3 - 1 - lecture 3.1 kierkegaard’s view of socrates (16 min)

7/22/2019 3 - 1 - Lecture 3.1 Kierkegaard’s View of Socrates (16 Min)

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[MUSIC]Last time we looked at Hegel's analysis oftheimportance of Socrates for Greek cultureand for world history.Kierkegaard studied Hegel's textscarefully, and in The Conceptof Irony he responds to it almost pointfor point.Our goal for the lecture today is to havea look at Kierkegaard's understandingof Socrates and to see where he agreeswith Hegel and where he disagrees.We'll look at Kierkegaard's analysisofSocrates' daimon, the trial and convictionofSocrates, the relation of Socrates to theSophists and the later schools ofphilosophy.

We'll also see that Kierkegaard was quiteexercised by HansLassen Martensen in his lectures at theUniversity of Copenhagen.Today we'll explore Kierkegaard'sresponse toMartensen's article on Faust, andKierkegaard'stwo satirical works that were aimed atMartensen and his students,namely, The Conflict between the Old andthe NewSoap Cellars and Johannes Climacus or De

omnibus dubitandum est.Finally, we also want to introduce alesser known Danish figure, AndreasFrederik Beck, who wrote the first bookreview of The Concept of Irony.This review is insightful in many ways.It gives us a brief snapshot into thecontemporary assessment of the work,and we can also gain some insight intoKierkegaard's view of itwhen we see his negative reaction toBeck's comments.Kierkegaard agrees with Hegel's

understandingof the daimon as a part of Socrates'subjectivity that's opposed to thetraditional valuesand customary ethics of Athens.Along these same lines, he also agreeswith Hegel inseeing the daimon as a private pendant tothe public oracle that the Greeks revered.Kierkegaard points out a discrepancy in



theaccount of the daimon in the ancientsources.According to Plato, the daimon wassomething purely negative.It warns Socrates not to do certainthings,but it never proposed or demanded positiveactions. By contrast,

according to Xenophon's account, thedaimon was not just negative,but also positive, prompting and enjoiningSocrates to do specific things.Kierkegaard was thus obliged to make somekind of judgement about which of theancientsources to follow on this point, andhere he wholeheartedly affirms the viewof Plato.He believes that Socrates is fundamentallya negative figure,and thus it's a confusion when one wantsto ascribe something positive to him.

This is important to Kierkegaard since hewantsto see Socrates' irony as his definingcharacteristic.Irony is in its essence negative ordestructive.It negates and criticizes various elementsof the established order.Kierkegaard believes that Xenophon has notproperly grasped this importantnegative mission of Socrates, and for thisreason he mistakenly attributes

something positive to Socrates' daimon.By contrast, Plato was the more perceptivestudent, whorecognized the importance of the negativeelement in Socrates.When Kierkegaard was growing up, thetragic drama Faust by the famous Germanwriter, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, was avery famous and much discussed work.When he was studying at the University ofCopenhagen, Kierkegaard becamevery interested in the story and thefigure of Faust.

In 1836, in his Journal BB, he made abibliography ofdifferent interpretations of Goethe's workand of the Faust legend generally.Kierkegaard was clearly planning to writesomething aboutFaust, perhaps an article or perhaps amonograph.Perhaps he even thought it might be apossible topic for his master's thesis.



In any case, he became very upset when, inJune of 1837,Hans Lassen Martensen publishedan article in the first issue of theacademic journal Perseus entitled"Observations on theIdea of Faust with Reference to Lenau'sFaust."When he heard about this, Kierkegaardbecame very upset and wrote in hisjournal, "Oh, how unlucky I am, Martensenhas written a treatment of Lenau's Faust."Why was Kierkegaardso upset about this?Why was he so interested in the figure ofFaust in the first place?The answer to these questions becomesclear whenwe take a brief look at Martensen'sarticle.Instead of treating Goethe's well-knownversion ofFaust, Martensen chose instead to treat aversion

written by the Austro-Hungarian poetNiembsch von Strehlenau,who wrote under the pseudonymNicolaus Lenau.On his journey, Martensen had met Lenaupersonallyin Vienna and became interested in hiswork.Martensen saw in the figure of Faust asportrayed by Lenau, a representative ofthe modern world.In his dissertation On the Autonomy ofHuman

Self-Consciousness, Martensen examined theconcept of autonomy,that is the idea that humans could acton their own and determine the truth bythemselves.He regarded this as a widespread anddangerous tendencyin modern thought that led away fromChristian belief.The figure of Faust represents exactlythis principle.He's the symbol of modern secularknowledge.

Faust embodies, I quote, "the deep feeling ofthe corruptionof the human will, its desire totransgressthe divine law, its arrogant striving toseekits center in itself instead of in God."According to the Christian view, humansare by nature sinfuland ignorant. They can know nothing



without the help of God.It's thus only human pride and arrogancethatbelieves it can discover the truth on itsown.Faust thus believes he has no use for Godor Christianity sincehe can discover the truth himself by meansof secular scientific knowing.He writes, Faust, quote, "represents thehuman race'sstriving to ground a realm of intelligencewithout God."Faust also represents the principle ofdoubt.What cannot be demonstrated by the toolsof science must bethe subject of skepticism, and thisincludes the doctrines of religion.This view rejects traditional beliefs andexposes everything to its mercilessskepticism.This, however, leads Faust to despair, andhe

becomes separated and alienated fromsociety and accepted ethics.Martensen thus portrays Faust as the modelforthe ills of the modern world.Kierkegaard's reaction to the publicationof Martensen'sarticle can be explained by the factthat he too was interested in seeingFaust as a paradigmatic example of modernexistence,and Martensen had anticipated hisassessment

of the nature of the modern age.Kierkegaard was interested in Faust forthesame reason that he was interested inSocrates.They were both negative figures whocalled into question traditional beliefsand values.

Both Socrates and Faust believed that the critical reasoningof eachindividual must decide the truth of thematter.

Socrates reduces people to aporia and endswith a negative conclusion.Just as Faust's skepticism leads him todespair.Kierkegaard is attentive to the fact thatboth Socrates andFaust represent something at the heart ofthe modern spirit.Kierkegaard draws this parallel explicitlyin his Journal AA from the year 1837,



when Martensen published his article.He writes, I quote, "Faust may be seen asparallel toSocrates, for just as the latter expressesthe severing of theindividual from the state, so Faust, afterthe abrogation of theChurch, depicts the individual severedfrom its guidance and left to itself."Both Faust and Socrates represent anemphasis on theindividual at the cost of a largerinstitution oraspect of the objective world.Kierkegaard addresses the same questionthat Hegel didabout the assessment of the condemnationof Socrates.Like Hegel, he's critical of what he calls

"the scholarly professional mourners and thecrowd of shallow butlachrymose humanitarians" who regardSocrates as an honest and

righteous man who was unfairly persecutedby the rabble.Also in agreement with Hegel,Kierkegaard sees the daimon of Socrates assomething thatclearly puts him at odds with thetraditional religion.With regard to the question of whetherSocrates was an atheist who rejectedthe gods of the state, Kierkegaard claimsthat this was based on a misunderstanding.This was a typical charge leveled againstancient Greek philosophers

like Anaxagoras, who were interested inexploring the phenomena of nature.

The Greek gods were conceived as closelyrelated to the natural forces,for example, Zeus with lightning, andPoseidon with the sea and withearthquakes.When the early Greek philosophers took itupon themselves to study nature, theydistinguishedthemselves from the religious tradition,that sees

the gods as causal agents in nature.The early Greek philosophers developed therudiments ofwhat we know today as the natural sciencesby trying to understand the phenomena ofnature without the agency of the gods.Since they didn't make any appeal to thegods in their explanations of the naturalworld,there arose the suspicion that they didn't



believein the gods at all and thus wereatheists.Kierkegaard points out that this is amisunderstanding since Socrateswas never interested in the investigationof the natural scientific phenomena,and thus it's a mistake to associate himwith these early Greek philosophers.Kierkegaard goes on to explain that thecharge of atheism canbest be understood in connection withSocrates' well-known claim to ignorance.In other words, when Socrates claimed toknow nothing, this was mistakenly takento mean that he knew nothing about thegods worshiped by the state.But this was, of course, not the point ofSocrates' self-proclaimed ignorance.He clearly knew many empirical thingsaboutthe world around him.But he claimed not to know the universalsand was

constantly trying to get people toformulate clear definitions of them.What is piety?What is justice?What is beauty?Kierkegaard claims that an importantelement in the condemnation of Socrateswas what was regarded as his attempt to alienateindividuals from the state.He brings this into connection with thefamous maxim, "know yourself."According to Kierkegaard, Socrates'understanding of this command

was that each individual should seek thetruth inhim- or herself, but this meant turningawayfrom the world of objective truth whichincluded traditional ethics and religion.Kierkegaard explains, I quote, "The phrase'know yourself' meansseparate yourself from theother."So the individual is thus alienated fromother individuals in society, since afterthe Socratic

interrogation, it's impossible tocontinue tomaintain the traditional values andcustoms as before.By means of this calling everything intoquestion,Socrates destroys the individual's beliefinall the things that hold society together.This is, according to Kierkegaard, rightly



regarded as a dangerous matter.I quote, "it's obvious that Socrates was inconflict with the viewof the state, indeed, that from theviewpoint of the statehis offensive had to be considered mostdangerous, as an attemptto suck its blood and to reduce it to ashadow."Given this, Kierkegaard agrees with Hegelthatthe Athenian state was justified incondemning Socrates,since he was, in fact, a revolutionaryfigurewho was undermining the foundation of thestate.But it should be noted that he was notrevolutionary in thesense that he was forming a specificpolitical party or a positive platform.Rather, his mission was purely negative.He separated individuals from the stateand isolated them

from one another by undermining theiraccepted beliefs in custom and tradition.He called each individual to withdraw intohim-or herself, and to find the truth there.

At the end of the chapter, "TheActualization of the View,"Kierkegaard gives an assessmentof the last part of Socrates' trialwhere he proposes his alternative punishment.Kierkegaard draws attention to the factthat in The Apology, Socrates makes a lot

out of the specific number of peoplewho voted for his acquittal and hiscondemnation.By doing this, Socrates regards the jurynot as a collectivewhole, or as the Athenian state as such,but rather as individuals.Each of them individually made a decisionand cast his vote.Socrates thus recognizes the importance ofthe subjectivity of individuality of eachperson.But he refuses to recognize the authority

of the abstract state or the collectivewhole.Here Kierkegaard is inagreement with Hegel's account, which seesSocrates' condemnation as being theresult of his refusal to accept thelegitimacy of the court.Kierkegaard explains, I quote, "Theobjective powerof the state, its claims upon the



activity of the individual, the laws, thecourts, everything loses its absolutevalidity for him."Kierkegaard sees Socrates as occupying aposition of completenegativity towards the state.Socrates accepts the truth and validity ofeach single individual but refuses toacceptit in any collective group, the state, thejury, a political party, etc.Such groups undermine one's individualityand reduce people to the common mean.This view alienates Socrates from hisfellow Athenians and isregarded as a real and serious threat tothe state.Much of Athenian society was built uponprinciples of community and democracy,and thus to call this into question wasvery alarming for most people.So, according to this interpretation, thegreatmenace to Greek society came not from

the mighty forces of the Persian Empirebut rather from an impoverished old man.The tool used to undermine the Athenianstate wasnot great armies or engines of war, butrather irony.Irony was a negative force that sparednothing in its path.The most sacred and time-honoredinstitutionsof the Athenians were at grave risk.[MUSIC].

3 - 1 - lecture 3.1 kierkegaard’s view of socrates (16 min)

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