctor of Philosophy McMaster University ©Copyright by Glen Graham, September 2011 Ph.D. Thesis – G. Graham; McMaster University – Religious Studies DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY (2011) McMaster University (Religious Studies) Hamilton, Ontario TITLE: Kierkegaard and the Longing for God AUTHOR: Glen Graham, B.A (Canadian University College), M.A. (University of Alberta) SUPERVISOR: Professor P. Travis Kroeker NUMBER OF PAGES: v, 279 ii Ph.D. Thesis – G. Graham; McMaster University – Religious Studies ABSTRACT A large part of modern Western philosophy defines selfhood as the self’s ability to master itself and psychological wellbeing as the actualization of self-integration. However, as this thesis argues, Kierkegaard’s understanding of longing for God challenges this understanding human identity, especially as it is articulated by Kant and the German Idealists. Through an examination of Kierkegaard’s Concluding Unscientific Postscript and his religious discourses, the thesis argues that Kierkegaard’s theology of longing both undermines the modern psychology understanding of autonomous selfhood and preserves a qualified understanding of autonomy. The thesis argues that Kierkegaard’s theology has much in common with Augustine’s understanding of longing in The Confessions. For Kierkegaard, the longing for God is not just a heteronomous desire for self-annihilation in God. The longing in question is relational and intellectual; it is a response to God’s illuminative self-revelation and self-communicative love. But as relational, the life lived in longing for God is not wholly autonomous either. In prayer the soul experiences its own neediness and imperfections as it begins to experience God’s perfection. Broadly conceived, the thesis explores Kierkegaard’s understanding of this neither . nor . , that is, his understanding of a religious life lived neither fully autonomously nor fully heteronomously. The thesis argues further that much contemporary scholarship cannot take Kierkegaard’s relational understanding of the God-relationship seriously and therefore misinterprets his understanding of human identity. iii Ph.D. Thesis – G. Graham; McMaster University – Religious Studies ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank Dr. Travis Kroeker for his supervision throughout my time at McMaster University. His seminars were invaluable and his guidance during the thesis writing process was extremely helpful. I would also like to thank Dr. Peter Widdicombe and Dr. Zdravko Planinc. I am very much indebted to their seminars; their comments on early drafts of my thesis were very beneficial. I am grateful to my parents for their supportive encouragement as I completed this project. I am very thankful to wife, Rhanda, and daughter, Ellie. I could not have finished this thesis without their love and support. iv Ph.D. Thesis – G. Graham; McMaster University – Religious Studies TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction 1 1. The “Misfortune” of Being: The Kierkegaadian Self and The Problem Of Moral Identity 24 2. The Wounds of Longing: Dis-Integration in Kierkegaard and Augustine 61 3. The Self Fights Back: The Struggle for Identity in Kierkegaard’s Four Upbuilding Discourses 145 4. Non-Combatancy: Longing and Surrender in Discourses at the Communion On Fridays 211 Conclusion 266 Bibliography 276 v Ph.D. Thesis – G. Graham; McMaster University – Religious Studies INTRODUCTION The longing for God is a desire that draws the self out of itself, out of body, out of mind, out of step with self and world. The experience of longing dispossesses and threatens the self’s very identity. Those religiously-minded individuals who actually live their lives in longing for God appear sick, dead to the world, indeed, as if plagued by a death-wish. However, as I argue in this thesis, for the Danish theologian and philosopher Søren Kierkegaard, the longing for God is not a sickness onto death but a way of life in God. From the perspective of modern or Western psychology such an understanding of longing is particularly problematic. A large part of Western philosophy is devoted precisely to the question of self-mastery. For instance, from a Kantian perspective, as I show in chapter one, autonomous selfhood is defined by the self’s ability to collect itself, to ward off the motions of the emotions, the “inclining” of the inclinations – anything that might lead the self out of itself and leave it dependent on uncontrollable external influences. And for Kant’s Idealistic successors (like Schelling), as I argue, selfhood is essentially defined by self-mastery. The self becomes a self, is a self, only in the struggle against itself. However, as I argue in chapter two, Kierkegaard’s understanding of the longing for God is fundamentally at odds with this anthropological and psychological framework, especially as it is articulated by Kant and the German Idealists. It is true that Kierkegaard often works with a certain understanding of psychological identity in mind. The characters he creates (his pseudonyms and the persons in his illustrative stories) are thoroughly Western and modern. Even if they are not philosophers themselves, they are 1 Ph.D. Thesis – G. Graham; McMaster University – Religious Studies individuals plagued by a loss of identity and defined by the very struggle to self- integrate. However, through an examination of Kierkegaard’s Concluding Unscientific Postscript and his religious discourses, I argue that Kierkegaard’s theology of longing both undermines the modern psychology understanding of autonomous selfhood and preserves a qualified understanding of individuality and autonomy. I argue that Kierkegaard’s theology has much in common with Augustine’s understanding of longing in The Confessions. For Kierkegaard, the longing for God is not just a heteronomous desire for self-annihilation in God. The longing in question is relational and intellectual; it is a response to God’s illuminative self-revelation and self-communicative love. But as relational, the life lived in longing for God is not wholly autonomous either. For Kierkegaard, God is the life of the soul; the soul is only alive insofar as it lives in God. A life lived in prayer is a life lived in longing for life. In prayer the soul experiences its own neediness and imperfection as it longs for God’s perfection. Broadly conceived, the thesis explores Kierkegaard’s understanding of this neither . nor . , that is, his understanding of a religious life lived neither autonomously nor heteronomously. In chapters three and four, I deal more specifically with Kierkegaard’s Christian theological understanding of longing in his discourses. As we shall see, Kierkegaard’s discourses themselves are instances of longing for God. The discourses are not merely critiques of modern anthropology or psychology; they are also symbolic interpretations of religious life. As interpretive, Kierkegaard’s discourses themselves require a reading attentive to symbolic meaning and narrative continuity. The aim in these chapters is to trace, through a close reading of Kierkegaard’s Four Upbuilding Discourses and 2 Ph.D. Thesis – G. Graham; McMaster University – Religious Studies Discourses from the Communion on Fridays, a narrative of longing comparable to Augustine’s in The Confessions. Kierkegaard’s critique of self-mastery is particularly well-defined here. Like Augustine, he shows how the struggle for self-mastery culminates in spiritual exhaustion and ultimately in self-annihilation. At first, the argument appears to be merely negative and dialectical. Kierkegaard essentially argues that a person needs to have a self in order to lose it in God. However, beyond this negative and dialectical understanding of selfhood (and here the comparison with Augustine gains traction), Kierkegaard traces another movement: a longing for life after mortification. This is a relational and dialogical understanding of the self, informed by Kierkegaard’s theology of the Logos. The understanding here is that God can share his Word because God is Word; that is, God is essentially communicative and not an impersonal force or emanation. Through prayer a person can begin to live in God’s self- communicative love. But this is a perpetual beginning, a perpetual education in God, an endless elongation of the self. For this reason, the life of prayer appears to be a kind of self-hatred. And yet for the one who submits to longing, as Kierkegaard shows, this life is joyful beyond measure; it is a life desired for its own sake. Here longing becomes a way of life, a desire that cannot (and does not want to) exhaust itself. As Kierkegaard entitles one of his upbuilding discourses, “To Need God is a Person’s Highest Blessing.” There is a certain analogy here between longing in human love-relationships and the longing for God, although the analogy will quickly reveal important differences. In good love-relationships the lovers ennoble each other; they grace each other with their presence. For this reason they learn to need each other; but the need is salutary because 3 Ph.D. Thesis – G. Graham; McMaster University – Religious Studies the lovers have begun to trust in the goodness of the relationship. The more intimate they become in communication, the more their need for each other grows. This need is a blessing; they rejoice over their neediness because their need is for some good. Moreover, they long to discover their mutual need without ceasing, to see each other with new eyes again and again. This longing to see better constantly separates and joins the lovers. The lovers draw apart (though not necessarily physically) in order to ache. In their mutual heartache, they begin to anticipate their renewed intimacy. They allow their hearts to ache so that they might discover their beloved other again -- as if for the first time. This movement of longing does not humiliate because the lovers truly do need each other; there is truth in their need.