The Art of Manliness - Kierkegaard on the Present (Passionless) Age

00:00:00.000 brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast

00:00:10.740 do you ever feel like the time we live in feels flat complacent timid conformist populated by

00:00:16.120 people who are focused on playing it safe and are inwardly empty a century and a half ago the

00:00:20.460 danish philosopher soren kierkegaard felt the same way about the period in which he lived

00:00:23.920 and posited that there are two kinds of ages the revolutionary decisive and passionate and the

00:00:28.820 sensible rational and reflective here to unpack kierkegaard's ideas on these two kinds of ages

00:00:33.560 is jacob halland retired professor of philosophy and the author of kierkegaard and socrates today

00:00:38.300 on the show jacob and i first discuss some background on kierkegaard and his existential

00:00:41.200 philosophy we then get into the differences between an age of passion and an age of reflection

00:00:45.380 we discuss how in a passionate age an individual stands as an individual possesses an energy which

00:00:50.300 focuses on truth and ideals and has the courage to take bold leaps of faith while in reflective age

00:00:55.020 the individual is subsumed by the crowd is afraid of public opinion and gets so lost in analysis and

00:01:00.120 abstraction that he never makes a decisive move all along the way we delve into how kierkegaard's

00:01:04.760 description of his age parallels our own and kierkegaard's evergreen call to be an individual

00:01:08.740 embrace risk and own your opinions and actions after the show's over check out our show notes at

00:01:13.600 aom.is slash two ages all right jacob halland welcome back to the show it's great to be here brett

00:01:31.100 so you are a retired philosophy professor at the university of tulsa but you've been staying busy

00:01:36.200 you've been still teaching with just other organizations you've been doing dostoyevsky things like that

00:01:41.680 but i wanted to bring you back on the podcast because for the past year i don't know what it

00:01:45.540 is i've been on this kierkegaard kick i don't know i've just i picked up stuff and i just want to keep

00:01:50.780 reading kierkegaard and what's interesting about you you're a plato guy you spent most of your career

00:01:55.160 writing about plato and socrates but you've also written a lot about kierkegaard as well

00:02:00.660 how did plato lead you to kierkegaard well you know that was both a wonderful accident and a very

00:02:07.980 natural development so we professors collect books with the intention to read them someday

00:02:14.260 and i was in my office probably around 1995 and just looking at my books kind of idle moment and

00:02:22.760 i pulled off the bookshelf a book called philosophical fragments which was translated by

00:02:27.880 a guy named david swenson in 1936 and as far as i know this was the first english translation of

00:02:33.700 kierkegaard so i knew plato's socrates and i started reading the first few pages of this book

00:02:39.720 and he's talking about socrates and this was the socrates that i knew but it was presented

00:02:44.720 more lucidly and directly than anything that i've ever read and kierkegaard says that socrates

00:02:51.940 made every individual that he spoke with the absolute center of his undivided attention

00:02:57.460 and that's how kierkegaard made me feel as a reader like he was writing for me

00:03:01.900 you know like i was the center of his undivided attention so i was first of all struck by this

00:03:07.760 amazing magnanimity and i should say kierkegaard was a student of the greeks he wrote a dissertation

00:03:13.180 called the concept of irony with continual reference to socrates which by the way is a great title

00:03:19.700 and he saw socrates passion for learning and living up to the eternal and transcendent truth

00:03:25.600 as a philosophical analog of christian faith and that's really because socrates took risks

00:03:31.320 right so for the socratic philosopher there's no certainty that one has adequately understood the

00:03:37.320 truth right there's no signs that say you know you are now leaving the cave and seeing things in their

00:03:42.300 true light and even if there were there's no certainty that you're adequately realizing what

00:03:48.220 you've understood in your own life so these gaps of uncertainty according to kierkegaard are bridged by

00:03:53.760 passion that is you might say by faith in the enterprise of philosophizing the faith that there is a

00:04:00.960 humanly essential truth and that it can be known so there was this whole religious layer that i wanted

00:04:05.720 to explore and then as i read more kierkegaard i was stunned by the creativity and range of his writing

00:04:12.340 you know he was really a literary genius of the first order i would compare him to mozart

00:04:18.400 he this is not an idle comparison he loved mozart's don giovanni and that opera is light and playful

00:04:25.880 and humorous but it also contains tragic depths and religious heights and i would really say that

00:04:32.080 it's the musical equivalent of kierkegaard's writing and both men by the way were equally prolific i think

00:04:37.860 there are 626 catalogued musical compositions of mozart and he died at the age 35 and kierkegaard died

00:04:44.760 at 42 and kierkegaard published at least 35 books between 1843 and 1855 when he died three of which

00:04:52.260 by the way including probably his most famous book fear and trembling appeared on the same day

00:04:57.420 and finally i would say you know kierkegaard is a late modern plato and what i mean by that is that

00:05:03.120 his books like plato's dialogues are full of different characters who are all in conversation

00:05:08.220 about the essential matters of human existence but kierkegaard is plato raised to a higher power

00:05:14.540 his most famous writings are pseudonymous they're books that are written quote-unquote so to speak

00:05:19.460 by at least 20 different distinct authorial personalities and so unlike plato kierkegaard

00:05:25.780 produced the authors who wrote his books and these books are works of cultural criticism

00:05:31.800 psychological exploration metaphysical inquiry and scriptural interpretation that combine letters

00:05:37.400 essays diaries aphorisms parables lectures sermons and dialogues in truly groundbreaking ways

00:05:43.380 and if any of our listeners are really interested in literature i would strongly recommend the book

00:05:49.220 called either or which is absolutely original i don't think anything had ever been written like

00:05:53.560 that before so let's talk about kierkegaard's big ideas okay so plato had his forms aristotle had his

00:05:59.920 ethics through reasoning kant had his categorical imperative what was what were kierkegaard's big ideas

00:06:06.860 like what was he trying to accomplish with his philosophy and also like how was he different from

00:06:10.580 other philosophers yeah well you know maybe we could talk about his big themes sure yeah and you know i

00:06:19.100 should say that i think different people would have a sort of different list but let me mention a couple

00:06:25.780 things so you know that friedrich nietzsche and martin heidegger made it fashionable to go back to the

00:06:33.140 earliest greek thought right these guys were interested in going back beyond socrates to the pre-socratics 0.96

00:06:37.840 into homer but it was kierkegaard who really set the stage for this sort of thing i describe him in

00:06:44.280 my book kierkegaard and socrates as an archaeologist of the original forms of philosophy and biblical faith

00:06:49.980 which he found in plato socrates on the one hand and in abraham and jesus christ on the other and so

00:06:57.680 socrates and the bible both emphasize the freedom and dignity of the individual right i mean because

00:07:04.060 you know the bible because of its core teaching that man is made in the image of god which is

00:07:09.640 sharpened for kierkegaard by the christian teaching that god is concerned with each and every individual

00:07:14.540 soul so kierkegaard is writing in what he perceived to be i think correctly an age of conformity and

00:07:21.280 increasing uniformity and it's in this context that he tries to recover the importance of what he calls

00:07:26.580 the single individual and i should also mention you know some of his books are like dedicated to

00:07:32.060 that single individual i'll just use that phrase so kierkegaard stands out especially for his

00:07:38.080 understanding of the task of individual human existence and the passion that is required to

00:07:43.660 discharge this task and because of this focused on existence on the quality of one's life as an

00:07:49.400 existing human being he's viewed in hindsight in the hindsight of the 20th century when we have

00:07:54.340 sartre and camus and so forth as a christian existentialist he presents a distinctive

00:08:00.420 philosophical anthropology and psychology that can in certain respects be traced back to plato

00:08:05.160 and i could articulate it this way human being is both body and soul and the ensouled body or

00:08:10.640 embodied soul exists in a particular time and place but it relates to a transcendent truth

00:08:17.180 so it's a synthesis of the temporal and the eternal the particular and the universal

00:08:22.660 freedom and necessity and holding these together according to kierkegaard is the task of human

00:08:28.440 existence and here he again looks to socrates socrates holds these together in an exemplary way

00:08:35.540 right not just trying to learn the truth which he conceived as what plato called the ideas but to

00:08:42.440 live by it and for socrates the point is not simply to know the eternal and universal idea of

00:08:47.880 justice for example but to be just here and now and what holds these elements together

00:08:53.300 is passion the earnestness and focus that socrates brings to his existence

00:08:58.220 but kierkegaard's conception of the truth is not the platonic ideas right not non-living being

00:09:05.980 but the living infinite god or rather what is revealed by god to human beings

00:09:10.880 and you know if you think of plato's cave image right the philosopher comes out of the dark cave of human

00:09:16.440 existence into the sunlit uplands of being and truth from the religious point of view that's not

00:09:21.960 going to work we can't get there on our own so the truth has to come down so to speak into the cave

00:09:27.500 through revelation well so the human being anyway if if we conceive of the truth as god as an infinite god

00:09:34.920 the human being is also a synthesis besides the other elements i mentioned of the infinite and the finite

00:09:40.420 and one of kierkegaard's great contributions is his psychological analysis of the conditions that

00:09:47.560 that we experience because of the misrelation of these elements he analyzes anxiety and despair

00:09:54.820 he has a book called the concept of anxiety and a book called the sickness unto death where he analyzes

00:10:00.060 despair and the depression and the rage that these conditions which he claims afflict all human

00:10:06.560 beings by the way produce as a misrelation of these elements that is the finite and the infinite time

00:10:11.980 and eternity universality and particularity and freedom and necessity this is all spelled out in

00:10:17.140 a terrific book that i know you're familiar with called sickness unto death and he says in that book

00:10:22.240 that when despair is completely rooted out the self rests transparently in the power that established it

00:10:28.880 right so that kind of transparent resting is the goal and finally i should mention one other thing and

00:10:35.660 that's his idea of indirect communication so what matters for kierkegaard is the inner appropriation

00:10:40.500 of the truth and that is a zone of silence because i mean i can tell you for example i can say brett god

00:10:46.900 is love but what does this mean and how do you in particular understand it now here there isn't even any

00:10:54.100 question of objective correctness i mean i can't look inside your soul to see if you've grasped the idea

00:11:00.400 that god is love correctly and it's not even clear what that would mean that's a question for each

00:11:06.280 existing individual to answer and the individual does so in the life that he or she leads

00:11:11.380 so kierkegaard is concerned with subjectivism like it's the subjective experience so he he doesn't okay

00:11:16.980 we've got to be clear about this he doesn't think there's like subjective truth right he believes

00:11:20.940 there's an objective truth out there what kierkegaard is concerned with and correct me if i'm wrong with this

00:11:25.160 what he's concerned with is your relation to that truth like are you actually trying to live up to

00:11:29.780 that truth in your own personal interior life exactly and so i wouldn't you know the word

00:11:36.340 subjectivism is a very loaded word because it makes people think of sort of relativity and so forth

00:11:40.940 there's a passage in the sequel to philosophical fragments which is actually kind of a joke that is

00:11:48.860 the the book that's the sequel is kind of a joke it's called the concluding unscientific

00:11:52.940 postscript to philosophical fragments and the joke is that that book is like four times longer

00:11:59.060 than philosophical fragments right supposed to be a postscript but in that book he makes it absolutely

00:12:04.300 clear that he believes in an objective truth and but he has a very interesting passage that he says

00:12:10.380 something like this he says where is there more truth in someone who worships the true god but does

00:12:19.100 so with no passion right so we're in his case we're thinking say of a christian who just goes to church

00:12:23.440 right goes through the forms but you know there's no kind of inwardness in that religiosity right it's

00:12:29.160 just going through going through the motions or in an individual who worships a false god right

00:12:36.800 but does so with all the passion of infinity right and what's interesting about that like he leaves the

00:12:43.060 question open but what's interesting about it is the question is where is there more truth that is to

00:12:49.780 say there is truth there is truth in someone in someone who is worshiping a false god right but does

00:12:57.800 so with this incredible inwardness and of course the ideal for kierkegaard is to worship the true god

00:13:03.000 the god of revelation the god of the new testament with all the passion of inwardness

00:13:08.240 and you know we got to be clear here so kierkegaard he's writing from a christian perspective

00:13:13.380 obviously that's a lot of his work is focused on but the big ideas i mean they're applicable to

00:13:18.880 anybody of any faith or non-faith i mean this idea of human beings are infinite we are infinite and that

00:13:25.200 we can think of infinite things to do and our capacities are infinite but we're finite and we're

00:13:30.460 not able to reach that so you feel anxiety and i think everyone's felt that like you have this to-do

00:13:34.520 list right of all the things you want to do before you die but you have to reconcile that with the

00:13:40.220 fact that well you're this human being you don't maybe don't have money to do all the things you want

00:13:44.560 to do you don't have the time to do and you feel anxious about that like kierkegaard was writing about

00:13:48.820 that yeah and you know i mean you've mentioned a couple sources of anxiety but i think it goes even

00:13:55.580 deeper there's a kind of nameless anxiety that has to do with let's call it metaphysical discontent

00:14:03.940 right i mean we're dealing as human beings because we're human we're implicated in the ultimate

00:14:10.460 questions right like why are we here and and there's a kind of you know it's common today to

00:14:18.080 talk about a god-shaped hole in us but we don't have to necessarily think religiously we can think

00:14:25.680 of socrates who would you know plato might analyze certain sorts of anxiety as resulting from not

00:14:34.720 standing in the presence of the truth now here conceived again from a platonic perspective as

00:14:40.660 kind of the the eternal structure of the world right which i mean his highest principle was the good

00:14:46.060 which is sort of this he compares to the sun right but the idea is that the human soul isn't complete

00:14:52.720 and isn't really nourished without coming into the presence of ultimate reality or somehow relating

00:14:59.020 to that ultimate reality and that's really a deep source of anxiety and you're right you don't have

00:15:03.820 to be a christian you know he's very interested in socrates and he describes socrates as sort of

00:15:09.700 standing on the borderline of the ethical and the religious right so for socrates the notion of

00:15:16.700 salvation is really ethical salvation it is the salvation of the soul through maintaining its

00:15:23.840 commitment to truth and justice and virtue but there are these as i suggested kind of

00:15:29.660 quasi-religious elements right there's a kind of faith and we even see it in the dialogue like the

00:15:35.440 apology you know there's a faith in the pronouncement of the delphic oracle that no one is wiser than

00:15:40.880 socrates which socrates doesn't understand but he comes to understand because he accepts the

00:15:46.680 idea that this is a serious declaration right and so he has to start thinking about what does it

00:15:51.600 mean to be wise and for one thing it's you know ultimately it comes down to being wise is this

00:15:57.360 passion for the truth the belief that there is a truth and that we can discover it and we can take

00:16:01.620 it into our lives and one of the i think one of the things that i get out of kicker whenever i read

00:16:06.200 him because he has this great writing style because it's very it's mocking it's biting it's sarcastic

00:16:12.280 sometimes but i feel like what kicker guard does whenever i read him he just like it feels like

00:16:16.060 he's grabbing you by the lapels and he's just like do you really believe what you say you believe

00:16:21.320 right like you say you believe these things but do you really really believe it i mean that's what

00:16:26.860 the whole point of what fear and trembling is about right it's like do you do you okay if you're a

00:16:31.360 christian or you believe in god do you really believe in a god that would say to a human being

00:16:36.140 sacrifice your firstborn son and that it's it's so stark and it's like man do i really believe this or

00:16:44.120 even if you're not a religious person like okay let's say you just say i i don't believe that

00:16:49.280 there's any inherent meaning in the world well kicker guard say well do you really believe and how

00:16:53.300 how is that playing out in your life that's what i get out of that's why i think i keep on going back

00:16:58.120 to kicker guard yeah and i like your description of grabbing us by little pels but what's what's

00:17:04.380 interesting is that you know he has this incredible lightness and incredible sense of humor

00:17:09.980 you can compare him with nietzsche in a number of ways but nietzsche you know nietzsche talks about

00:17:16.880 philosophizing with a hammer kicker doesn't really philosophize with a hammer except that's the effect

00:17:22.880 on the reader so for example when you talk about grabbing by the lapels in in the book either or

00:17:27.580 it begins with a little parable it's not even a parable a little story that really has religious

00:17:33.560 meaning okay and so it's it's a little story about the editor of the book who bought this

00:17:41.140 writing table you know and he loved this writing table and he put money in one of the drawers of

00:17:45.980 the writing table and he and one morning he was going to go on a trip and the coach was outside and

00:17:51.340 it was blowing its horn and he couldn't get the money drawer open so he got angry at the writing

00:17:55.820 table and he took a hatchet and he banged the writing table with a hatchet but the money drawer

00:18:00.800 didn't open but another drawer popped open and it contained the papers of two characters that he

00:18:05.240 calls a and b and then those are supposedly the book that is called either or it's the papers edited

00:18:11.340 by this guy but what's religiously significant about this is the banging on the desk with a hatchet

00:18:19.500 and this becomes a symbol of you know human beings need to be hit over the head sometimes this external

00:18:25.780 blow and that blow is a religious blow right i mean we can think of abraham leading isaac up

00:18:31.800 up the mountain to sacrifice him it's it's this sort of being stunned and that is what kierkegaard

00:18:38.860 wants to do because and i'll talk about this a little later he's he looked at his age and he said

00:18:43.260 these people are complacent you know they're sort of these bourgeois christians who who if you ask

00:18:49.940 them like he's got one passage he says um a man says to his wife am i a christian and she says well

00:18:57.560 of course you are you know you were born in a christian country the king is a christian your

00:19:02.400 parents were christian you've been baptized you're a christian but you see that's very external the

00:19:07.340 issue is are you inwardly a christian do you believe as you said yeah and nietzsche picked up on

00:19:14.260 this as well i mean that's what he meant by god is dead it wasn't necessarily that he thought that

00:19:17.820 people externally said they don't believe in god anymore in the 19th century they acted like they

00:19:24.200 said they'd they'd go to church they would say i i believe in god but like he says really if you

00:19:29.160 actually look at how they behave they really don't believe in god they they rely on science or whatever

00:19:33.760 to explain reality for them right it's not an animating principle of their existence so let's i want

00:19:40.780 to talk about one specific work of kierkegaard because the thing about kierkegaard is you read a

00:19:44.420 sometimes it'd be hard kind of hard to read he's like what is he talking about here

00:19:47.800 to read it a whole bunch of times but he did write this one essay in 1846 that's really readable

00:19:53.040 it's a lot of fun i think it's very pertinent to even our our age today this essay is called the

00:19:58.840 present age you can read this in one sitting i've read it multiple times in preparation for this

00:20:03.460 it's called the present age or on the death of rebellion can you give us some background on this

00:20:08.060 essay like what was kierkegaard trying to do with it and what were what was going on in his life that

00:20:12.500 caused him to write it yeah so the essay called the present age is part of a longer essay called

00:20:19.880 two ages and two ages started out as a review of a novel of the same name two ages by one of

00:20:27.760 kierkegaard's favorite authors a woman named thomasine gulenborg and the novel two ages contrasts the

00:20:34.260 character of everyday life in copenhagen at the time of the french revolution okay 1790s and the

00:20:42.240 author calls that the age of revolution and the 1840s which she calls the present age so the book

00:20:49.620 appeared as you said in 1845 or 1846 something like this at the time that denmark was an absolute

00:20:56.320 monarchy and it would become a constitutional monarchy as political reforms swept across europe in

00:21:02.320 the tumultuous year of 1848 and that of course is the year that marx published the communist manifesto

00:21:06.940 but the author's impression of life in the present age which kierkegaard shared was that the energetic

00:21:13.780 passion of the revolutionary age had given way to a kind of bourgeois superficiality and triviality

00:21:19.920 and this is you know after the french revolution things had in certain respects settled down many

00:21:24.940 features of the modern state had emerged that are with us to this day so for example napoleon

00:21:30.320 instituted legal codes that advanced advanced equality under the law government was centralized

00:21:36.480 and bureaucratized education was expanded and under the control of the state and so forth

00:21:40.500 and this contrast between the two ages that's brought up by the novel two ages is what interested

00:21:46.600 kierkegaard and his reflections on this contrast occupy more space than his review of the novel i think

00:21:52.380 the review of the novel is like 35 pages and if you haven't read the book two ages which i have to

00:21:57.860 confess i haven't you know he kind of summarizes it and talks about it but the really interesting

00:22:01.620 stuff is his reflection on these two ages so there are two other things that need to be said about the

00:22:06.000 historical context and i think that are important for understanding kierkegaard one is the influence

00:22:10.740 of hegel and the other is kierkegaard's battle with a satirical publication called the corsair

00:22:16.160 so with regard to hegel in kierkegaard's day the intellectual world world of denmark and indeed i

00:22:23.640 would say of europe as a whole was dominated by the thought of the great german philosopher gwf hegel

00:22:28.500 and hegel's philosophy was highly abstract and systematic his highest principle was not god but

00:22:35.520 reason you can sort of think of hegel as kind of translating religious history into philosophical

00:22:41.320 history and reason unfolded in history and according to hegel history was a necessary and rational

00:22:47.600 process and it had reached its goal its ultimate goal of human freedom in the post-napoleonic liberal

00:22:55.000 states of europe now this view by the way was embraced not just by danish philosophers but by

00:23:00.120 leading theologians and kierkegaard thought that this triumphant social philosophy gave the age a kind of

00:23:06.340 smug self-satisfaction right here we stand at the end of history right human striving has reached its

00:23:11.820 goal and he thought that it debased christian faith and in some sense even made it impossible

00:23:17.300 and hegel's idea of history is behind the notion of the demands of the times which kierkegaard

00:23:24.540 criticizes in two ages he starts his book two ages by talking about the demands of the times

00:23:28.680 and this applies to our time today you know it's common to hear people today talk about being on the

00:23:34.720 right side of history but you see this phrase being on the right side of history assumes that

00:23:39.920 we understand the mysterious mechanism of history which we don't and anyway very often people on the

00:23:46.340 right side morally right the side of what is good and just are trampled underfoot by the march of

00:23:51.320 history and what's more the implicit assumption of people who talk about being on the right side of

00:23:57.000 history is that human beings should change to keep up with the demands of the times and kierkegaard

00:24:02.400 thinks this is completely backwards he says that to be human is to learn from the older person who

00:24:09.120 remains true to himself and what kierkegaard admires about the author thomasin gulenborg is that she

00:24:15.000 remained true to herself he writes that nothing has ever been so cruel as the demands of the times in the

00:24:22.120 mouth of the young okay so last thing that the uh the corsair this magazine or the corsair was a

00:24:28.420 magazine that was established in 1840 as an organ for public opinion and the founding editor said

00:24:35.140 when it first appeared that in spite of the name right in corsair means a pirate ship this publication

00:24:41.460 would not plunder people or flay them but that's exactly what it did and one of its prime targets was

00:24:47.700 kierkegaard he was maliciously caricatured they actually had a cartoonist who drew these rather witty by

00:24:55.000 the way cartoons of his physical appearance which mocked him in these funny drawings and it was

00:25:00.740 actually even vulgar i mean his manhood was called into question there's a little skit where kierkegaard

00:25:05.320 keeps saying i have no organ right and like by organ i think it was meant like publication right there's

00:25:10.780 nothing i could but obviously this has another sort of double entendre right so this was going on when

00:25:17.680 he wrote two ages and it colored his impression of the role of the press as an attack dog of the

00:25:24.060 public which he talks about in this book two ages okay so yeah i want to hit back on that idea of

00:25:29.320 hegel hegelism like so they believe that through hegelism you through reasoning we can figure out life

00:25:35.240 basically and kierkegaard say actually no you can't do that because existence requires a risk it requires

00:25:41.600 you know he talks about a leap of faith sometimes you have to do something even though you don't know the

00:25:45.540 final outcome because it's impossible for us to know the final outcome and so he's pushing back

00:25:49.700 against that idea that we can we can know what the final outcome is to all things he'd say the best

00:25:55.720 we can do is actually just take really educated guesses or finally just a leap of faith to what we

00:26:01.020 think is the right thing yeah right and you know in uh concluding on scientific postscript he says

00:26:07.600 somewhere that look you know maybe there is a system by the way hegel sort of presented this

00:26:13.480 systematic philosophy and he said but but that's for god like it's not for us we we we don't

00:26:19.860 understand that system and actually hegel is very much sort of behind the discussion of the reflective

00:26:26.020 age which we'll come to in this book two ages and so the problem with hegel from kierkegaard's

00:26:32.860 perspective is that he kind of erases the individual human being by focusing on this kind of god's eye

00:26:40.320 view right you can sort of think of spinoza or something of this kind of abstract system so

00:26:45.900 there's a passage in a postscript where he says something like this he says uh if a dancer could

00:26:50.800 leap very high you know we would honor that person we would applaud but if someone thought he could

00:26:56.060 defy gravity right and never come back down then they would be subjected to laughter and then he says

00:27:02.820 and that's maybe where the system will finally found its true readers on the moon right in other

00:27:10.040 words it's not it you know this is a philosophy like if you're if you're taking a sort of god's

00:27:15.140 eye perspective you can have this knowledge but existing human beings need to live and our you

00:27:23.080 know calling really if you look at it religiously is to live life in the light of the truth and that's

00:27:29.560 our job and you know so we don't have the systematic knowledge that's not possible and anyway knowing the

00:27:35.940 system is not actually it's highly abstract it's not going to help us with this task of existing

00:27:41.320 we're going to take a quick break for your word from our sponsors and now back to the show so let's

00:27:48.560 get back to this idea that these two ages um so kigger was saying there was there was a period where 0.97

00:27:54.340 there was an age of passion this is the period of revolutions this is when all the french revolution

00:27:57.920 was going on things like that kind of like big picture how would kigger guard describe 0.96

00:28:02.640 like what are what's the ethos of a of a passionate age and then contrast that what he what he and this

00:28:09.300 other author was seeing in their current age in the 1840s of a reflective age like what are the

00:28:14.240 characteristics of the the two types of ages okay so kigger guard's concern is the inner condition of 0.99

00:28:22.180 our souls and the contrast between the two ages brings out what we've lost in the present age but to be

00:28:28.360 clear i think this needs to be said at the outset he's not praising the french revolution kigger guard 0.97

00:28:33.380 was if anything a political conservative and he's certainly not a fan of mob violence and radical

00:28:39.040 revolutionary action but he does say that the age of revolution is characterized by passion and the

00:28:45.180 present age is characterized by reflection so what do these words mean passion and reflection

00:28:49.460 well in the first place for kigger guard passion is humanly essential it's an inward motion of the soul 0.98

00:28:56.060 the focusing of one's energies on an ethical or religious ideal right so someone who admires the

00:29:02.940 courage of a hero and enthusiastically aspires to be like the hero has passion this personal commitment

00:29:09.900 unifies the individual and it's the source of individual character it gives form to life

00:29:15.340 socrates eros for wisdom is passion in the kigger guardian sense passion is immediate and concrete 0.99

00:29:22.320 it reveals who we are and only with passion he says are we in fact something definite

00:29:28.140 the passionate soul has a certain inward tension and resilience which kigger guard associates with 1.00

00:29:33.640 culture so you might think of the soul right here's an image as a bow that can shoot that can aim and

00:29:40.440 shoot its arrows of action at any target it chooses but the soul without passion is like an unstrung bow

00:29:46.280 right it lacks character it lacks form it lacks unity it lacks energy and aim now for kigger guard thinking 1.00

00:29:52.360 is a passionate activity it's the response of a single individual whose soul is open to the alluring

00:29:59.680 mysteries of life again socrates is exhibit a in philosophical fragments kigger guard writes the paradox 0.99

00:30:06.600 is the passion of thought and the thinker without a paradox is like a lover without passion a mediocre fellow

00:30:13.680 so kigger guard says the present age is a passionless age in an age of reflection okay well 1.00

00:30:20.780 what does he mean by reflection in the first place reflection is thought that is untethered from

00:30:27.320 passion and it's therefore unfocused and idle reflection wanders in the realm of possibility but

00:30:34.600 it never translates into actuality you know kigger guard taught latin for a time it's the only job he ever 1.00

00:30:40.080 held for a year or two to teaching latin to high school kids and his writing is full of grammatical

00:30:45.460 analogies so if life is grammatically indicative like the sentence i am living reflection is in the

00:30:54.500 subjunctive mood i could be living i would be living i should be living right doesn't describe what is

00:31:01.200 actually the case reflection remains in the realm of the possible and it never translates into action

00:31:06.040 it never comes to the point of a decision a genuine commitment of the soul to a specific course of life

00:31:11.940 and the notion of a decision by the way is crucial to kierkegaard reflection is also associated with

00:31:16.940 abstraction so think of a reflection in water the image is insubstantial because it abstracts from

00:31:24.400 the concrete reality of the individual right or of the of the original i mean for one thing it's two-dimensional

00:31:31.780 while the original is three-dimensional abstraction drains life of its vibrancy and immediacy you know

00:31:38.420 toqueville uh echoes this idea he says there's nothing more unproductive for the human mind than an

00:31:43.640 abstract idea so idle imagination and abstraction these are the characteristics of reflection they

00:31:49.700 generate a kind of virtual reality which in the worst case ultimately comes to replace actual reality

00:31:56.440 and you know woe to us if we can't tell the difference we kind of let's make this more

00:32:01.840 concrete like how do you how can people see that in their own lives i mean i'm as you were describing

00:32:05.480 that i was imagining you know the reflective person being this uh like a college student trying to

00:32:11.460 figure out what they're going to do with their life and they're just they got the sheet like a

00:32:15.460 spreadsheet and they're they're laying out all their decisions and they're thinking well if i choose this

00:32:20.900 major then it'll allow me to get this job which will allow me to make more money and this will allow me to

00:32:26.180 have a house you know start a family is is that the kind of an idea of a reflective person

00:32:31.480 yeah i mean but you know again the the crucial element is is this passion right is this focusing

00:32:40.660 and energy of the soul and what kickart is pointing to is the danger of getting lost in thought and

00:32:48.880 never committing to anything so if your college student is kind of listing possibilities

00:32:53.380 you might i mean it sounds kind of banal and trite but

00:32:59.160 nonetheless true what the college student should be thinking about is who am i what do i want right

00:33:06.660 and that incidentally requires a kind of boldness a kind of faith in life's possibilities i'm sure

00:33:14.000 you would agree with me i mean you know that one of the hardest things to communicate to young

00:33:19.860 people is things are going to work out if you you know i'm not saying go into the world unprepared

00:33:27.160 with no skills or anything like that that's not my recommendation but if you follow your kind of

00:33:34.860 inward calling right if you sort of look at yourself and say this is what i love this is what i excel at

00:33:42.360 this is what i want to do you've got to have a kind of faith that that that's going to work out

00:33:47.860 but if you don't have that that focus or that passion which is really unfortunate

00:33:54.000 then you're just kind of wandering around again untethered right no you're right i i've over the

00:34:00.360 years i've gotten lots of letters from young men they're like what should i do with my life and i'm

00:34:05.460 worried and i'm just like man it's gonna work out like they're like what should i major and i'm like

00:34:09.960 man what you can major in anything and you'll figure it out like i you know i tell them like i went

00:34:15.140 to law school thinking i was gonna be an attorney and now i'm talking to jacob howlin about kicker

00:34:19.280 guard um it works out it's gonna work out so that's that idea so kicker wants you to be bold he wants

00:34:25.600 you to be courageous he wants you to take that leap of faith knowing that things because this is again

00:34:30.180 going back this he's pushing back against hagel like we can play that hagel was talking you know

00:34:34.500 politically and you know big picture but you can apply this to your own life you can't know the end

00:34:39.220 to your own life there's no system right i think a lot of people that's why like this people love

00:34:44.820 self-help books they think well i can find this system if i follow this system then i will get six

00:34:50.620 pack abs and i'll make lots of money and then i'll have a flourishing romantic life and kicker

00:34:55.900 and say no there's no system i mean maybe there is a system but you can't know it uh so just just

00:35:01.860 be passionate find something and just follow it yeah i mean you know there's no app although i'm sure

00:35:07.500 there will be one ultimately for you know for life right like your life no people have tried

00:35:11.880 there's definitely people have tried exactly exactly so in in the present age what i love about

00:35:18.100 he gives parables he loves to use parables and he created this parable that i'm going to call i don't

00:35:24.300 think it's called this but it's called the treasure on ice to highlight the difference between an age of

00:35:29.320 passion or a passionate person or a reflective person or an age of reflection can you walk us through

00:35:34.300 this parable of the treasure on ice yeah so just before he tells the parable of the treasure on the

00:35:40.700 ice kierkegaard talks about the advice of an oldster who tells a youth to take the plunge into the waters

00:35:47.000 of existence and even if it's a rash leap kierkegaard writes if only it's decisive and you have the makings

00:35:54.520 of a man then life's judgment upon your recklessness in case it is reckless right will help you to become

00:36:00.680 one to become a man you know this actually reminds me i should say of a passage from joseph conrad's

00:36:06.780 lord jim where the character of stein says gives this advice he says the way is to the destructive

00:36:12.060 element submit yourself and with the exertion of your hands and feet in the water make the deep deep

00:36:18.200 sea keep you up anyway the parable the treasure on the ice extends this image right of jumping into

00:36:25.120 the water to the ultimate degree so in the parable the water has become life-threateningly cold but

00:36:31.700 the treasure that stands out on the thin ice is enormously valuable and i should say i suspect here

00:36:37.980 that kierkegaard is especially thinking of the treasure of faith he has the following beautiful

00:36:42.600 description of faith in concluding on scientific postscript he says sitting calmly on a ship in fair

00:36:48.380 weather is not a metaphor for having faith but when the ship has sprung a leak then enthusiastically

00:36:54.680 to keep the ship afloat by pumping and not to seek the harbor that is the metaphor for having faith

00:37:00.780 while the understanding like a desperate passenger stretches its arms toward land but in vain faith

00:37:06.240 works victoriously in the depths joyful and victorious against the understanding it rescues the soul

00:37:12.020 well anyway in a passionate age people would cheer the skater who goes out on this thin ice to obtain

00:37:17.940 the treasure and the onlookers would admire this daring man and they would be humbled in the

00:37:23.420 comparison with him and they would be ethically encouraged to follow his bold example but in a

00:37:29.100 reflective age on the other hand everyone would agree that it's foolish and ridiculous to take

00:37:34.120 risks to obtain the treasure but then an expert skater an exceptionally skilled skater would get the idea

00:37:40.880 of skating very close to the thin ice and turning at the last moment before he falls in and so kierkegaard

00:37:47.680 says thus an inspired venture would be turned into an acrobatic stunt and actuality would be turned

00:37:53.780 into a theater now he says the audience would cheer for the skater but even in cheering for the expert

00:37:59.220 skater they would secretly suppose that the stunt wasn't so great after all and that they could have

00:38:04.080 done the same so they would admire socially what each one privately regards as trivial and i think you

00:38:10.100 know this parable captures some essential things about our age first of all it's cowardly small-mindedness

00:38:15.840 you know today we call it safetyism everyone must be protected above all else even from supposedly

00:38:21.960 harmful emotions and kierkegaard says that the highest prudence sometimes requires acting contrary

00:38:27.780 to prudence in a narrow calculating sense so for example was socrates imprudent when at his trial he

00:38:35.780 refused to beg for his life to pander to the judges or was he being true to himself to his ideal and the

00:38:42.340 goal that both he and kierkegaard put first and foremost that is being an individual what's an

00:38:47.700 individual an active passionate thoughtful center of responsibility and the parable points out that

00:38:53.940 the passion that makes great things possible has been replaced in our age by reliance on expertise and

00:39:01.100 skill right we were joking about the app a couple minutes ago the life app as if there's a formula

00:39:07.720 technique right that could replace passionate commitment and it also underscores the exhibitionism

00:39:13.900 that's characteristic of our age the skater who wants to be admired more than he wants the treasure

00:39:19.420 and what kierkegaard in later part of the book calls the gallery public that is the public that's bored

00:39:24.900 and seeks entertainment and finally the parable points out the phenomenon of hypocrisy the crowd that pretends

00:39:31.440 to admire socially what everyone individually secretly despises and i think this is an increasing

00:39:37.260 feature of our lives today right because we you know people even students in college and so far

00:39:42.020 they're scared to speak their minds and they want to be seen as sort of agreeing with what is regarded

00:39:49.540 as politically correct whereas inwardly they disagree right as you were talking about this idea of

00:39:55.340 the the skater the passionate skater just goes out to the ice to get the treasure the thin ice and then

00:40:00.860 he said kierkegaard said in a passionate age everyone would be cheering him on yes even though it could end up in

00:40:05.540 just you know the guy dies right and instead with either like why are you doing that like you shouldn't be

00:40:11.020 like a passionless age like don't do that like that's not safe i actually it brought up to mind

00:40:16.100 i remember when i was 22 i proposed to my wife and you know we we got i got married when i was 23

00:40:22.780 but i remember i was back in my hometown and i was visiting a high school friend in his family

00:40:28.620 and i told this guy's mom's like yeah i'm getting married and she's you know she was at the time she's

00:40:34.360 like in her 50s so she's a baby boomer and this is like a upper middle class family and i remember

00:40:39.520 the mom looked at me she's like why would you do that why would you get married so young you need 1.00

00:40:43.940 to finish college you need to finish you need to get a job and i remember i just looked at her

00:40:47.960 befuddle and it was like to me it was obvious well because i love this i love this woman that's why i'm

00:40:53.020 going to do it i was passionate i was i wanted to marry this woman and then i was talking to this

00:40:57.160 very reflective person who was thinking no you need to that's not that's not the right thing to do you

00:41:02.220 need to get a job you need to you need to think this out more i mean kirk yard would be like yeah

00:41:06.100 you're a reflective person yeah i think that's right and just you know it's interesting because i got

00:41:13.260 married at the age of 21 and went off to grad school and i sort of encountered the same thing people

00:41:20.100 saying well you know i mean why would you get married and then we had kids like oh isn't it a

00:41:25.000 bad idea to have kids if you're in graduate school actually it was great because you know

00:41:30.160 my wife got a job and she would work and i would take the kids i mean one kid at the time i was

00:41:37.080 writing my dissertation i would take him off to preschool and the other kid was like a one years

00:41:41.360 old you know and i would just kind of do the laundry put them on a pile of laundry or put them

00:41:45.300 in a high chair with paints and just sit there and write you know things work out they work out

00:41:49.980 things work out also you know and and now like going back to taking with this like this marriage

00:41:54.540 example you know now the reflective ages say okay you can get married but like you need to have

00:42:00.120 skills you need to hire an expert you know you got to find a marriage coach like there's coaches for 0.99

00:42:04.660 everything i don't know if you're on social media a lot jacob no i am not but it is there's been this

00:42:09.100 proliferation of coaches for every facet of human life there are marriage coaches there are productivity

00:42:15.460 coaches there are i saw like an infidelity coach so it's like a coach to help you navigate

00:42:21.340 infidelity i mean kigger say this is this is a reflective age like you're instead of just following 1.00

00:42:27.920 what you think is the right thing to do you're you're looking to an expert to you so you can become

00:42:31.940 skilled so you can get close to the treasure but then at the last minute swoop away so you don't

00:42:37.420 actually encounter any danger yeah that's right and you know as we're speaking i'm reminded of

00:42:43.540 nietzsche writes in a wonderful short book which is i think maybe the best introduction to his thoughts

00:42:50.040 called the on the advantage and disadvantage of history for life and he says that in the modern age

00:42:56.660 like part of the problem of passion is like we don't trust our instincts i mean we don't even know

00:43:02.120 what we should feel by the way i think this is quite kick a guardian but it also describes our age as well

00:43:07.900 because we're so confused by by thinking and by sorts of this this kind of uh realms of abstraction that

00:43:17.860 we're just not even sure how we should respond to things and so if you don't actually know how to feel

00:43:24.920 or you're so out of touch with your own feelings and desires that you know you don't trust them then i

00:43:31.720 think maybe you do need coaches you know all right it's also as i was reading the present age and

00:43:37.980 reading about the parable of the uh treasure on ice this is i know this might seem like trivial and

00:43:42.580 trite and banal and not interesting but i i see this reflective in the in the state of american

00:43:48.940 professional baseball today i don't know if you've been to a baseball game or watch baseball

00:43:53.120 it is so boring i went to a drillers game last last year tulsa drillers game and it was the most

00:43:59.420 boring there was like no fielding there was no base stealing there was no it was just everyone

00:44:03.700 was trying to hit a home run and i was like what is going on here because in the game almost went

00:44:08.520 to extra innings and this past year i've been seeing more and more articles coming up people

00:44:12.960 writing about the game of baseball and it's this uh saber metrics that's one of the reasons people

00:44:17.660 think baseball is so boring is that it's just completely statistic driven and so you don't see

00:44:22.220 players doing what was like risky stuff stealing bases stealing home bunting you're not seeing

00:44:27.540 fielding anymore because we had baseball now is this system that can tell you exactly what you

00:44:33.300 need to do to win the game and it's taken it's taken the fun out of the game yeah you know my wife

00:44:41.660 told me that she was speaking with my son who's a big soccer fan he was and and he said that uh the

00:44:48.000 game is no longer beautiful that um it's you know they're constantly sort of stopping and looking at the

00:44:53.560 replays to see was this guy fouled and there are new rules you know the defenders have to keep their

00:44:59.160 hands behind their back and no one's making any contact and it's you know so i i haven't been to

00:45:07.780 a ball game for years i did see the drillers maybe last five years ago or something like that i used to

00:45:13.980 be a big baseball fan but i think it's i mean i know it's a trivial example but i think it shows like

00:45:18.520 how prevalent this this idea of reflection it can even color sports and for us you know sports can

00:45:26.740 be it's this it's this medium that we use to express you know passion that's what you think

00:45:32.300 sports is about but we've because of different incentives and it's a lot of just money is the

00:45:37.620 the main driver we've we've turned it into a reflective sport which it's not as fun it's not as fun yeah

00:45:43.300 yeah for sure yeah kicker it's all about risk you gotta there's no risk then it's not fun it's not

00:45:48.500 it's not enjoyable so one of the things kicker guard thought was part of this reflective age was

00:45:54.340 this thing he called leveling and i think the best way to describe leveling it's just basically this

00:45:59.740 subsuming of the individual into the crowd there's this sort of this dynamic going on of equalizing

00:46:07.240 and homogenizing so that no one stands out no one can be special and kicker guard thought it was

00:46:14.020 driven in part by the press because the press can be used to cut people down to size and just by sort

00:46:20.660 of this abstract notion of the public and public opinion and so instead of you know doing their own

00:46:26.220 their own thing having their own opinions people just sort of default to group things because they're

00:46:31.460 afraid of being leveled what did kicker i think was behind this leveling process well you know envy is is

00:46:39.680 crucial to this so and and you know as you said kicker can be difficult and one of the most difficult

00:46:46.360 things in this essay about the present age is he says reflections idea is envy right so that's a

00:46:54.860 strange statement and what does it mean well envy is a kind of malicious grudging and discontent

00:46:59.200 at the sight of another's excellence and good fortune envy wants to tear down the good to ensure that

00:47:04.700 another person doesn't enjoy the good and you see that's the effect of reflection reflection is

00:47:10.500 critical and deconstructive it's negative it disillusions and disenchants and that disillusionment

00:47:15.620 destroys action reflection raises doubt doubt paralyzes and blocks our energies and reflection

00:47:22.420 kierkegaard says always gives one an out an excuse for not making any decision it analyzes everything

00:47:29.080 it dissects it it holds it up to inspection if you do that to a living thing by the way the analysis

00:47:35.720 and cutting it open you kill it and in a way reflection does the same thing it uproots what's

00:47:40.240 grown organically and the stories we live by so the effect of all this is to substitute this virtual

00:47:45.700 world of fantastic abstract thought for the actual world and we end up being unable to distinguish our

00:47:51.480 fantasies from reality so kierkegaard says that reflections envy turns into ethical envy that is

00:47:57.600 censorious envy and meanness directed at other people i think there's some deep psychological

00:48:02.960 mechanism at work here kierkegaard doesn't really spell this out but he gives us hints

00:48:06.840 so my own sense of it is this aristotle rightly connects happiness with activity with realizing our

00:48:13.320 human potentialities and those who are paralyzed by reflection are to that extent unhappy and when these

00:48:19.140 people encounter individuals who aren't paralyzed who are active and energetic and confident and

00:48:24.700 flourishing they actually experience it as a kind of a front an insult even if they don't recognize

00:48:29.820 this and so reflections envy goes to work they find much to criticize and they're sure to be joined by

00:48:36.680 a chorus of other impotent people like themselves and kierkegaard says the effect of this phenomenon is

00:48:42.880 to make people fear even more than death he says the judgment of others which is called down on us just by

00:48:49.280 being ourselves just by being individuals so the ancient athenians had a practice called ostracism

00:48:53.200 which was among other things an outlet for envy and so there's a story about a guy named aristides he

00:48:59.720 was known as aristides the just and they had an ostracism and aristides was sitting next to a guy who

00:49:05.520 didn't recognize him and he was ostracized and aristides turns to him and he said you voted to

00:49:10.900 ostracize aristides why did you do that and the man said because i'm so tired of hearing him called the

00:49:16.040 just but kierkegaard says the one who envied and voted to ostracize for that reason right for a

00:49:24.640 reason like he's called the just knew that the person they were ostracizing was excellent okay to

00:49:30.280 kind of sum up where we've been so far kierkegaard thinks there's two types of ages there's an age of

00:49:35.220 passion and an age of reflection in an age of passion people are in touch with the energy of their soul

00:49:41.580 it's sort of like this bow it's like the tension in a bow where they aim their energy at an ideal

00:49:46.520 and then they they give their whole self to over to truth and a purpose and and a person's passion is

00:49:52.760 what unifies a person's character it's what unifies the infinite and the finite within them

00:49:58.420 but then in a reflective age you know people get lost in thought they never move into action they get

00:50:04.760 stuck in abstraction they never come to any real decision they don't you know they don't commit to

00:50:10.920 certain outcomes in life and then in this reflective age there's also this leveling process going on

00:50:15.920 where people lose their individual cells in the crowd people are afraid of standing out they're

00:50:21.760 afraid of others you know they're the public they're afraid of the public hammering them down

00:50:26.260 or ostracizing if they try to stand out but then they're also you know they're also envious of people

00:50:31.920 who are able to escape the pressures of the reflective age and stand as individuals so that's kind of

00:50:38.080 you know kigger's idea that he set up did kigger have an idea of what caused this passionless age 1.00

00:50:44.540 i mean what did he think what was going on in denmark in the middle of the 19th century where you know

00:50:50.000 it was just kind of like meh you know boring flat complacent what was going on well you know this is a big

00:50:57.060 question to which i really can't do justice but maybe i can point us in the right direction

00:51:01.580 so in the first place passion requires a kind of enchantment you know like that which the beloved

00:51:07.160 produces in the lover but the present age is marked by disenchantment and disillusionment

00:51:12.800 and i think you know to some extent this is one of the effects of modern science and philosophy

00:51:17.380 so if you think about the middle ages the middle ages held that the heavenly spheres

00:51:21.840 turned out of love for the highest love for god and the cosmos was understood to be lighted warmed and

00:51:30.140 resonant with music as c.s lewis puts it in his wonderful book the discarded image modern thinkers

00:51:36.420 like descartes swept all this away the concreteness of place gave way to the cold uniformity of space

00:51:43.900 and the value-laden idea of height of the highest and lowest things that are connected in a great chain of

00:51:49.740 being gave way to the neutral concept of distance the vibrancy of the created world gave way to the

00:51:56.200 inertness of matter which is an abstract notion but descartes further reduced it to the mathematical

00:52:02.260 and measurable concept of extension you know which can be mapped with cartesian coordinates and

00:52:07.740 you can turn it into equations so in general modern science reduces quality to quantity and in modernity

00:52:14.720 everything is relativized there are no absolutes there are no fixed standards i mean today

00:52:19.720 not even nature provides such a standard because through science and technology we can in descartes

00:52:24.620 words become the masters and possessors of nature nothing is given not even our biological characteristics

00:52:31.300 you know today i can change my sex if i if i like and again possibility is elevated over actuality

00:52:38.620 this is a characteristic of the modern world and the consideration of abstract possibilities

00:52:43.180 is exhausting and enervating it may even be nauseating modern philosophy begins in doubt and

00:52:50.120 descartes begins by doubting everything and our age kierkegaard's age and our age is critical negative and

00:52:56.560 ironic and this has always been one side of thought but today it's too often pretty much the only side it

00:53:02.420 tears down but it doesn't build up it's not constructive but it's deconstructive kierkegaard says that in the

00:53:09.220 the age of heroes and of great and good actions is past there's no great passion no hero no lover no

00:53:15.400 thinker no knight of faith well yeah he had this idea i think it's interesting every philosopher has

00:53:20.080 sort of their ideal man you know aristotle had his you know athenian gentleman nietzsche had his

00:53:25.660 ubermensch kierkegaard had his knight of faith and i think the opposite of a knight so knight of faith

00:53:30.500 is someone who has that passion they're able to be an individual and and really act out what they

00:53:35.980 believe right but he also says there's the opposite of that would be like the knight of infinite

00:53:39.300 resignation right so it's this person who just turns inward they just like i'm not going to be

00:53:44.160 involved in the world i'm just going to stay home and just stick to myself all i've got my beliefs

00:53:50.080 and i'm going to live them out privately kierkegaard said no i mean he's like he kierkegaard said i

00:53:55.360 understand why you'd want to do that right i completely get it but you need to be a knight of

00:53:58.440 faith you actually if you if you believe something you need to go out into the world and try to make it

00:54:02.900 happen yeah i mean it's you know on the other hand i think there's a passage in plato's republic

00:54:10.220 where socrates is speaking about the madness of the crowds right living in a city where there's

00:54:17.300 violence and sort of general insanity and he says you know you gotta all you can really do is hide

00:54:23.780 behind a little wall and ride out the storm and try to live your life in justice and holiness on the

00:54:30.220 other hand i would point out that socrates didn't really do that you see i mean he you know he went

00:54:35.960 out into the marketplace and he talked to people and he got himself killed so there is a kind of i

00:54:41.800 mean it's interesting because kierkegaard was a public figure you know that's why he came under fire

00:54:48.080 from the corsair and uh and he took a lot of lumps but he was trying to make the world a better place

00:54:54.960 he wasn't just hiding behind a little wall and yet there is there is something to that idea so we

00:55:02.760 have to sort of like how can i put it we have to take care of our own business and my business and

00:55:08.700 your business is our individual lives we have to have that center and that grounding and one of the

00:55:15.740 i like to get this to a micro level you know apply to you know my individual lives i think that's what

00:55:20.120 kierkegaard wants you to do i think the takeaway i got from like this idea of leveling in my own

00:55:25.040 personal life is kicker talks a lot about of don't you don't want to evade he thought evasion was like

00:55:30.880 a sin don't evade being an individual i think i think the thing i got from there is like never

00:55:36.640 like be an individual and make a decision and stand for it and have the the passion to

00:55:41.920 to live by it but never make a decision like don't pass the buck to the group right don't be like

00:55:47.980 yeah well whatever the group says i'll just go along with that because i don't want to

00:55:51.760 cause a ruckus and you see that happen in you know just small groups you belong to whether it's a

00:55:57.720 your work right you see this in group the small group dynamics well whatever the group wants to do

00:56:02.700 and then the individual's like well i got this thing i want to say it might cause a a stink i don't

00:56:07.720 want to do it and kierkegaard say no you're evading don't evade be an individual don't don't uh try to

00:56:14.060 stand up against leveling as much as you can yeah and you know of course that doesn't mean that one

00:56:21.440 should sort of abandon all prudence sure but on the other hand you know i have found myself in

00:56:27.200 situations where i'm speaking with a group of people and someone says something and i'm thinking

00:56:32.380 to myself i really ought to speak up i ought to pipe up and say something about that and i don't

00:56:38.320 and then someone else with more courage says exactly what i should have said and i feel humbled

00:56:45.560 and shamed right because i could have said the thing i was thinking the same thing so those situations

00:56:51.080 i mean they teach us something you know and this fidelity to the things that you believe and the

00:56:58.460 things you think are important that should not be buried under a kind of wet blanket of cowardly

00:57:04.780 submission to groupthink so yeah this goes back to what kierkegaard is doing he's like are you an

00:57:10.020 individual like he's basically going back grabbing by the lapels be an individual and if you say you

00:57:15.400 believe these things like do you really believe it or you don't evade don't don't say like well i'm

00:57:19.280 just doing this because like my family says it's the right thing or this my work group or my friends

00:57:23.620 say this is what i should it's like no don't don't do that i want you to be be courageous take a stand

00:57:30.080 mm-hmm yeah and you know because at the end of the day like i said i think that the idea of the

00:57:36.900 individual for both socrates and kierkegaard is an active thoughtful passionate center of

00:57:42.940 responsibility i mean there's a sense in which the ultimate outcome of this age of reflection and lack

00:57:50.500 of passion and so forth and centralization and you know the sort of abstraction of the modern age and

00:57:57.340 so forth is that there aren't any selves like no one's really worthy of the name self right that

00:58:04.580 there's somebody there who's going to who's going to stand for things and stand behind their actions

00:58:13.000 and their and their opinions and their speeches well jacob this has been a great conversation where

00:58:17.900 should people go to learn more about your work well they can go to my website jacobholland.com

00:58:23.520 they can also go to amazon and they can look there at you know the books that i've written and

00:58:28.780 one book that i edited i think between the two of those you can you can probably uh those would

00:58:34.100 probably be a good place to start well jacob this has been a great conversation thanks for your time

00:58:37.980 it's been a pleasure thank you so much brett it's always a pleasure talking with you my guest today was

00:58:43.260 jacob holland he's the author of the book kierkegaard and socrates it's available on amazon.com you can

00:58:47.540 also find more information about his work at his website jacobholland.com also check out our show notes

00:58:51.600 at aom.is slash two ages we find links to resources and we delve deeper into this topic

00:58:56.180 well that wraps up another edition of the aom podcast make sure to check out our website at

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The Art of Manliness - March 30, 2022

Kierkegaard on the Present (Passionless) Age

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