HeyJ LI (2010), pp.

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THE SELF AND SOCIETY IN KIERKEGAARDS ANTI-CLIMACUS WRITINGS

MICHAEL ONEILL BURNS

University of Dundee, Scotland

I. INTRODUCTION

The goal of the present essay is to provide a reading of two of Kierkegaards texts, written in 1848 and published under the pseudonymous authorship of Anti-Climacus, The Sickness Unto Death and Practice in Christianity, which pay primary attention to the development of both the relational self and properly relational social groups. These works will not be read alongside each other merely because they seem to go well together in some generally thematic sense, but rather because Kierkegaard himself initially intended to publish these texts together, under his own name, as the Collected Works of Consummation. Kierkegaard explicitly stated that these 1848 writings were the most valuable he had produced, and that the Anti-Climacus writings were extremely valuable.1 Because of this, it seems clear that these works not only can be read together, but more importantly that they should be read together, as they present a collected body of work that provides Kierkegaards most detailed explication of his conception of the inward individual, as well as his most overt social criticism. I will argue that rather than being divergent aspects of his overall project, the development of the inward self and of outward social formation are necessarily dependent on one another, that Kierkegaards projected vision of social reality (Practice) is impossible without the properly related inward self (Sickness). A secondary goal is to present the philosophical and religious writings of Kierkegaard in such a way as to engage constructively the theories of the subject and of the political found in contemporary European philosophy and to point out the relevance of Kierkegaards socio-political thought to contemporary debates. The conclusion will attempt briey to re-consider the place of the religious in the work of Kierkegaard, arguing that rather than emphasizing dogmatic Christianity, Kierkegaard instead develops a religious ontology in which God represents pure possibility.

II. THE SICKNESS UNTO DEATH

Kierkegaard (Anti-Climacus) begins part A of The Sickness Unto Death with an explication of his theory of the self that surely stands as the most pedantic and overtly confusing passage of his entire corpus. This passage opens with the statement A human being is spirit.2 Although this may seem simple enough, as Stephen Crites has noted in his essay The Sickness Unto Death: A Social Interpretation3, the English translation features
r The author 2010. Journal compilation r Trustees for Roman Catholic Purposes Registered 2010. Published by Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.

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a seemingly insignicant but crucially important error. The English translators (Howard and Edna Hong) have translated this sentence A human being is spirit, leaving one with the implication that Kierkegaard is here referring to a singular, individual human being; in fact, the Danish term being translated, Mennesket, is more accurately translated as human being, rather than as A human being. Kierkegaard goes on to ask But what is spirit? to which he replies, Spirit is the self.4 Thus far weve seen that for Kierkegaard human being is spirit, and spirit is the self, so human being is the self. Thus, Kierkegaards intention is to describe spirit as the self, rather than as a self, and this corrected translation removes the false tendency common amongst Kierkegaard scholarship to interpret the passage as being necessarily concerned with the singular, individual self, rather than the self as such. With this in mind we are able to read the social and relational implications inherent to Kierkegaards discussion of the self in The Sickness unto Death. After establishing that human being is spirit, and that this spirit is the self, Kierkegaard poses another question: But what is the self?5 To this he responds with what may be the most difcult sentence of his corpus:
The self is a relation that relates itself to itself or is the relations relating itself to itself in the relation; the self is not the relation but is the relations relating itself to itself.6

From this he goes on:

[A] Human being is a synthesis of the innite and the nite, of the temporal and the eternal, or freedom and necessity, in short, a synthesis. A synthesis is a relation between two. Considered in this way, [a] human being is still not a self.7

Kierkegaard here provides an important and eventually persuasive initial theory of the self. One of the important aspects of the rst sentence is that the self is a relation. Now, the proper self is not a one-way relating of a singular self either to something else or directly to itself. As far as Kierkegaard is concerned, a self relating directly to itself, or directly to something else in a one-way process is not an actual self. Instead, the self relates itself to itself through the relation, and thus the self is not the relation as such, but is the relation in the process of relating, and thereby the relations relating itself back to itself. Kierkegaard then states that,
Such a relation that relates itself to itself, a self, must either have established itself or have been established by another.8

Here Kierkegaard is not claiming that the self can, in actuality, be established by itself or have been established by another, but is instead is claiming that if the self is to be established at all, the only possible options are for it to be self-establishing or established by another. Although he provides these two possibilities, Kierkegaard believes that the only way a self can come into existence is through its being established by another. This other, or something which establishes the relation, is thus the something which the self relates to, and which relates to the self, and which the self relates to itself through. Thus the self is the relation in the process of relating to something other than the self that has established the entire relationship. Kierkegaard continues:
If the relation that relates itself to itself has been established by another, then the relation is indeed the third, but this relation, the third, is yet again a relation that relates itself to that which established the entire relation.9

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Again Kierkegaard seems to intentionally, and with a possible touch of irony, muddy the waters a bit more by adding another level of relationality to his conception of the self. Now we see that even the relation that relates itself to itself is itself a relation which relates itself to that which establishes the entire relation. The important factor to note at this juncture is that human self is a relation which is necessarily established by another, and that this relation relates itself to itself and in relating itself to itself relates itself to another.10 Thus the self is completely dependent on its relation to another.11 After this explication of what the self is, Kierkegaard introduces the affective category to which the majority of the text is devoted: despair. Initially Kierkegaard presents two forms of despair, the rst being not to will to be oneself, to will to do away with oneself and the other being in despair to will to be oneself.12 Kierkegaard notes that if human self had established itself, then only the rst form of despair would be possible, as the second form springs from the dependence of the relation (the self) on relating itself to that which established the entire relation; thus without this something that establishes the entire relation, there would be no relation at all. Because of this dependence, Kierkegaard nds all despair is ultimately traced back to, and resolved in, the second form.13 For Kierkegaard despair is the sickness plaguing the self that is not properly relational in the manner previously discussed. The most serious form of despair is to be unaware of being in despair. Because all exist in a primary state of despair, it is better to be in despair, even if aware of this despair, than to not be aware at all. Kierkegaard nds the rst step to curing the sickness is this awareness, which can lead to the process of becoming a properly related self. Kierkegaard describes the state of the self who has got rid of its despair:
In relating itself to itself and in willing to be itself, the self rests transparently in the power that established it.14

At this point we note the addition of the concept of will to this formulation of the self who has overcome its primordial state of despair. It is important to realize that although the self is completely dependent on the power which established it, it also exists as a free self, and thus consistently must will to be itself. In regards to despair, Kierkegaard goes on to argue that the possibility of despair is mans superiority over the animal, and further, the awareness of this sickness is the superiority of the Christian over the natural man.15 He also notes that despair is neither a pure excellence nor a defect, but is rather both, and that the ability of man to despair is an innite advantage, as well as an utter ruination.16 Kierkegaard connects despair with his oft-used notion of possibility, but whereas the properly related self would be able to will the actual out of the possible, the one caught in despair is unable to move out of the realm of possibility. Despair is the afiction of one caught in possibility, in an impotent selfconsuming, in which one is never able to actually do what one wants to do.17 Kierkegaard compares the torment caused by despair to an inability to die18, and notes that the one in torment is in despair precisely because he cannot get rid of himself, cannot reduce himself to nothing.19 Thus despair is ultimately to despair over oneself, as seen in Kierkegaards formula for all despair, to despair over oneself, in despair to will to be rid of oneself.20 This despair is caused ultimately by an unfullled desire for self-annihilation.21 Now that we have seen Kierkegaards formulas for both the properly related self and the self in despair, we may go on to consider Kierkegaards account of how one both becomes conscious of ones despair, and subsequently begins the process of becoming a

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self. Of special importance to the present paper is Kierkegaards use of both freedom and will in relation to the self. In book C of Sickness Kierkegaard argues that despair must be considered primarily within the category of consciousness.22 Consciousness becomes the decisive category when considering despair because as Kierkegaard puts it whether despair is conscious or not constitutes the qualitative distinction between despair and despair23. He goes on to consider consciousness in relation to the self, stating:
The more consciousness, the more self; the more consciousness, the more will; the more will, the more self. A person who has no will at all is not a self; but the more will he has, the more selfconsciousness he has also.24

Here Kierkegaard attempts, somewhat unconvincingly, to establish a connection between consciousness and will in the formation of the self, as well as noting the importance of freedom in relation to the self. He stated at the outset of part C that the self is freedom25, and now we see that the self must be free, as it only becomes a self through willing to be a self. This emphasis on willing can also be seen as connecting with another common Kierkegaardian category, movement. Because the self must will to be a self, willing initiates the self into a process of becoming a self; Kierkegaard conceives of this process as an innite moving away from itself in the innitizing of the self, and an innite coming back to itself in the nitizing process.26 The self never becomes the self, but enters into a process of constantly becoming itself by moving away from itself and back to itself. This becoming remains relational as the self moves away from itself towards that which established the relation, and then relates back to itself through this establishing relation. The self can only exist in a relation between the innite and the nite, because as Kierkegaard conceives of it, innitudes despair is to lack nitude27, and nitudes despair is to lack innitude.28 Thus, the despair of innitude is the despair of one caught in the grip of fantastic imagination29, where one considers everything to be possible, but is unable to will anything in actuality, and thus fails to become a self. The despair of nitude on the other hand, is to lack the sense of possibility that comes with innitude. When one lacks innitude, one becomes completely nitized, and according to Kierkegaard [becomes] a number instead of a self.30 This nite self is what Kierkegaard later calls a mass man31, a term he uses in The Present Age to describe the seless and politically stagnant crowd of the present age. It has become clear at this point that for Kierkegaard the self always exists as a synthesis of two concepts: between possibility and necessity, innitude and nitude. Further, this synthesis can only be navigated by a movement of the willing and free self. It must also be noted that this synthesis provides a position in which what is seemingly negative can be afrmed in the process of becoming a self. For example, Kierkegaard notes that despair itself is a negativity [. . .] however, to reach the truth, one must go through every negativity.32 In this manner Kierkegaard provides a partial afrmation of the negative, as he does elsewhere throughout his corpus, in the context of the process of becoming a self. Although there is little space to delve into a deeper textual explication, before moving on we must briey note the affective category Kierkegaard identies as being the corrective to despair: faith. As in much of his work, he identies faith as the most important subjective category, and in Sickness he states, The opposite to being in despair is to have faith.33 Kierkegaard then goes on to provide the formula for faith:
In relating itself to itself and in willing to be itself, the self rests transparently in the power that established it.

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We see here that the formula for faith is the same as the formula for the self who has gotten rid of its own despair; Kierkegaard thus presents faith as the sole alternative to despair. In line with Kierkegaards work as a whole, this faith must be characterized by a subjective decision that grips the subject and affects him with an enthusiastic commitment.

III. PRACTICE IN CHRISTIANITY

While The Sickness Unto Death was concerned with the inner workings of the self, Practice in Christianity, the other text published under the name Anti-Climacus and conceived during 1848, was called by Kierkegaard an attack upon the established order.34 Although this texts concern with issues of society and the political diverge greatly from Kierkegaards inward and ethical texts, Kierkegaard himself wrote that Practice in Christianity was without a doubt [. . .] the most perfect and truest thing I have written.35 In one sense this text, which was meant to be the nal section of Kierkegaards projected volume Collected Works of Consummation, serves as the work in which he most explicitly outlines what it means to be a properly existing religious individual. While in some sense an overtly religious and even pastoral text, Practice at the same time stands as Kierkegaards most powerful social and political critique; it provides a social, or outward, exemplication of the inward project of The Sickness Unto Death. Kierkegaards stated intention for Practice is the re-introduction of Christianity into Christendom36, and he nds this to be a necessary task because, since all were considered to be Christian in his time, no one was actually expected to live as a Christian. Kierkegaard thus uses this text to re-present Christianity in a way which makes it seem new, or difcult, to his intended Danish audience. Rather than presenting Christianity as a set of facts or assertions that can be agreed or disagreed with in objective fashion, Kierkegaard presents Christianity through what he refers to as indirect communication, the point being to make subjective decision absolutely necessary in the matter. In this way he is not only attempting to re-think the nature of religious existence, but also the nature of belief. According to Kierkegaard, Christ cannot be known, but only believed37; Kierkegaard thus confronts the objective and indecisive religion of his time with a religion that necessitates subjective belief and decision. This is the main goal of Kierkegaards indirect communication, to create a space in which one must decide to enter the process of becoming a religiously existing individual. One of the key moves made by Kierkegaard in his re-presentation of Christianity is the illegitimate light he shines on the person of Christ, noting that Christ was, and is, literally a nobody38, and that both during his age as well as in the present age, the existence of Christ is considered illegitimate by those in power. Kierkegaard emphasizes that rather than attempting to gain honour and prestige in the eyes of the state, Christ disdained (and distains) all worldly prestige; the Church should thus also be characterized by this same disdain for prestige and recognition by the state.39 Kierkegaard goes on to argue that the motto by which Christs relationship to the established order can be characterized is that he is illegitimate; he uses Christs saying that one should not put a new piece of cloth on an old garment to imply a willingness to not recognize the established order, but instead to do away with it to make room for the new.40 At this point Kierkegaard is clear that his conception of Christ and of religious existence in general is not characterized merely by reform; rather, the new must emerge through revolution. It should be noted, however, that Kierkegaard locates the revolutionary element in Christianity not in what Christ does, but

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rather in the fact that in the eyes of the established order, he does absolutely nothing41 and is literally nothing.42 This nothingness or negativity that characterizes Christ is the very thing Kierkegaard sees as bringing him into collision with the established order.43 One of the prime concerns of Practice is how one is to live in relation to the established order. According to Kierkegaard, one must avoid being consumed into the outwardly focused life that is the crowd, or mass, of the established order. For Kierkegaard, to live in such an established order, particularly to be something in it, is a continuation of being tied to mothers apron strings, and as long as one continues to exist as part of this established order, one will be able to calculate the probability and spinelessly exempt oneself from the least little decision.44 Kierkegaards prime contention against the established order is its failure to force individuals to make decisions and exist as a single individual. Kierkegaard seems here to set the stage for a collision between two opposites, the single individual and the established order.45 In a similar way he sets religious existence against secular existence. Whereas the present age has turned them into essentially the same thing, or at least has made them compatible, Kierkegaard wants there to be an innite contrast between the two, so that the properly religiously-existing individual will be nothing but an offense to the secularity of the established order.46 The most signicant social critique present in Practice is the distinction made by Kierkegaard between the triumphant Church and the militant Church. This distinction is explicated primarily in section V of Practice, which Kierkegaard opens with a prayer containing the lines [. . .] keep us also from this, that we delude ourselves into thinking ourselves to be members of a Church already triumphant here in this world.47 One of the primary differences Kierkegaard identies between the triumphant Church and the militant Church is the role of truth in the life of each. For the triumphant Church, truth is something settled, something which can be objectively (and most importantly nonrelationally) known by the individual. For the militant Church however, Christ is the truth in the sense that to be the truth is the only true explanation of what truth is.48 For the individual who is part of the militant Church, truth must be something which is related to and appropriated on an individual basis. Thus Kierkegaard notes that the being of truth is the redoubling of truth within yourself [. . .] that your life, my life, his life expresses the truth approximately in the striving for it [. . .].49 According to Kierkegaards religious understanding, truth is obviously not to know the truth but to be the truth.50 This emphasis on truth as like a task, or innite process, gives the militant Church a subjective and social aspect not necessary to the triumphant Church. To be a part of the militant Church, the individual must rst be properly related to the truth through a redoubling of this truth within himself. In line with the manner in which the self is theorized in Sickness one must rst be properly related to oneself through a relation to something outside oneself before one can properly relate to anything else. Thus the emphasis on inwardness found in Sickness is not eradicated by social participation in the militant Church, but is rather consummated into a social relation around the common truth. Kierkegaard draws another distinction between the triumphant Churchs emphasis on adoration and the militant Churchs emphasis on imitation. While the triumphant Church upholds a vision of Christ as one to be admired and worshiped, the militant Church requires individuals to imitate the works of Christ in actuality. This distinction is grounded in the fact that for the triumphant Church, established Christendom is: it exists as such, rather than existing in a process of becoming. The militant Church cannot exist in this way, and vice versa, to the established order the existence of a truly militant Church is a

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complete impossibility. Thus this Church never is but instead is constantly engaged in the innite process of becoming.51 So stark is this contrast that Kierkegaard goes on to remark that this Church triumphant [. . .] resembles the Church militant no more than a square resembles a circle.52 In this discussion Kierkegaard makes an interesting statement with regard to representation. He notes that the majority of individuals in the triumphant Church are content with perceiving themselves in the order that represented them.53 That is, the majority of individuals during his time consider themselves to be Christians because the dominant order, that of established Christendom, represented them as such. We can see that rather than existing as properly relational-selves, individuals looking to the triumphant Church (or equally, the state) for their self-representation are attempting to be related to by the order in power without necessary relating to themselves through this order. In opposition to this relation-less representation, Kierkegaard argues that in the Church militant, direct recognisability is impossible; being a member of the militant Church is expressed in contrast to what the order in power represents as being a Christian (or, a citizen).54 Kierkegaard makes this move to emphasize the error in equating being a citizen with being a Christian during his time. Because he nds it necessary that the militant Church be a suffering Church, Christianity needs to disassociate itself from the system in power and once again exist (or better, in-exist) on the margins of what is socially represented. Simply enough, Kierkegaard is arguing that as soon as all are considered to be Christians by the triumphant Church, none are actually Christian. One can nd an exemplication of Kierkegaards thought on issues of the political in The Present Age55. In this work, he provides a social critique in which he contrasts his age, the present age, which is characterized by understanding and reection, with what he calls the age of revolution, which is characterized by passionate commitment and enthusiasm. As he writes, a revolutionary age is an age of action; ours is the age of advertisement and publicity.56 His primary critique of the present age is that it remains unable to act. Rather than leading to the development of properly-related individuals, the present age has created instead a crowd, or public, with is nothing but an abstraction57, and in which no one is expected to make a real commitment to anything. This is so because the present age is one of empty and passionless reection in which, rather than having to become real selves, individuals can simply become lost in the identity given them by the order in power. We can see here that what is plaguing the present age is in fact the same failed form of selfhood discussed in Sickness, despair.58 Because the age is caught in reection, it lacks nitude, and according to Kierkegaard, individuals in the present age have lost the interest of reality.59 To do something denite, to take action in relation to a cause, would require a leap from reection into action. For one caught up in the identity of the public, this is impossible. We thus see that the concept of despair is an inherently political category; this concept identies what Kierkegaard sees as the chief obstacle blocking the emergence true selfhood, which itself is the pre-condition for the emergence of a true form of social and political life.

IV. RE-THINKING THE RELIGIOUS

At this point one may still contend that even if Kierkegaards thought contains an element of social and political critique not normally associated with his work, still his ultimately

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religious trajectory and grounding of all true forms of selfhood and social existence in the religious sphere leave his work with little relevance to contemporary (and largely materialist) investigation being carried out in theories of subjectivity and the political. To counter this impression one must re-think the religious as a consequence of Kierkegaards work. By re-thinking the religious I dont mean a sort of side-stepping by which we maintain the overall structure of Kierkegaards thought while replacing concepts like God and religion with terms more palatable to contemporary philosophical discourse; rather that we re-think these terms in light of their activity within the tradition of Kierkegaard. Thus rather than asking what Kierkegaard means by the religious, we should ask what the religious does in his work; rather than reading his work as disinterested spectators (what he would call an aesthetic reading) or concentrating on the ethical claims of his work, we read the religious as a category implying decision and action. We must rst ask: in what way is the religious the highest sphere of existence? Does this mean that one attains the highest form of existence only when dedicated to a specic system of religious belief - in Kierkegaards case, Christianity? More bluntly, must one be a Christian to be a truly existing self? At one point in The Present Age Kierkegaard intimates an answer to this question that goes against the standard interpretation of his work. While criticizing the lack of properly relational individuals in the present age, he says:
The individual no longer belongs to God, to himself, to his beloved, to his art or to his science [. . .]60

One would expect Kierkegaard to criticize those in the present age for not properly belonging to God, and even for not properly belonging to themselves; here, however, Kierkegaard goes on to note that the individual no longer belongs to his beloved, his art, or his science as well. It seems as though Kierkegaard is implying that one can be a properly related self through passionate commitment not only to God, but also to a beloved, to art, or to science. Hubert Dreyfus has recently picked up on this as well, and his observations are worth quoting at length:
According to Kierkegaard, one can only stop the levelling of commitment by being given an individual identity that opens up an individual world. [. . .] These special commitments are experienced as gripping our whole being. Political and religious movements can grip us in this way, as can love relationships and, [. . .] such vocations as science and art. [. . .] this commitment determines what will be the signicant issue for us for the rest of our life.61

It thus seems as though existing in the religious sphere is primarily a matter of how one exists; rather than necessitating one be in delity to a specic commitment to Christianity, existing in the religious sphere has more to do with the way in which one exists in relation to any dening commitment. While one can exist religiously in his commitment to God, one can exist religiously equally in his relation to a political movement, a lover, an artistic passion, or science.62 This point seems to be supported by David Wood, who in his essay Thinking God in the Wake of Kierkegaard has argued that this dening commitment or relationship is not about relating to God as such, but rather about the way in which one relates to something. According to Wood, Kierkegaard makes it clear [rst] that God is a mode of relationship.63 He goes on to argue that [. . .] Kierkegaards comment that since everything is possible for God, then God is this - that all things are possible, could be interpreted as a way of organizing ones being in the world.64 Because for Kierkegaard God is that all things are possible65, relating to a commitment in this religious manner gives one the ability to believe in what is seemingly impossible to the common order of

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things; in the face of this impossibility, the religiously related subject will state simply, I cannot do otherwise66, and keep going. Slavoj %i&ek, in a reection on one of Kierkegaards journal entries, has similarly argued that God is nothing but the mode of how we relate to him; that is to say, we do not relate to him, he is this relating.67 This reading (of both Wood and %i&ek) seems to be supported by Kierkegaard himself, who states the religious address can deal with everything, but it must continually bring everything into relation to the absolute category of religiousness.68 A primary relation to the absolute category of religion provides one with the pathos to religiously relate to all things. Kierkegaard goes on to equate religious existence with a certain sort of action, noting one must act religiously in all passionate relating.69 Although this reading, by which the religious (or God) is purely a manner of relation, seems enticing to those who wish to place Kierkegaard in dialogue with contemporary non-religious philosophical discourse, it causes a tension when read in light of his earlier work. In Concluding Unscientic Postscript to Philosophical Fragments, Johannes Climacus (the predecessor to Anti-Climacus) writes that consequently, the task is to practice ones relation to ones absolute telos so that one continually has it within while continuing with the relative objectives of existence [. . .].70 Thus, the pathos-lled individual can relate to relative ends only through a primary relation to the absolute telos, or God. In this sense, once an individual has established relation with God, they can then relate to relative ends through this primary relation to God. While one could argue that this places an absolute emphasis on a particularly Judeo-Christian conception of God, it seems equally plausible in light of the earlier discussion to read Kierkegaards notion of God ontologically rather than theologically - to read Kierkegaard as a philosopher of religion rather than as a theologian. Reading Kierkegaard in this way opens the way for a constructive engagement with contemporary philosophical thought rather than leaving him as an important gure amongst many in the history of philosophy. One can then argue that, rather than practicing an odd sort of Christian apologetic, Kierkegaard is ultimately concerned with individuals existing as properly related selves who overcome their primordial despair through passionately, or religiously, relating themselves to a cause which subsequently denes their existence and grips their whole being. Rather than this properly religious relational existence leading to an inwardlyfocused self, this inwardness is typically consummated in a properly-related outwardness; as Kierkegaard would afrm, once we learn how to exist as properly-related selves, the task of rethinking the socio-political can properly begin. As Graham Smith puts it, in Kierkegaards thought, the realisation of genuine community presupposes the attainment of selfhood. Thus, it is by considering Kierkegaard from this perspective that we are guided towards a link between a religious ontology and our understanding of the possibilities of the political.71 This notion of possibility is crucial for re-thinking the political potential of Kierkegaards thought, for it provides a criticism of any ideology that claims that a particular social or political system is absolutely necessary. Instead, Kierkegaards religious ontology, in which God represents the notion of absolute possibility, provides a ground for believing that another world, or situation, is always possible. Such an ontology of possibility provides resources for the collective political individual for whom truth is always a militant process of creation rather than the dogmatic imposition of a single totalizing and absolute system upon all others.72 Kierkegaard also provides a reminder that militant group activity and individual subjectivity are not isolated and un-related phenomena; rather, before relating to any collective cause or idea, the individual must rst

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become properly self-relational. While this is only a beginning, it does perhaps show the relevance of the melancholy Dane for 21st century philosophical thought.

Notes
1 Sren Kierkegaard, Practice in Christianity, trans. Howard V. and Edna H. Hong (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991), p. xviii. 2 Sren Kierkegaard, The Sickness Unto Death, trans. Howard V. and Edna H. Hong (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983), p. 13. 3 Stephen Crites, The Sickness unto Death: A Social Interpretation in George B. Connell and Stephen C. Evans (eds.) Foundations of Kierkegaards vision of Community (New Jersey: Humanities Press, 1992), pp. 144160. 4 Kierkegaard, Sickness, p. 13. 5 Ibid., p. 13. 6 Ibid., p. 13. 7 Ibid., p. 13. 8 Ibid., p. 13. 9 Ibid., p. 13. 10 Ibid., pp. 1314. 11 Although at this point it could seem as if Kierkegaard is setting up a somewhat problematic regress of the innite levels of relation in the self; this regress can be reversed, and rather than the self constantly referring back to some paradoxical end point of reference, we can read it as a progress characterized by the creative becoming of the self whom is constantly moving forward in becoming. Thus rather than regressing back into a paradoxical point of divine nothingness, the self emerges from this point and moves forward in an innite act of creative becoming. 12 Kierkegaard, Sickness, p. 14. 13 Ibid., p. 14. 14 Ibid., p. 14. 15 Ibid., p. 15. 16 Ibid., p. 15. 17 Ibid., p. 18. 18 Ibid., p. 18. 19 Ibid., p. 19. 20 Ibid., p. 20. 21 Although there is little space to spend on this point in the present essay, it must be noted that Kierkegaards notion of self-annihilation is not a negative/nihilistic category, but rather a religious one. As Kierkegaard theorizes it, one can only becoming nothing when they exists as nothing in relationship to the divine, and thus are consummated into the life of the divine. In this way, annihilation becomes the true form of religious existence for Kierkegaard. 22 Kierkegaard, Sickness, p. 29. 23 Ibid., p. 29. 24 Ibid., p. 29. 25 Ibid., p. 29. 26 Ibid., p. 30. 27 Ibid., pp. 3032. 28 Ibid., pp. 3334. 29 It must be noted that imagination is not a primarily negative category for Kierkegaard, but it runs the risk of trapping one in the fantastic imagination of possibility which keeps one from the actual. 30 Kierkegaard, Practice, p. 33. 31 Ibid., p. 34. 32 Ibid., p. 44. 33 Ibid., p. 49. 34 Kierkegaard, Practice, p. xvii. 35 Ibid., p. xviii. 36 Ibid., p. 36. 37 Ibid., p. 26. 38 Ibid., p. 43. 39 Ibid., p. 45. 40 Ibid., pp. 4748. 41 Ibid., p. 50. 42 Ibid., p. 63. 43 Ibid., p. 83. 44 Ibid., p. 90. 45 Ibid., p. 93.

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46 Ibid., p. 112. 47 Ibid., p. 201. 48 Ibid., p. 205. 49 Ibid., p. 205. 50 Ibid., p. 205. 51 Ibid., p. 211. 52 Ibid., p. 212. 53 Ibid., p. 214. 54 Ibid., p. 215. 55 While the standard version of this text makes up the second half of Two Ages, trans. Howard V. and Edna H. Hong (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978); I am relying on the version of this text translated by Alexander Dru in this paper, as this version is both more accurate, and less awkward in its translation. 56 Sren Kierkegaard, The Present Age, trans. Alexander Dru (London: Harper Collins, 1977) p. 35. 57 Ibid., p. 61. 58 This Connection is made by Graham Smith in his important article Kierkegaard from the Point of view of the Political. 59 Kierkegaard, Present Age, p. 78. 60 Ibid., p. 53. 61 Hubert Dreyfus, On the Internet, (London: Routledge, 2001) p. 86. 62 Clearly the allusion to the generic procedures of Alain Badiou is blatant at this point, but a fuller discussion placing Kierkegaards passionate commitments into dialogue with Badious generic procedures would be too lengthy to take place in the present work. For more on this see, Michael ONeill Burns, Alain Badiou: Thinking the Subject after the Death of God in Jon Stewart (ed.) Kierkegaards Inuence on Social-Political Thought (Surrey: Ashgate, 2010). 63 Wood, Thinking God in the Wake of Kierkegaard, in Jonathan Ree and Jane Chamberlain (eds.), Kierkegaard: A Critical Reader (Oxford: Blackwell, 1997) p. 70. 64 Ibid., p. 70. 65 Kierkegaard, Sickness, p. 40. 66 Kierkegaard, Practice, p. 205. 67 Slavoj %i&ek, The Parallax View (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2006), p. 104. 68 Sren Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientic Postscript to Philosophical Fragments, trans. Howard V. and Edna H. Hong (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992), p. 422. 69 Ibid., p. 432. 70 Ibid., p. 408. 71 G. Smith, Kierkegaard from the point of view of the political, History of European Ideas 31 (2005), p. 37. 72 For a discussion of Kierkegaards religious ontology in relation to contemporary materialist ontology, see Michael ONeill Burns, The Hope of Speculative Materialism, in Anthony Paul Smith and Daniel Whistler (eds.), After the Post-secular and Postmodern: New Essays in Continental Philosophy of Religion (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2010).