Must We Reinterpret Kierkegaard?

Abstract

And yet, the objection to Kierkegaard most often heard tries to argue in a completely abstract way. If you refuse to submit to proof the truth of your professed faith-why shouldn't I be justified in accepting, also without proof, any other religious doctrine The correct way to answer this question is to counter it by another: Do you profess such a doctrine And there is much more than an even chance that the answer would be, No-but I could--or somebody else could. To which Kierkegaard would reply, Let us wait until this happens and then let us see whether you--or that third party for whom you have so much concern-understand yourself in what you say about accepting certain doctrine without proof. It makes no sense to argue such questions in the conditional mood. The indicative is difficult enough. In his preface Lowrie berates Schrempf (p. 6), the man who not only translated all of Kierkegaard's major works into German and thus did more than anybody else to turn general attention to him, but who also provided his translations with prefaces and epilogues in which he was very critical of Kierkegaard. Lowrie sums up the gist of Schrempf's criticism by saying that it showed what a Kierkegaard was. I do not know how Lowrie would translate fool into the language of the New Testament. But perhaps I might remind him of this. Different people reacted in different ways to the message of Paul. But humanly speaking, the man who understood Paul best was Festus. What did he say to Paulus ? Mainei, Paule (Acts 26:24)-which in English goes very well with Paul-you are a fool. I think it is quite appropriate to call Kierkegaard a fool, and I am afraid Schrempf the detractor understood Kierkegaard much better than his admirer, Lowrie. Kierkegaard's folly is Kierkegaard's subjectivism. And this subjectivism is present in On Authority no less than in any of his other writings. There is no reason to revise our interpretation of Kierkegaard. The author of this book is still the same man who quoted, after Hamann, periissem nisi periissem (I should have perished, had I not perished) as his motto, and it would be in vain to try to share Kierkegaard's rescue while refusing first to perish with him.