Kierkegaard: Existence and Identity in a Post-Secular World by Alastair Hannay

Abstract

Reviewed by: Kierkegaard: Existence and Identity in a Post-Secular World by Alastair Hannay Ronald F. Marshall Kierkegaard: Existence and Identity in a Post-Secular World. By Alastair Hannay. London and New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2020. ii + 116 pp. Alastair Hannay, professor emeritus at the University of Oslo and acclaimed translator and expositor of Søren Kierkegaard’s writings, has written a monograph to show how Kierkegaard’s conservative “polemic and missionary purpose . . . to enlighten contemporaries on the fact that they are not the Christians they comfortably assume they are” (86) has not been wasted in our secular age. Leaning on analyses of Herbert Marcuse (1898–1979) and Jürgen Habermas (b. 1929), Hannay sees our time as surprisingly ripe for Kierkegaard. He uniquely has the insights to liberate humanity “from the destructive impact of [our] oppressive social order,” and his teachings on inwardness can break “the entrenched divisiveness of traditional political loyalties” (79). Hannay points out that the Danish word for inwardness can mean “sincere, or heartfelt and warm, but also, profound” (80). [End Page 342] Pursuing the profound sense, Hannay sees how “sin is endemic to existence” and needs renewed appreciation when “the externals of religion” are being ruled “by politics, instead of politics being ruled by the hidden inwardness of singled-out politicians” (88–89). This is important in our time when “a personally felt void [is] now becoming familiar for increasing numbers of people [as well as] the imperfections highlighted by Christian ideals” (92). At the heart of this Kierkegaardian inwardness is not the rank subjectivism of self-made truths, but simple “self-abnegation” (89). This comes from the New Testament’s call to die to the world and hate yourself (74). It is not about self-denigration, but rather about being social outcasts, along with the biblical, outcast God who declared that “my king-ship is not of this world” (John 18:36) (33), and about “being an alien, being in exile” (91). We must not succumb to the temptation to “grab hold of finiteness to support” ourselves (18). Here Hannay could have added Kierkegaard’s words that God wants us to make “a clean break with this world,” and gradually have us “wean ourselves away” from it (Journals, ed. Hongs, §1399) (57). “Misery” helps bring this about (52). Hannay is worried that in this more receptive time for Kierkegaard, he will be watered down by his new popularity (1, 7). To ensure that this does not happen, we need to insist upon this profound sense of inwardness rooted in human imperfection. We cannot forget Kierkegaard’s critique of crowds, and the danger that collectives have for deluding us. “For Kierkegaard,” Hannay rightly argues, “the first-person plural pronoun is a cover under which we keep our individuality at bay” (2). In the stream of life we may go with the flow or, with Kierkegaard, go against it—“upstream as an outsider” (3). The “definitive rest” that we long for deep down cannot be found in this “world that seems so ill-equipped to adopt it” (77). So we must be outcasts, following the example of this Danish “social saboteur” (25). Prayer can help us establish this odd way of life, whereby we are weaned from the finite. For in prayer we are changed, being pushed to conform to God’s will (50). Hannay also thinks that the solitude of a home altar helps—“a room for ourselves at the back” of our residence (21, 27, 83). But Kierkegaard thinks a polemical coterie [End Page 343] would be better—something Hannay does not consider, but fits well with his notion of “singled-out individual selves” (2, 89). Like a “company of criminals . . . the Christian congregation,” Kierkegaard writes, “is a society consisting of qualitative individuals and that the intimacy of the society is . . . conditioned by [its] polemical stance against the great human society” (Journals §4175). If Hannay had made use of these words, his case would have been stronger for establishing this odd way of life underscored by his preferred social saboteur. Ronald F. Marshall First Lutheran Church of West Seattle Seattle, Washington Copyright © 2021 Johns Hopkins University Press and Lutheran Quarterly, Inc