The Danish Philosopher SørenAabyeKierkegaard (1813-1855) said about himself: “I've already started with reflection. I didn't acquire a little thought with age. I'm reflection from beginning to end”. With this and in the light of his writings, we can say that the source of Kierkegaard's work is his own existence. Therefore, to understand it, it is necessary to know some biographical data, such as the challenge to the Official Church of Denmark, of which his brother was a bishop. The relationship with his father, who was 56 years old when his son was born, and the love for Régine Olsen are the factors that we will address in this text.
the father's fault
About the relationship with the father, Michael Pedersen, Kierkegaard writes:
“Herein lies the difficulty of my own life. I was brought up by an old man with extreme severity in Christianity, which disrupted my life in a horrible way and led to conflicts that no one suspects, let alone talks about.” (Kierkegaard, Diario, p. 341.)
Kierkegaard's father had been very poor in childhood. He was a sheep herder in Jutland and moved to Copenhagen, capital of Denmark, where he became rich as a wool merchant. Jewish religious expression was marked by sad pietism and anchored in guilt and fear of punishment. In Copenhagen, he attended the Moravian Brotherhood congregation, marked by austere religious thinking that emphasized the sinful condition of human nature.
“It's truly terrible, when at certain moments I think about all that dark background of my life, from the early years. The anguish my father filled my soul with, his terrible melancholy, the multitude of things I can't even point to. This same anguish dominated me in the face of Christianity and yet I felt attracted to it so intensely.” (apud Reichman, 1978, p. 19).
The father's melancholy, of which he becomes heir, was due to two faults: that of having blasphemed against God, while still in his childhood, and the of raping Kiekergaard's mother, Anne Lund, who was illiterate and domesticated in her home, when he was still married to his first wife. About this, the Danish philosopher tells us:
"THEuntil he was 82 years old my father had not been able to forget a terrible fact: as a child, in the cerrado* of Jutland. Poor hungry sheepherder and subject to all evils, from the top of a hill while tending the animals, he cast a curse on God.” (Kierkegaard Pap. VII/1 to 5)
About his father's sin, Kierkegaard thought that the death of his five brothers and his mother was a consequence of it:
“It was then that the great earthquake took place, which suddenly imposed on me a new law of infallible interpretation of all phenomena.
I suspected at that point that my father's advanced age was not a divine blessing but a curse and that the Our family's intellectual gifts had only been given to rush against each other.
I felt the silence of death spread around me, when I saw in my father a wretch who must have outlived us all, cross planted over his grave of hope.
A fault must have weighed upon the whole family, a punishment from God must have fallen upon it.” (Kierkegaard, Diario, p. 80).
In addition to these factors, Michael Pedersen's influence is felt by the education he provided his son: he offered Jakob Mynster, a critical pastor of Hegel, as a teacher; it also required the son to act out stories and theatrical scenes. Also, by influence, Kierkegaard enrolled in the theology course at the University of Copenhagen in 1830, only finishing in 1840, in as a result of both a cultural life opposed to the austerity he had learned from his father, and of his own criticisms of religion and the role of the religious.
Also different from the solitary thinker he would later become, Kierkegaard becomes a constant presence in theaters and parties, a period that we can identify with his concept of “aesthetic stage”: marked by both hedonism and indifference to the world, the individual at this stage has pleasure as a fundamental value of existence, but chooses not to do it choices: "I can do this or that, but whatever I do, it's a mistake, so I don't do anything" (Kierkegaard, O. Ç. IV, p. 155 ).
In 1886 he experienced a collapse that shook his spirituality. That same year, for unexplained reasons, Kierkegaard broke up with his father and reconciled shortly before his death in 1838. marked by no want to be yourself, this phase has an affinity with the concept of despair that he would coin years later.
“I have just returned from a society where I was the soul: witty words poured out of my mouth, everyone laughed, admired me – but I withdrew... I left and wanted to shoot myself. Death and hell, I can abstract from everything, but not from myself; I can't forget myself even when I'm sleeping” KIERKEGAARD, apud FARAGO, F., Understanding Kierkegaard, p.36.
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Even his father's death will reverberate in Kierkegaard's philosophy: in addition to being the event that allowed him to wake up from the crisis, for him, his father's death was a sacrifice. Both convinced that their family was marked by a tragic fate for which Michael Pedersen must pay by suffering the death of his children, the death of the patriarch was understood as if the father had replaced him in his destiny of dying still young. That's why we have the lines:
“My father died on Wednesday at two in the morning. I deeply wanted him to live for another two years and I see in his death the last sacrifice that his love did for me, because he didn't die for me, but for me, so that I can, if it's still possible, to do any thing” (Kierkegaard, Diario, p. 80).
After his father's death, the philosopher received a considerable inheritance and was able to devote himself to writing his books and self-publishing them under various pseudonyms. Before that, however, he fulfilled his father's wish and graduated in Theology and, after three years, received the title of Master with the thesis “Concept of irony constantly referred to Socrates”.
Régine Olsen was the great love of Kierkegaard's life
Regina Olsen: The sacrifice of love
In 1837, Kierkegaard meets Régine Olsen and both his love for her and the breakup of his engagement in 1841 are events that reverberate in his work. The reasons that led to the breakup were never clarified, we only know its effects on both of their lives: Régine chooses to marry Fritz Schlegel, in 1849, and Kierkegaard, dedicates to her several of her works, referring to her like "min Laeser", Danish term that can be applied to both genders: my reader/my reader. Régine would thus be the reader to whom the philosopher would direct his reflections.
Of his “Two Uplifting Speeches,” he declares: “I thought above all about: my reader. Because this book contained a small indication that was addressed to him” (Kierkegaard, O. Ç. XVI p. XXII). And also: "I wrote 'The Alternative' and, mainly, 'The Seducer's Diary', because of it" (Kierkegaard, O. Ç. XVI p. XXI). About the love he feels: “You, the mistress of my heart, hidden in the depths of my chest, in the my most copious vital thought, from where the distance to Heaven and to the Hell***". And further: “Beloved she was. My existence will exalt your life in an absolute way. My writing career could also be considered as a monument to his merit and glory. I take it with me in History” (Kierkegaard, Diario, p. 150).
One explanation for the breakup is that Kierkegaard wanted to preserve his bride from the curse he believed was on his family. In that way, he would have made a sacrifice of love. He met her, as we have seen, in a process of transition between the phase in which he indulged himself and the phase in which he reconnected with theology. After submitting his master's thesis, Kierkegaard also delivers the first sermon. He came to understand that the life shared with another person did not correspond to the role he intended to play, even if he refused the title of pastor. O Lutheranism, he considered as a doctrine opposed to interior religiosity, which he understood as fundamental for the true Christian and wrote several articles defending his positions. About this, he said: “Shepherds are officers of the king; King's officers have nothing to do with Christianity”****.
Thus, breaking off the engagement, though it marked him deeply, seemed consistent with his decision to devote himself to philosophy and theology. He himself presents this interpretation, in which ordinary life could not be compatible with the model of life he wanted to follow: “Tthere was a thorn in the flesh... that's why I didn't get married and couldn't adapt to the conditions of ordinary life. So I concluded that my mission was that of someone extraordinary” (apud Colette, La difficoltà di essere cristiani, p.129 )
His mission, he expresses in a text that contains the bases of the philosophy of existence: “Tit's about finding a truth that's true for me, about finding an idea that I can live and die for. And what use would it be for me to find a truth called objective truth, to go through the systems of philosophers, and to be able, when required, to summarize these?” (Kierkegaard, Selected texts, p.39) .
* This quote comes from Harbsmeier's article, translated into Portuguese by Karl Erik Schollhammer. The translation of the Danish term as “cerrado” can be controversial, but we prefer to keep the translation as it was done.
*** Kierkegaard, Pap. LlA 347, apud HARBSMEIER, Eberhard, 1993, p.197
**** KIERKEGAARD, Søren Aabye. THE THOUGHTERS. Ed. Abril, Victor Civita, São Paulo, 1979.
By Wigvan Pereira
Graduated in Philosophy
