KSRK: Quidam’s Diary (May 16 and May 19)

This blog is a little longer than ususal, but then so are the passages with which it is concerned. Over a couple of days at Mt. Angel last week I was entirely engrossed in these two entries for May 16th and 19th. In the May 16th entry the method of pseudonymous authorship is mentioned in connection with an unnamed friend, who might plausibly be another stand-in for Kierkegaard himself (notwithstanding the obvious observation made many times here before, that there is much of K in Q already). There is also a puzzling reference to 'sympathetic desire'. Near the beginning of the May 19th entry, Quidam writes "one would certainly prefer to enjoy the general reputation of not being regarded as a loony-bin inmate. That, too, I am achieving." Well, not for anyone with access to his diary. Still, there is these passages what I understand to be quintessential Kierkegaard, let alone Quidam, and I hope my attempt at unpacking some of this isn't completely in vain.

May 16. This entry is largely concerned with Quidam’s friend, who I’m sure has been mentioned before, but I can’t bring myself to go back through the diary to track previous entries with mention of him. This friend has evidently tried to rouse Quidam’s passions for his fiancé, but of course we readers know that they hardly need rousing. Quidam then devises a scheme in which this friend takes some of Quidam’s letters to a ‘third man’ and put them into her hands. Get that? It’s fairly confusing, not least because there’s no way of knowing what the contents of these letters are. They would probably be similar to the diary, which perhaps means that we’re better off not being able to read them. The important part comes in the last paragraph, where Quidam references Augustine (whose dedication to and renouncing of “the erotic” would certainly seem to appeal to Kierkegaard), and then writes:

It is true that I have desired her, indeed, that I do desire her, but that I had no external obstacle shows that there was something higher that binds my desire. That higher something is the idea. Together with it, I desire her, infinitely, without it, I hold to what is higher than both of us. Thus my concern is of a different sort: Essentially (for in actuality and on the basis of my chances I may achieve nothing) with these letters I am writing a bill of divorcement that sets infinity between us, and with these letters, I have essentially done my part (truly not my sympathetic desire) to procure some ease in my life, which grieves me.

This is clear as mud. Why does he desire her, infinitely, with the idea? Is the idea eros itself? If so, is it perhaps that eros is compatible with God, but that the idea of God (to say nothing of God Himself) is “higher than both of us”? Probably not, since he doesn't state it as clearly as this himself, but then how often does he ever bother to do so?

I think that the rest of the paragraph gives us some idea of what the content of those letters is; namely, something that, when read by his beloved, would probably drive her to ask for an end to the engagement. The last part of the last sentence is confusing, and strikes me as somewhat paradoxical; to procure some ease in his life also causes him grief? Would breaking up with her himself perhaps cause him less grief?

May 19. Q begins this entry by speculating that she has received his letters, then reflects on the nature of repentance and action. This leads to an interesting thought about language, when he writes “for I believe that [language] exists to strengthen and assist people in abstaining from action.” Following this are reflections on deception; having already stated that honesty isn’t the best policy when dealing with women, he now claims that “the world wants to be deceived.” This leads to a brief preview of his later work, “The Difference Between a Genius and an Apostle”:

I have never been able to understand it in anyother way than that every human being is essentially assigned himself and that outside o fthis either there is an authorization such as apostle’s, the dialectical nature of which I cannot grasp, although out of respect for what is handed down to me as sacred I refrain from drawing any conclusions from my nonunderstanding – or there is maundering. It is quite true that a person who cannot shave himself can set up shop as a barber and serve others according to their needs, but in the world of spirit this is meaningless.

It is, however, regarded as part and parcel of earnestness to want to be readily available to exert an influence upon others, yet without necessarily wanting to be an apostle (how meaningless!).

And then he looks forward to Wittgenstein ("Whereof one cannot speak, one must pass over in silence."):

I do not doubt that it is found in printed sermon outlines, and one hears it ever so often, unless one is listening to an individual who has been personally tested and knows how to speak and knows wherof he speaks.

Maybe it’s just that “whereof”.

A phrase that is repeated several times in the central long paragraph is that the single individual essentially has with himself to do, and I think in many ways it might serve as a tag line for what we now understand as “existentialism,” even if this (probably) isn’t the exact sentence that the likes of Barth, Heidegger and Sartre worked from. From these reflections on the essence of the single individual, Quidam is then concerned with the way in which the individual can communicate with others. It’s a long passage, but I think it’s revealing of Kierkegaard’s method throughout his anonymous works. At least the ones I’ve read.

Since I myself am an existing person and consequently must use ethically what is said, I have pondered this very much. When one chooses differently, chooses to instruct or to listen, but leaves out the crises of realization, then it is easy to have much to say, much advice to give, and easy to find peace of mind. Through what I have thought about this, I have reached the conclusion that I benefit a person most by deceiving him. The highest truth with respect to my relation to him is this: essentially I can be of no benefit to him (this is the expression for the most profoundly optative sympathetic pain, which one can keep from experiencing only through giddiness, but also for the highest enthusiasm in the equality of all), and the most adequate form for this truth is that I deceive him, for otherwise it would be possible for him to make a mistake and learn the truth from me and thereby be deceived, namely, that he would believe that he had learned it from me.

And then, at the the end of the paragraph, there is what strikes me as an incredible statement:

Let every human being be closehanded; then God will be the only openhanded one.

Many, if not most, Christian authors, would I believe find this appalling. Consider the beginning of Augustine’s De Mendacio:

There is a great question about lying, which often arises in the midst of our every day business, and gives us much trouble, that we may not either rashly call that a lie which is not such, or decide that it is sometimes right to tell a tie, that is, a kind of honest, well-meant, charitable lie. This question we will painfully discuss by seeking with them that seek: whether to any good purpose, we need not take upon ourselves to affirm, for the attentive reader will sufficiently gather from the course of the discussion. It is, indeed, very full of dark corners, and hath many cavern-like windings, whereby it oft eludes the eagerness of the seeker; so that at one moment what was found seems to slip out of one's hands, and anon comes to light again, and then is once more lost to sight. At last, however, the chase will bear down more surely, and will overtake our sentence. Wherein it there is any error, yet as Truth is that which setteth free from all error, and Falsehood that which entangleth in all error, one never errs more safely, methinks, than when one errs by too much loving the truth, and too much rejecting of falsehood. For they who find great fault say it is too much, whereas peradventure Truth would say after all, it is not yet enough. But whoso readest, thou wilt do well to find no fault until thou have read the whole; so wilt thou have less fault to find. Eloquence thou must not look for: we have been intent upon things, and upon dispatch in putting out of hand a matter which nearly concerns our every day life, and therefore have had small pains, or almost none, to bestow upon words.

The compromise between the political state and Christianity which Kierkegaard so vociferously protests as ‘Christendom’ has roots that run much deeper into the history of Christianity than the golden age of Copenhagen. More specifically, Christianity was first taken up as the official religion of the Roman Empire in the early fourth century, and perhaps Kierkegaard (here through Quidam) claims as much when he writes:

So let the history books tell of kings who introduced Christianity – I am of the opinion that a king can introduce an improved breed of sheep and railroads etc., but Christianity and spirit, ethically understood, not even an emperor should go to the trouble of introducing – that is, essentially understood.

A little history is worth repeating: Christianity first received what might be termed a ‘political dispensation’ in the fourth century, after the battle of the Milvian Bridge was won by Constantine the Great, who famously ordered his troops (many of them pagans) to paint crosses on their shields. Constantine had by this time had already been declared ‘Caesar’, and thus the phrase ‘render unto Caesar’ couldn’t help but be invested with entirely new meaning. Perhaps paradoxical new meaning, or perhaps seemingly paradoxical, since the Edict of Milan of 313 only declared that thenceforth Christianity would be tolerated, as opposed to persecuted, which it certainly had been up until then, and often viciously. But there’s simply no denying that a Christian emperor gave the almost three-century-year-old faith something of a ‘most favored religion’ status. And while the Roman emperor’s political title was ‘Caesar’, it is worth noting that his religious title was ‘Augustus,’ and insomuch as this Augustus was Christian there is bound to be, looking backwards, some confusion between emperor and pope. There was, however, a pope at this time (Miltiades, 310-314), the church was still a religious body, and while Christians undeniably benefited from the imperial edict (namely by not being killed), to see in this exemption from persecution a religion imposed by the state in preparation for a dystopia which resembles a surreal combination of the soma drinkers in Huxley’s Brave New World and the Christian Broadcasting Network is less erroneous than ludicrous.

Anyway, from ‘Augustus’ we eventually come to ‘Augustine’ (354 – 430 and referenced above), whose examination of the relationship between Christianity and the state, “City of God” must have been of some interest to Kierkegaard. For Kierkegaard, I think there must have been some connection between state-sponsored Christianity, the conformity of thought it imposes, and the need for deception in conveying the Truth. Is there a difference between Kierkegaard’s deception and Augustine’s mendacium? Augustine’s treatment of lying was unequivocal, and the pains with which Kierkegaard defends his method would seem to indicate that his transgression of the traditionally ethical view of lying also required a ‘teleological suspension of the ethical’, although I haven’t seen it referenced here.

Quidam is perfectly clear about his motives for employing deception, and it is perhaps most interesting because it is paradoxically tied to his attempt at repentance:

Therefore I have never represented myself as repenting before now, although I do indeed repent and have repented that I entered into that relationship and find my humiliation in not being able to undo it, precisely what my pride desires, since it is crushed because I, who have had an almost foolhardy conception of willing, must wince because there is something I will, will with all my passion, but cannot do.

It’s also interesting that just exactly what he would will with all his passion still seems open to question. It could be to get married. It could be to break it off. It could be to cover himself in cream cheese, put on a diaper, and go running down the Skelbaekgade yelling “I am not a werewolf! I am not a werewolf!” Who can really say, in the midst of all this obfuscation? And it often reads as deliberate obfuscation:

Why I cannot (which is due to my relation to the idea, until either this is changed or I am), I cannot tell her in such a way that she can understand it, but for this very reason I have never said that I repented. Thus there was meaning in my conduct. But to repent and to give pride as the hindrance to the expression of repentance, since, on the contrary, it ought to be the object of repentance, is high treason against God.

He as much as admits to the probable confusion when he then writes,

How anyone can understand it and find it plausible, I do not comprehend, but in return most people presumably say the same thing about my view.

I would add that this sentence itself is fairly confusing, and perhaps confused. Who else’s point of view could he be referring to in the first part of the sentence? His observation that ‘pride’ is necessarily the object of repentance, seems to me extremely insightful, but relating this observation to the rest of the paragraph is tough going.

Lastly, I thought it interesting that near the end of this entry he wrote,

Incapable as I am of understanding such tasks as the future of all mankind or what it is that the times demand, I have concentrated entirely on myself.

Interesting, because the author of “The Present Age” seems elsewhere very much concerned with something besides his own self, and moreover seems eager to play the role of reformer. True reform begins with the reform of self, as he seems to indicate here. Which seems, indeed, "part and parcel" to his reluctance to make any public claim to Truth.