1 - 1 - lecture 2-1 kierkegaard, martensen and hegelianism (21 min)

5/27/2018 1 - 1 - Lecture 2-1 Kierkegaard, Martensen and Hegelianism (21 Min)

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[MUSIC]Hello and welcome to the second lecture ofSoren Kierkegaard: Subjectivity, Irony andthe Crisis of Modernity.In the first lecture, we learned thatthere were a number of importantaspects of the thought of Socrates that

were a great inspiration for Kierkegaard.We talked about Socratic irony, the ideaof aporia, Socrates' role as the gadflyof Athens, Socrates' daimon and finally,Socrates' so-called maieutic art.It was useful to see these concepts intheir original context in Plato's dialoguessince this will give us a greaterappreciation for Kierkegaard's unique useof them.But we still have one brief errand toattend to before we get to this.Kierkegaard's understanding of Socrates

was, of course, based onhis reading of the texts of Plato,Xenophon, and Aristophanes,that is, the primary Greek sources.But it was also largely shaped by theinterpretation of the famous Germanphilosopher, Hegel,with whom he was in a constant criticaldialogue in The Concept of Irony.Hegel's philosophy was a highly populartrend at the University of Copenhagen inthe late 1830s when Kierkegaard was astudent and was writing this work.

So, in this lecture we'll explore firstthepresence of Hegel at the University duringKierkegaard's time,and then we'll go through Hegel's analysisof Socrates, treating the sametopics that we introduced last time, thatis, Socratic irony, aporia, thedaimon, and so forth.We'll see how Kierkegaard is inspired andinfluenced by theimportant historical role that Hegelascribes to the person of Socrates.

What does it mean to say that we areautonomous?For most people today, autonomy is just afancy word for freedom.Literally, autonomy just means that one isable to give a law to oneself;in other words, one can decide foroneself what one wishes to do.So, to say that someone is not autonomousmeans that that person


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is subject to external laws that oftencontradict what one wants to do.So, in this sense, we all generallythink that autonomy is a good thing,just as we think that freedom is a goodthing.I don't want someone telling me what to door imposing arbitrary rules and regulationson me that limit my freedom.Today, autonomy is conceived as auniversally positive

thing, but this was not always the case.In some societies the main value was notfor peopleto go out and act on their own desires andwishes.Instead, the most important thing was forthemto follow a set of rules that hadbeen agreed upon by one's family, cultureor society.This includes dressing in a certain way oracting in accordance with accepted norms.According to this view, to act

autonomously is asign of arrogance and disregard for one'sfamily or tradition.This is often associated with religion.For example, in religious ceremonieseveryone is expected to do thesame thing, to perform the same ceremonyin the same way.It's impossible to be an individualist ornon-conformist in a ceremonial context.Moreover, in Christianity it's thoughtthat human beings are finite and sinful.They are only able to gain salvation not

by their ownacts alone, but by the grace of God.It's therefore considered not justarrogant but even irreligious toact as if one can determine the truth foroneself.In this sense, autonomy is conceived as anegative thing.This issue, which is still very much alivetoday, was one that was important inKierkegaard's time.It was thematized by a young Danishscholar named Hans Lassen Martensen.

When Kierkegaard was a student here at theUniversityof Copenhagen in the 1830s, the philosophyof theGerman philosopher Hegel became a majortrend among students.The key figure for the popularity of HegelwasMartensen, who was just five years olderthan Kierkegaard.


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In 1836 Martensen returned to Copenhagenfrom a two-yeartrip that he took to Berlin, Heidelberg,Munich, Vienna and Paris.On his trip, Martensen met most of theleading figures in Prussia andthe German states who were discussingHegel's philosophy at this time.When he returned to Copenhagen, Martensenimmediately began an illustrious academiccareer.

On July 12th, 1837, he defended hisdissertation,which was entitled On the Autonomy ofHuman Self-Consciousness.In this work, he critically treated thesystems of the Germanthinkers, Kant, Schleiermacher and Hegel.Martensen argued that these philosophiesallrepresented systems of autonomy that hebelievedfocused one-sidedly on the power of theindividual.

According to Martensen, this fails torecognizethe profound dependency of human beings onGod.With this topic Martensen can, in a sense,besaid to anticipate Kierkegaard's topic ofirony. In both cases,what's at issue is the role of theindividual orthe subject vis-a-vis the objective order ofthings.Both Martensen and Kierkegaard seem

to be in agreement that modernsubjectivityor even relativism has gone too far.Martensen's key term for this is "modernautonomy" while Kierkegaard's is "irony,"but in the end they're talking about thesame set of issues.Martensen began lecturing at theUniversityof Copenhagen in the fall of 1837.It was here at Regensen College thathe defended his dissertation in the sameyear.

His courses soon became the talk of theentire university.Students from all disciplines flocked tohear what he had to say since hewas in a sense giving an account of whathe had learned on his tripabout the most recent developments inphilosophyand theology in the German-speakingstates.


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To the consternation and amazement of theolder, moreconservative faculty, Martensenimmediately becamea kind of academic celebrity.To the students, he was an exciting youngscholar, who couldspeak to them in a way that they had notexperienced before.He presented to them the basic ideas ofthe philosophy

of Hegel, which all of Prussia and Germanywas talking about.One of Martensen's students describes hisencounter withthese lectures as his intellectualawakening.He writes, and I quote, "The man who, throughhis lectures made such a strong impressionon meand many others was a young instructorwho had been appointed to give lectureson the recent history ofphilosophy for us first year students.

It was Hans Lassen Martensen.He brought new life into the newuniversity building.Martensen for many years filled thelargest auditoriumswith nothing but zealous auditors.What immediately won me over to him wasthe freshenthusiasm which surrounded him incomparison to the other instructors.He spoke precisely about what I thirstedto hear and did so at timeswith a warmth, which I found doubly

impressive in the cold temple of thesciences."Among the students in Martensen's lecturehall was the youngSoren Kierkegaard.

His notes to Martensen's course can befound in his Notebook 4.Here Kierkegaard could witness first-handthe sensation thatHegel and German philosophy were makingamong his fellow students.He was vexed by Martensen's success and

frustrated by theavid interest that his fellow studentsshowed in these lectures.While Kierkegaard clearly felt alienatedfrom thegroup of students that followed Martensenaround,he knew that he had to take seriouslythe thought of Hegel, if he was going towrite a dissertation on


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irony since Hegel had treated this topicin a handful of different texts.So, he read carefully Hegel's lectureswith a specialeye to different treatments of Socratesand Socratic irony.So why was Hegel so interesting to the studentsof Kierkegaard's generation?Hegel was born in Stuttgart in 1770 and hespent thelast decade of his life at the Royal

Friedrich Wilhelm's University,which is today the Humboldt University inBerlin.His lectures there in the 1820s drewstudents fromall over Europe. After he died on November14, 1831,his students formed a society dedicatedto publishing a complete edition of hisworks.They believed that Hegel's lecturesconstitutedan important aspect of his thought,

and so in their edition they decided topublish four series of hislectures along with the works that Hegelhad published in his own lifetime.These were the Lectures on the Philosophyof Religion, the Lectures on Aesthetics,the Lectureson the Philosophy of History and finallythe Lectures on the History of Philosophy.Kierkegaard owned copies of all of theseworks and in The Conceptof Irony, he refers to or quotes directlythree of the four.

Hegel's most extended account of Socratesappears in the firstvolume of the three-volume Lectures on theHistory of Philosophy,which appeared from 1833 to 1836, edited byHegel's student, Karl Ludwig Michelet.We want to look at Hegel's analysis andsee how it'srelevant for Kierkegaard's understanding ofSocrates in The Concept of Irony.In this investigation, Hegel makes use ofthethree main sources of Socrates' life and

teachings:the philosopher Plato, the historianXenophon,and the comic writer, Aristophanes.These are the same three sources thatKierkegaard uses inhis analysis of Socratic irony in TheConcept of Irony.Why were people so interestedin Hegel's philosophy?


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Was this simply the latest philosophicaltrend or was there reallysomething important about it that spoke topeople at the time?In Hegel's lectures he portrays Socratesas what he calls a "mentalturning point" in the history of philosophyand culture.The Greek philosophers prior to Socrates,the so-called pre-Socraticphilosophers, were concerned with

understanding the world of nature.They were, in a sense, the first naturalscientists.They tried to give natural explanations ofthe world without appealing to any divineagency.They were thus primarily interested in theobjective world as they found it outsidethemselves.By contrast, Socrates was the first toturnthe focus inward to the realm of thought.While the other philosophers were

concernedwith explaining the natural phenomena inthe world, they didn't problematize thisissue of the way people thought.This is what Socrates did.He believed that understanding how peoplethought was priorto and more important than understandingthe natural world.For in order to understand the naturalworld, we must first know what it is tounderstand something at all.According to Hegel, this marked a

revolutionary idea notjust in Greek philosophy but in Greekculture generally.The Greeks were accustomed to living inaccordance withtime-honored customs and habits that they took tobe divinely sanctioned.This is the broad sphere of what Hegelcalls inGerman, "Sittlichkeit," which is usuallytranslated as "ethics" or "ethical life."By this, however,he means not just the customary ethics

that a given people like the Greeksfollow,but also the broad spheres of religion,laws, traditions and established patternsof social interaction.For Hegel, the Greeks believed that thisobjective sphereof customary ethics was true, as it were, bynature.In other words, when they acted in


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accordancewith tradition and custom, this was notjust thearbitrary will of some specific individual,but rather it was true in itself.This is the beginning of what is knowntoday as the tradition of naturallaw, that is, the idea that some things areright or wrong by nature.According to Hegel, the conception oftraditional ethical

life can be seen in Sophocles' tragedy,Antigone.In this work, a conflict arises betweentheyoung woman Antigone and the King ofThebes, Creon.Antigone's brother, Polyneices has beenkilledin a failed revolt against the state.Creon decrees that the bodies of therebels should not buriedbut rather should be left exposed to thewild animals and

the elements.Anyone caught trying to bury one of therebels was punishable by death.Antigone regards this as an arbitrarydecree of a single man, the tyrant Creon.This was just his personal opinion.The fact that he's the king and thus hasthe sanction of the law behind him doesn'tchange this.For Antigone, there's a higher law, namely,the law of the family,the law that dictates that family membersbury the dead or their deceased.

In his lectures, Hegel quotes this workand refers toAntigone, who says that these are theeternal laws of the gods.For Antigone, the funeralrites are absolute, objective facts ofnature that she mustobey, even if her action is illegal by humanlaws.The laws of nature are absolute, whereashuman laws are arbitrary.Hegel take this to be exemplary for theGreek view prior to Socrates.

The revolution of thought that Socratesbrought aboutwas to shift this emphasis on the outward,objectivesphere that was given by the gods astrue forever, to the inward sphere of theindividual.As Hegel explained, I quote, "Socrates'principle isthat man must attain to truth through


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himself."Though for Socrates, one should not acceptblindly what custom and tradition teach.Instead, one must critically examine thesethings andcome to a conclusion about them for oneself.But note that this doesn't mean thatwhatever thesubject happens to think is true and hasvalidity.Instead, Hegel believes that there's still

an objective truth butit must be reached and recognizedby the individual subject through rationalexamination.The problem with the Greek view prior toSocrates was thatthe sphere of accepted custom andtradition was, in a sense, tyrannical.This was claimed to be true in itselfand one's own personal opinion about itdidn't matter.For Antigone, it's an absolute truth thatthe surviving

members must give the funeral rites todeceased relatives.It doesn't matter what Creon or anyoneelse thinks about this.It's simply true in and of itself.But for Socrates and for the modern view,each individual hasthe right to give his or her assent to thetruth.This recognizes the rationality of theindividual to know and understand thetruth.So the revolution that Socrates began in

the Greek world and that led toour modern conception is that the subjectis a constitutive element of the truth.This was a revolution among the Greekssince it was a new and shocking idea,indeed, an idea that cost Socrates hislife.The idea of a subjective truthwas one that greatly appealedto the young Kierkegaard.In the summer of 1835, he came here toNorthern Zealand, to theNorth of Copenhagen, where he visited the

small towns and villages at his leisure.He records his impressions from this shortjourneyin his first journal, called simply JournalAA.This was an important period for the youngstudent, Kierkegaard, whoseemed not really to be makingparticularly rapid progress with hisstudies.


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One reason for this was perhaps that hewas stillsomewhat unsure about what he wanted to dowith his life.In the Journal AA, he recounts some of hisself-doubts and uncertaintiesabout, which course of life to take.On August 1, 1835 here in thefishing village of Gilleleje, he writes,"What I really need is to be clear aboutwhat I am to do, not what I must know.

It is a question of understanding mydestiny, ofseeing what the Deity really wants me todo;the thing is to find a truth which is atruth for me, to find the idea for whichI am willing to live and die."Here, the young Kierkegaard statesexplicitly that he urgently needs todiscover a subjective personal truth, ashe says, "a truth for me."Like Socrates, he rejects the objectivetruths that are accepted by society.

He continues, "What use would it be in thisrespect if I were to discover a so-calledobjective truth or if I worked my waythrough the philosophers' systems?And what use would it be in that respectto be able to work out a theoryof the state which I myself do notinhabit, but merely held up for others tosee?"Here he rejects the objective knowledgethat's recognized by the world.He acknowledges that this enjoys respectand recognition among

people, but since it's objective, it lackssomething fundamental.Thus, like Socrates, he wants to find atruth within himself.It's particularly interesting to note theway in which Kierkegaard also includesChristianityin his account of the objective truth.He writes, "What use would it be to be able to propoundthe meaning of Christianity, toexplain many separate facts, if it had nodeeper meaning for myself and my life?"Here he recognizes that Christianity can

be regarded assomething external and outward, as oneobjective truth among others.The academic fields of theology, such asdogmatics orchurch history might be thought to fallinto this category.For example, what some church councildecided is an objective fact, butthis has nothing to do with the


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individual's relation to Christianity.Like Socrates, Kierkegaard believes thatthe deeper truth is notthe objective one, but rather thesubjective one that lies within.He connects this directly withSocrates a few pages later.For Kierkegaard as for Socrates, knowledge ofexternal thingsis irrelevant without knowledge of oneselfas subject.

He writes,"One must first learn to know oneselfbefore knowing anything else.Only when the person has inwardlyunderstood himself and then sees theway forward on this path, does his lifeacquire repose and meaning."Kierkegaard claims that one must first beginwith skepticismor irony in order to work through it.He writes, "true knowing begins with a not-knowing (Socrates)."Kierkegaard refers to the way in whichSocrates undermines traditional

truths and begins from the start or from aposition of what he calls "not-knowing."Many years later, in 1846, in theConcludingUnscientific Postscript, Kierkegaarddevelops this distinction in some detail.At the beginning of the work he explainsthat"the objective issue" is about the truth ofChristianity.This the objective truth aboutChristianitysuch as can be determined by, for example,

the historical record, the sources and soforth.In contrast to the objective truth,there's also the subjective,which is about the individual's relationto Christianity.The question of one's personal, inward,subjectiverelation to Christianity is, for Kierkegaard,a muchdeeper and more important truth then allofthe external, objective truths that can be

established.This fundamental distinction betweensubjective andobjective, for which the Postscript is sowell known, finds its origins inKierkegaard's reflections here in Gillelejein 1835,and these reflections are closely relatedto Socrates' revolutionof thought that turned away from external


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custom and tradition,and gave validity to what was inward andsubjective.[MUSIC]

1 - 1 - lecture 2-1 kierkegaard, martensen and hegelianism (21 min)

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