Kierkegaard's Weanings

Abstract

The first time I read Soren Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling, I wondered about the significance of the sentences about weaning at the end of each short retelling ofthe Abraham/Isaac story in the Attunement chapter. My philosophy professor, however, said nothing about them, so I figured they were inconsequential (at least not going to be on the test). Circumstances changed, however, when I became a philosophy professor and decided to use Fear and Trembling in my Existentialism class. In rereading the text I rediscovered those pesky sentences about weaning and remembered I had had some bewilderment about them as a student. It was time to do some research on them in case any of my students had questions about them. Not surprisingly, most of the books about Fear and Trembling did not mention the weaning passages at all.' Finally, I discovered Edward Mooney's book, Knights of Faith and Resignation: Reading Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling.2 In this intriguing interpretation of Fear and Trembling, Mooney has an extended passage on the attunements. Although the weaning passages are not the focus of this passage, he does devote almost two pages of his commentary to the weaning sentences. While what Mooney suggests was quite helpful in directing my thoughts on this subject, I will present a more sustained discussion of the weaning sentences than Mooney's and argue that the weaning passages are more instrumental in Kierkegaard's presentation of the Abraham and Isaac story than previously imagined. They foreshadow the main theme of Fear and Trembling-the existential leap of faith by the knight of faith. One reason the weaning passages may have been overlooked by scholars is the biographical history that surrounds Fear and Trembling.' Kierkegaard wrote Fear and Trembling in the creative flurry he experienced after he broke his engagement with the young Regina. In the two years after his dis-engagement, Kierkegaard wrote Either/Or, Three Edifying Discourses, Repetition, and Fear and Trembling. Most Kierkegaard scholars agree that many passages in these works, sometimes called the aesthetic works, are attempts by Kierkegaard to explain or justify his actions regarding Regina. The aesthete's behavior in the first part of Either/Or can be interpreted as Kierkegaard's obsession with the very young Regina and demonstrates his unworthiness to be her husband. The Agnes and Merman story in Problem III in Fear and Trembling has also been interpreted to be a biographical account of Kierkegaard's relationship with Regina. This time Kierkegaard casts himself as a merman/seducer incapable of giving the pure Agnes/Regina the untainted and full love she deserves. Given this background of Kierkegaard's personal life, the weaning passages can be and have been interpreted as a message to Regina: In the same way a mother must wean her child in order for that child to become a healthy, independent adult, Kierkegaard must wean Regina from his influence in order for her to realize her full potential. We know that Kierkegaard's journals are filled rather obsessively with thoughts about Regina at this time. Kierkegaard himself links his life with these passages. In an 1843 journal entry that discusses the main theme of Fear and Trembling, he writes: When the child has to be weaned the mother blackens her breast, but her eyes rest just as lovingly upon the child. The child believes it is the breast that has changed, but that the mother is unchanged. And why does she blacken her breast? Because, she says, it would be a shame that it should seem delicious when the child must not get it.-This collision is easily resolved, for the breast is only part of the mother herself. Happy is he who has not experienced more dreadful collisions, who did not need to blacken himself, who did not need to go to hell in order to see what the devil looks like, so that he might paint himself accordingly and in that way if possible save another person in that person's God-relationship at least. …