[MUSIC]We've seen that Kierkegaard was irritatedby the fact that Martensenwas having great success with the studentsat the University of Copenhagenand that Martensen like Kierkegaard wasinterested in the figure of Faust.One important aspect of Martensen'sthought was his characterizationof modern philosophy as beginning withthe principle of doubt.While ancient philosophy and medievalphilosophy were uncriticaland based their views on faith, modernphilosophythat began with Descartes realized that itwas necessaryto begin from the ground up by doubtingeverything.Descartes realizes that many of thethings that he and other peopletake to be true, in fact, prove to bemistaken under closer scrutiny.This means that many of the things that wethink that we know are based upon a veryshaky foundation.In his Meditations on First Philosophy,Descartes beginsby making an attempt to doubt absolutelyeverythingthat he has known or ever been taught,so that he can attempt to determine fromthe start what can firmly be established astrue.Martensen seizes on this image ofDescartes applying a systematicmethod of doubt as a model for modernphilosophical thought.He takes a Latin phrase from Descartes'text to capture this:"De omnibus dubitandum est," or one mustdoubt everything.Martensen used this phrase repeatedly, andit becamea kind of short-hand slogan among hisstudents.It seemed to be not just acharacterizationof the period of modern philosophy incontrastto earlier periods, but also a call toarms for modern philosophers to applyDescartes' skeptical method.Clearly, this set of issues that Martensenaddresses isclosely related to the issues thatKierkegaard finds in Socrates,who questions his fellow countrymen andcalls their accepted view into doubt.

Descartes doesn't wish to stop untileverything has been called into question,just as Socrates doesn't wish to stopuntilhe's gained a satisfactory answer to hisquestions.Kierkegaard wrote two satirical worksabout Martensenand his students but never publishedthem.Both of them take the issue of Descartes'universal doubt as a central motif.The first of these works is a studentcomedy entitledThe Conflict between the Old and the NewSoap Cellars,which Kierkegaard wrote in his Journal DDprobably in thefirst months of 1838 when he was still astudent.The inspiration of this piece came fromthis square here inCopenhagen, where, during Kierkegaard'stime, therewere rival shops that sold soap.There was an old established shopthat was located here in the basement ofthis building.This was an old soap cellar, and, then,one day, a new soap cellar moved in andbecame its rival.In order to avoid losing business, the oldsoap cellar put upa sign to indicate that his shop was the oldtraditional soap cellar.This was an amusing rivalry that caughtKierkegaard's attention.It will be recalled that at his trial,Socrates proposed as his penalty that hebe maintained at public expense and thathe could take free meals at thePrytaneum.This was a kindof public building in Athens, a sort oftown hall,where people who had done great deedsfor the state,for example, victorious Olympian athletes,would receivefree meals at the expense of the state.In his satire, Kierkegaard makes use of thisidea but instead of placing Socratesin the Prytaneum, as Socrates himselfrequested,Kierkegaard places Martensen and hisstudents there.Kierkegaard creates a handfulof amusing characters who engage in absurdphilosophical conversations.

They're constantly using slogans such as"de omnibus dubitandum est"that everyone knew from Martensen'slectures and written works.In Act Two of the comedy, Kierkegaardcreates theabsurd situation of placing these comicphilosophers in the Prytaneum.

The implication is then that they, likeSocrates, were providing some importantpublic service with their philosophizingandwith their attempt to doubt everything.But instead of doing anything meaningful,they simply engage in confusedand absurd philosophical conversation, allthe while taking themselves veryseriously.Kierkegaard here seems clearly to bemaking fun of Martensen andhis students,and their sense of self-importance,and their attempt to begin as Descartesdid, with universal doubt.What's interesting here, when weconsiderthis work as a satire on Martensen and hisstudents, is that at this time, Martensenhimselflived in this house just opposite the soapcellers.In September of 1837, that is, when, hewas a student and when he was writingthis comedy on the Soap Cellars,Kierkegaard moved into anapartment that stood right at the cornerof this square,in this white building, at the corner ofLovestraede and Niels Hemmingsens Gade

Another satirical workthat Kierkegaard wrotebut never published makesdirect use of Martensen's slogan.It's entitled, Johannes Climacus orDe omnibus dubitandum est.Johannes Climacus is the name thatKierkegaard uses as the pseudonymousauthor of the works, PhilosophicalFragments and the Concluding UnscientificPostscript.But this satirical text was apparentlywritten at somepoint in 1843, before these two well-knownpseudonymous books.De Omnibus tells the story of a youngstudent named Johannes Climacus.He attends lectures here in oneof the lecture halls at the University of

Copenhagen and becomes interestedin the philosophical discussions about theneed to begin by doubting everything.Clearly, Kierkegaard intends Climacus torepresent one of Martensen's students,who's caught up in the flurry of interestsurrounding Martensen's lectures.Much of the text is filled with a seriesof philosophical deliberationsin which Johannes tries to determineexactly what is meant with the demandthat one doubt everything in philosophy.There are three different variants of thisthat he explores in turn.First, "Philosophy begins with doubt,"second, "in order to philosophize,one must have doubted," and third, "modernphilosophy begins with doubt."In each case, he ends up in absurdities.Although Kierkegaard never finished thiswork and it breaks offin the middle, the plot was apparentlyintended to endby showing how Johannes was reduced todespair inhis attempt to follow the imperative ofdoubting everything.In a note Kierkegaard explains the planfor the work that he never realized.He writes, "Johannes does what we are toldto do.He actually doubts everything.He suffers through all the pain of doingthat.When he has gone as far in that directionas hecan go and wants to come back, he cannotdo so.Now he despairs.His life is wasted.His youth is spent in these deliberations.Life has not acquired any meaning for him,and all this is the fault of philosophy."So the point seems to be that philosophycan have a negative, seductive effect onyoung people.Martensen has irresponsibly enjoined thestudents to doubt everything, butthis would also involve doubting thingssuch as one's religion,

one's relations to family, community, and so forth.When one begins to doubt these things,then one isolates oneself.While it was intended as a kindof academic exercise, these young studentstakeit seriously as a way of life and therebycome to undermine their own beliefs.Once one has reached this point, it's

impossible to go back.Once one has begun the process of criticalreflection it's impossible to return andlive inthe uncritical intimacy of one's formerbeliefs.This is the view that is suspicious ofnew knowledge and fearful of what it mightbring.As was the case with Socrates itseparates the individual from their familyand community.The conclusion of Kierkegaard's story isthat Johannes ends in despair.He is destroyed by philosophical doubt.Kierkegaard agrees with Hegel'scharacterizationof Socrates as a turning point in history.He proposes his own evaluation of this, byanalyzing first therelation of Socrates to the movement ofthe Sophists which preceded him,and then his relation to the differentschools of philosophythat came after him.By seeing Socrates between these twopoles,we can come to a better understanding ofhis role asa turning point in the development ofGreek thought and culture.The cause of the downfall of Greek lifewas what Kierkegaard, followingHegel, characterizes as "the arbitrarinessof finite subjectivity."This is associatedwith the Sophists,who were known for their relativism.He explains, "The Sophists representknowledge separating itself in its motleymultiplicity from substantial morality bymeans of the awakening reflection.On the whole, they represented theseparated culture for which a needwas felt by everyone for whom thefascination of immediacy had faded away."Like Socrates, the Sophists also subjectedtodoubt and criticism accepted custom andtraditionor what is called here "substantialmorality."They represented a separation oralienation from the traditional Greekculture.The Sophists claimed to teach a practicalknowledge thatwould be beneficial to young men inpolitics and business.Specifically, they taught the art of

speakingand argumentation by means of which theycouldmake an effective case for whatever theyperceivedto be to their advantage at the moment.But this argumentation was always in theinterestof the one doing the arguing and notin the interest of any higher truth, sincethat truth is exactly what the Sophistsdenied.So there's both something negative andsomething positive about this procedure.The negative aspect says thatthere's no absolute truth, and the truthsof traditional custom, moralityand ethics are in fact illusory, having nofirm foundation.Given that there is no absolute truth,there is only an arbitraryor contingent truth which is dictated bythe self-interest of the individual.So the Sophists elevate these contingent,arbitrary truths to somethingimportant, and their promise is to teachhow to pursue this.Given that there are no absolute truths,the Sophists thus enjoined people torevel in the contingent ones for as longas it serves their purposes.Kierkegaard explains this as follows,I quote, "In it's first form, this educationofferedby the Sophists shakes the foundation ofeverything, butin its second form it enables every pupilof integrity to make everything firm andfast again.The Sophist, therefore, demonstrates thateverything is true."The Sophists can thus give reasons andarguments for anything at all.It is in this sense that we still use theword "sophist" today.We say for example, that someone is asophist whotries to justify blatantly wrongfulbehavior by means of specious reasoning.One of the things that botheredKierkegaard about Martensen was the factthat he pretended to assume a posture ofradical, disabused skepticism withhis well-known claim, "De omnibus dubitandum est,"but this was only an emptyslogan.Martensen's point was, like that ofDescartes, to emergefrom the skepticism and begin to establishsomething positive,

a doctrine, an argument, or a foundationaltruth claim.This was exactly the way that Kierkegaarddescribes the Sophists, as we just saw.They shake the foundationsof everything, but then they makeeverything firm again.For Kierkegaard, the profundity and geniusof Socrates is to befound in the fact that he remains in skepticism and negativityand refuses to be drawn into theconstruction of a positive truth claim.Kierkegaard contrasts Socrates with theSophists by claiming thatSocrates is purely negative, whereas theSophists teach positive doctrines.For example, Protagoras claims to knowwhat virtue is and to be able to teach it.By contrast, Socrates claims not to knowwhat it is and claims it cannot be taught.Kierkegaard concludes from this analysis,I quote, "irony has a world-historicalvalidity."In other words, it's valid for Socratesto use irony in the given historicalsituation.His irony was aimed against two targets:first,the unreflective proponents of traditionalAthenian life and, second, theself-assured Sophists who were makingvarious unfounded positive claims.With respect to the former, traditionalvaluesand ethics were falling into decay, andit was historically valid that these betaken up by critical reflection at thetime.With respect to the latter,it was valid that Socrates tried toconfrontthe Sophists and expose the shallowness oftheir relativism.These were two important aspects of Greeklife at the time, andSocrates, with his irony, plays a keyhistorical role in this context.He's not employing irony just to beflippant or to irritate orimpress someone, rather, his use of ironywas dictated by the times.By Kierkegaard's time,it had become a standard motif to compareSocrates andhis fate with Christ.Both were ethically righteous individuals,and both had been prosecuted in legalproceedings and ultimately executed.There was a body of literature onthis comparison which Kierkegaard was

familiar with.One of the most important of these was thework of the German theologian, FerdinandChristian Baur, entitledDas Christliche des Platonismus oder Sokrates und Christus,that is, On Christianity in Platonism orSocrates and Christ, from 1837.Kierkegaard refers to this work repeatedlyin The Concept of Irony.In the New Testament, Christ is portrayedas struggling withthe scribes and teachers of the law, knownas the Pharisees,who insisted on strict observance ofreligious ceremonies and practices.In comparative studies, like that ofBaur, a parallel was often drawnwith Christ's conflict with the Phariseesand Socrates' conflict with the Sophists.Kierkegaard makes this connection when hesays, I quote, "the Sophists are reminiscent of thePharisees."This gives us an important insightinto the significance of Socrates forKierkegaard.Initially, it was not clear why he wouldbe so interested in Socrates, a paganphilosopher,if his primary goals had something to dowith a specific understanding andappreciation of Christianity.Here we see the connection.Socrates is like Christ, and the Sophistsare like the Pharisees.So although Socrates is a paganphilosopher, he displays some importantpointsof commonality with the message ofChrist that Kierkegaard believes have beenforgotten.Thus by making use of some ofSocrates' ideas or methods, Kierkegaardbelieves thathe can bring some insight into whathe takes to be a confused understanding ofChristianityin his own day.[MUSIC]