Sárospataki Füzetek 15. (2011)
2011 / 4. szám - TANULMÁNYOK - Kónya Péter: Szlovák reformátusok a 17-18. században
Sawyer, Frank ped out of business at 40 years old and read philosophy and theology. But his morbid sense of punishment by God only increased with the death of the children - now grown up. Two of S. Kierkegaard’s sisters died in childbirth, a brother died while on business in New York. A cousin committed suicide. Other’s like S. Kierkegaard’s brother Pedersen and he himself talked about suicide. S. Kierkegaard was the youngest by seven years. S. Kierkegaard wrote more than 25 books. His Journals or Diary runs into several thousand pages. He seems to be talking about painful subjects like how morbid his father was or how painful that he himself called off the engagement relationship with the girl he loved (Regine Olsen) — but in the end S. Kierkegaard is talking about all of us — and like those who entered into dialogue with Socrates, we end up saying: I don’t know what to think, what to do, or who I am. S. Kierkegaard wants us to raise the existential questions for ourselves. Toward the end of his life S. Kierkegaard abandoned his ‘indirect’ approach and wrote openly and scathingly against the church and its leaders (he called this his ‘attack upon Christendom’). It was an extreme attack, which raised strong counterattack. S. Kierkegaard declared that this was a sign that he was ‘on the right road’. Indeed, “...obviously I ought not to be exactly in a hurry to get rid of it [counterattack, slander, misrepresentation against him], unless I wish as soon as possible to get on the wrong road”.4 Tillich remarks that S. Kierkegaard’s critique of the church was in a sense more radical than that of Marx and Nietzsche combined (S. Kierkegaard’s was an attack from the inside).5 His critique towards the end of his life became fanatical, yet even in the Danish church papers a couple of years after his death there were articles admitting he had pointed to problems of worldly clergy and a complacent faith. It was said that after Kierkegaard, it is clear: “There exists a wordly-minded clergy; that many things in the Church are rotten; that all need daily repentance....”6 Indeed, Kierkegaard is now recognized in the Calendar of Saints of the Lutheren Church (Nov.ll) and of the Episcopal Church (Sept.8). For his further influence, see point 4 in this essay: ‘After Kierkegaard’. 2. Big steps in philosophy: which way is the wind blowing? Kierkegaard’s reaction. Kierkegaard was a flag in the wind, indicating the turn to the subjective and to authenticity. He flaps in several cross winds, reacting to Kant and Hegel. KANT (1724-1804)7 — S. Kierkegaard rejected Kant’s ‘pure reason’ and whereas Kant talked about ‘religion within the limits of reason alone’, S. Kierkegaard talks about ‘reason within the limits of religion alone’. S. Kierkegaard could rejoice in Kant’s positing of the ‘antinomies’ (see paragraph below) as the limit of reason, for this indicates that we need more than pure reason. For Kant that meant that we 4 S. Kierkegaard, Attack Upon Christendom, 1853-54, trans. Walter Lowrie (Princeton University Press, 1944), 95. 5 Paul Tillich, Perspectives on and 20th Century Protestant Theology (London: SCM Press, 1967), 163. 6 Newspaper article, ‘Remarks on the State of the Danish National Church’, by the Rev.Dr.Kalkar, Copenhagen, August 1, 1858. Cf. also www.en.wikipedia.org/kierkegaard. 7 Peter Kunzmann, Burkhard & Wiedmann, Atlas Philosophie (Deutscher Taschenbuch, 2005), 137ff. 54 Sárospataki füzetek 2011/4
