Kierkegaard on the Present (Passionless) Age
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Summary
Do you ever feel like the time we live in feels flat, complacent, timid, conformist, populated by people who are focused on playing it safe and inwardly empty? A century and a half ago, the Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard felt the same way about the period in which he lived and posited that there are two kinds of ages: the revolutionary, decisive, passionate, and the sensible, rational, and reflective.
Transcript
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brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast
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do you ever feel like the time we live in feels flat complacent timid conformist populated by
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people who are focused on playing it safe and are inwardly empty a century and a half ago the
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danish philosopher soren kierkegaard felt the same way about the period in which he lived
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and posited that there are two kinds of ages the revolutionary decisive and passionate and the
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sensible rational and reflective here to unpack kierkegaard's ideas on these two kinds of ages
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is jacob halland retired professor of philosophy and the author of kierkegaard and socrates today
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on the show jacob and i first discuss some background on kierkegaard and his existential
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philosophy we then get into the differences between an age of passion and an age of reflection
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we discuss how in a passionate age an individual stands as an individual possesses an energy which
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focuses on truth and ideals and has the courage to take bold leaps of faith while in reflective age
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the individual is subsumed by the crowd is afraid of public opinion and gets so lost in analysis and
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abstraction that he never makes a decisive move all along the way we delve into how kierkegaard's
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description of his age parallels our own and kierkegaard's evergreen call to be an individual
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embrace risk and own your opinions and actions after the show's over check out our show notes at
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aom.is slash two ages all right jacob halland welcome back to the show it's great to be here brett
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so you are a retired philosophy professor at the university of tulsa but you've been staying busy
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you've been still teaching with just other organizations you've been doing dostoyevsky things like that
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but i wanted to bring you back on the podcast because for the past year i don't know what it
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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
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reading kierkegaard and what's interesting about you you're a plato guy you spent most of your career
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writing about plato and socrates but you've also written a lot about kierkegaard as well
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how did plato lead you to kierkegaard well you know that was both a wonderful accident and a very
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natural development so we professors collect books with the intention to read them someday
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and i was in my office probably around 1995 and just looking at my books kind of idle moment and
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i pulled off the bookshelf a book called philosophical fragments which was translated by
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a guy named david swenson in 1936 and as far as i know this was the first english translation of
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kierkegaard so i knew plato's socrates and i started reading the first few pages of this book
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and he's talking about socrates and this was the socrates that i knew but it was presented
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more lucidly and directly than anything that i've ever read and kierkegaard says that socrates
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made every individual that he spoke with the absolute center of his undivided attention
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and that's how kierkegaard made me feel as a reader like he was writing for me
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you know like i was the center of his undivided attention so i was first of all struck by this
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amazing magnanimity and i should say kierkegaard was a student of the greeks he wrote a dissertation
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called the concept of irony with continual reference to socrates which by the way is a great title
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and he saw socrates passion for learning and living up to the eternal and transcendent truth
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as a philosophical analog of christian faith and that's really because socrates took risks
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right so for the socratic philosopher there's no certainty that one has adequately understood the
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truth right there's no signs that say you know you are now leaving the cave and seeing things in their
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true light and even if there were there's no certainty that you're adequately realizing what
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you've understood in your own life so these gaps of uncertainty according to kierkegaard are bridged by
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passion that is you might say by faith in the enterprise of philosophizing the faith that there is a
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humanly essential truth and that it can be known so there was this whole religious layer that i wanted
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to explore and then as i read more kierkegaard i was stunned by the creativity and range of his writing
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you know he was really a literary genius of the first order i would compare him to mozart
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he this is not an idle comparison he loved mozart's don giovanni and that opera is light and playful
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and humorous but it also contains tragic depths and religious heights and i would really say that
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it's the musical equivalent of kierkegaard's writing and both men by the way were equally prolific i think
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there are 626 catalogued musical compositions of mozart and he died at the age 35 and kierkegaard died
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at 42 and kierkegaard published at least 35 books between 1843 and 1855 when he died three of which
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by the way including probably his most famous book fear and trembling appeared on the same day
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and finally i would say you know kierkegaard is a late modern plato and what i mean by that is that
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his books like plato's dialogues are full of different characters who are all in conversation
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about the essential matters of human existence but kierkegaard is plato raised to a higher power
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his most famous writings are pseudonymous they're books that are written quote-unquote so to speak
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by at least 20 different distinct authorial personalities and so unlike plato kierkegaard
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produced the authors who wrote his books and these books are works of cultural criticism
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psychological exploration metaphysical inquiry and scriptural interpretation that combine letters
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essays diaries aphorisms parables lectures sermons and dialogues in truly groundbreaking ways
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and if any of our listeners are really interested in literature i would strongly recommend the book
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called either or which is absolutely original i don't think anything had ever been written like
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that before so let's talk about kierkegaard's big ideas okay so plato had his forms aristotle had his
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ethics through reasoning kant had his categorical imperative what was what were kierkegaard's big ideas
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like what was he trying to accomplish with his philosophy and also like how was he different from
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other philosophers yeah well you know maybe we could talk about his big themes sure yeah and you know i
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should say that i think different people would have a sort of different list but let me mention a couple
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things so you know that friedrich nietzsche and martin heidegger made it fashionable to go back to the
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earliest greek thought right these guys were interested in going back beyond socrates to the pre-socratics
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into homer but it was kierkegaard who really set the stage for this sort of thing i describe him in
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my book kierkegaard and socrates as an archaeologist of the original forms of philosophy and biblical faith
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which he found in plato socrates on the one hand and in abraham and jesus christ on the other and so
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socrates and the bible both emphasize the freedom and dignity of the individual right i mean because
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you know the bible because of its core teaching that man is made in the image of god which is
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sharpened for kierkegaard by the christian teaching that god is concerned with each and every individual
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soul so kierkegaard is writing in what he perceived to be i think correctly an age of conformity and
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increasing uniformity and it's in this context that he tries to recover the importance of what he calls
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the single individual and i should also mention you know some of his books are like dedicated to
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that single individual i'll just use that phrase so kierkegaard stands out especially for his
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understanding of the task of individual human existence and the passion that is required to
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discharge this task and because of this focused on existence on the quality of one's life as an
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existing human being he's viewed in hindsight in the hindsight of the 20th century when we have
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sartre and camus and so forth as a christian existentialist he presents a distinctive
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philosophical anthropology and psychology that can in certain respects be traced back to plato
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and i could articulate it this way human being is both body and soul and the ensouled body or
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embodied soul exists in a particular time and place but it relates to a transcendent truth
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so it's a synthesis of the temporal and the eternal the particular and the universal
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freedom and necessity and holding these together according to kierkegaard is the task of human
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existence and here he again looks to socrates socrates holds these together in an exemplary way
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right not just trying to learn the truth which he conceived as what plato called the ideas but to
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live by it and for socrates the point is not simply to know the eternal and universal idea of
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justice for example but to be just here and now and what holds these elements together
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is passion the earnestness and focus that socrates brings to his existence
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but kierkegaard's conception of the truth is not the platonic ideas right not non-living being
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but the living infinite god or rather what is revealed by god to human beings
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and you know if you think of plato's cave image right the philosopher comes out of the dark cave of human
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existence into the sunlit uplands of being and truth from the religious point of view that's not
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going to work we can't get there on our own so the truth has to come down so to speak into the cave
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through revelation well so the human being anyway if if we conceive of the truth as god as an infinite god
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the human being is also a synthesis besides the other elements i mentioned of the infinite and the finite
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and one of kierkegaard's great contributions is his psychological analysis of the conditions that
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that we experience because of the misrelation of these elements he analyzes anxiety and despair
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he has a book called the concept of anxiety and a book called the sickness unto death where he analyzes
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despair and the depression and the rage that these conditions which he claims afflict all human
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beings by the way produce as a misrelation of these elements that is the finite and the infinite time
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and eternity universality and particularity and freedom and necessity this is all spelled out in
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a terrific book that i know you're familiar with called sickness unto death and he says in that book
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that when despair is completely rooted out the self rests transparently in the power that established it
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right so that kind of transparent resting is the goal and finally i should mention one other thing and
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that's his idea of indirect communication so what matters for kierkegaard is the inner appropriation
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of the truth and that is a zone of silence because i mean i can tell you for example i can say brett god
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is love but what does this mean and how do you in particular understand it now here there isn't even any
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question of objective correctness i mean i can't look inside your soul to see if you've grasped the idea
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that god is love correctly and it's not even clear what that would mean that's a question for each
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existing individual to answer and the individual does so in the life that he or she leads
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so kierkegaard is concerned with subjectivism like it's the subjective experience so he he doesn't okay
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we've got to be clear about this he doesn't think there's like subjective truth right he believes
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there's an objective truth out there what kierkegaard is concerned with and correct me if i'm wrong with this
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what he's concerned with is your relation to that truth like are you actually trying to live up to
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that truth in your own personal interior life exactly and so i wouldn't you know the word
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subjectivism is a very loaded word because it makes people think of sort of relativity and so forth
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there's a passage in the sequel to philosophical fragments which is actually kind of a joke that is
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the the book that's the sequel is kind of a joke it's called the concluding unscientific
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postscript to philosophical fragments and the joke is that that book is like four times longer
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than philosophical fragments right supposed to be a postscript but in that book he makes it absolutely
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clear that he believes in an objective truth and but he has a very interesting passage that he says
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something like this he says where is there more truth in someone who worships the true god but does
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so with no passion right so we're in his case we're thinking say of a christian who just goes to church
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right goes through the forms but you know there's no kind of inwardness in that religiosity right it's
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just going through going through the motions or in an individual who worships a false god right
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but does so with all the passion of infinity right and what's interesting about that like he leaves the
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question open but what's interesting about it is the question is where is there more truth that is to
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say there is truth there is truth in someone in someone who is worshiping a false god right but does
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so with this incredible inwardness and of course the ideal for kierkegaard is to worship the true god
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the god of revelation the god of the new testament with all the passion of inwardness
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and you know we got to be clear here so kierkegaard he's writing from a christian perspective
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obviously that's a lot of his work is focused on but the big ideas i mean they're applicable to
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anybody of any faith or non-faith i mean this idea of human beings are infinite we are infinite and that
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we can think of infinite things to do and our capacities are infinite but we're finite and we're
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not able to reach that so you feel anxiety and i think everyone's felt that like you have this to-do
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list right of all the things you want to do before you die but you have to reconcile that with the
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fact that well you're this human being you don't maybe don't have money to do all the things you want
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to do you don't have the time to do and you feel anxious about that like kierkegaard was writing about
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that yeah and you know i mean you've mentioned a couple sources of anxiety but i think it goes even
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deeper there's a kind of nameless anxiety that has to do with let's call it metaphysical discontent
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right i mean we're dealing as human beings because we're human we're implicated in the ultimate
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questions right like why are we here and and there's a kind of you know it's common today to
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talk about a god-shaped hole in us but we don't have to necessarily think religiously we can think
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of socrates who would you know plato might analyze certain sorts of anxiety as resulting from not
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standing in the presence of the truth now here conceived again from a platonic perspective as
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kind of the the eternal structure of the world right which i mean his highest principle was the good
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which is sort of this he compares to the sun right but the idea is that the human soul isn't complete
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and isn't really nourished without coming into the presence of ultimate reality or somehow relating
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to that ultimate reality and that's really a deep source of anxiety and you're right you don't have
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to be a christian you know he's very interested in socrates and he describes socrates as sort of
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standing on the borderline of the ethical and the religious right so for socrates the notion of
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salvation is really ethical salvation it is the salvation of the soul through maintaining its
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commitment to truth and justice and virtue but there are these as i suggested kind of
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quasi-religious elements right there's a kind of faith and we even see it in the dialogue like the
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apology you know there's a faith in the pronouncement of the delphic oracle that no one is wiser than
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socrates which socrates doesn't understand but he comes to understand because he accepts the
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idea that this is a serious declaration right and so he has to start thinking about what does it
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mean to be wise and for one thing it's you know ultimately it comes down to being wise is this
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passion for the truth the belief that there is a truth and that we can discover it and we can take
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it into our lives and one of the i think one of the things that i get out of kicker whenever i read
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him because he has this great writing style because it's very it's mocking it's biting it's sarcastic
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sometimes but i feel like what kicker guard does whenever i read him he just like it feels like
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he's grabbing you by the lapels and he's just like do you really believe what you say you believe
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right like you say you believe these things but do you really really believe it i mean that's what
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the whole point of what fear and trembling is about right it's like do you do you okay if you're a
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christian or you believe in god do you really believe in a god that would say to a human being
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sacrifice your firstborn son and that it's it's so stark and it's like man do i really believe this or
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even if you're not a religious person like okay let's say you just say i i don't believe that
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there's any inherent meaning in the world well kicker guard say well do you really believe and how
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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
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to kicker guard yeah and i like your description of grabbing us by little pels but what's what's
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interesting is that you know he has this incredible lightness and incredible sense of humor
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you can compare him with nietzsche in a number of ways but nietzsche you know nietzsche talks about
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philosophizing with a hammer kicker doesn't really philosophize with a hammer except that's the effect
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on the reader so for example when you talk about grabbing by the lapels in in the book either or
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it begins with a little parable it's not even a parable a little story that really has religious
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meaning okay and so it's it's a little story about the editor of the book who bought this
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writing table you know and he loved this writing table and he put money in one of the drawers of
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the writing table and he and one morning he was going to go on a trip and the coach was outside and
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it was blowing its horn and he couldn't get the money drawer open so he got angry at the writing
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table and he took a hatchet and he banged the writing table with a hatchet but the money drawer
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didn't open but another drawer popped open and it contained the papers of two characters that he
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calls a and b and then those are supposedly the book that is called either or it's the papers edited
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by this guy but what's religiously significant about this is the banging on the desk with a hatchet
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and this becomes a symbol of you know human beings need to be hit over the head sometimes this external
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blow and that blow is a religious blow right i mean we can think of abraham leading isaac up
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up the mountain to sacrifice him it's it's this sort of being stunned and that is what kierkegaard
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wants to do because and i'll talk about this a little later he's he looked at his age and he said
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these people are complacent you know they're sort of these bourgeois christians who who if you ask
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them like he's got one passage he says um a man says to his wife am i a christian and she says well
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of course you are you know you were born in a christian country the king is a christian your
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parents were christian you've been baptized you're a christian but you see that's very external the
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issue is are you inwardly a christian do you believe as you said yeah and nietzsche picked up on
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this as well i mean that's what he meant by god is dead it wasn't necessarily that he thought that
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people externally said they don't believe in god anymore in the 19th century they acted like they
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said they'd they'd go to church they would say i i believe in god but like he says really if you
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actually look at how they behave they really don't believe in god they they rely on science or whatever
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to explain reality for them right it's not an animating principle of their existence so let's i want
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to talk about one specific work of kierkegaard because the thing about kierkegaard is you read a
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sometimes it'd be hard kind of hard to read he's like what is he talking about here
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to read it a whole bunch of times but he did write this one essay in 1846 that's really readable
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it's a lot of fun i think it's very pertinent to even our our age today this essay is called the
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present age you can read this in one sitting i've read it multiple times in preparation for this
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it's called the present age or on the death of rebellion can you give us some background on this
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essay like what was kierkegaard trying to do with it and what were what was going on in his life that
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caused him to write it yeah so the essay called the present age is part of a longer essay called
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two ages and two ages started out as a review of a novel of the same name two ages by one of
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kierkegaard's favorite authors a woman named thomasine gulenborg and the novel two ages contrasts the
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character of everyday life in copenhagen at the time of the french revolution okay 1790s and the
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author calls that the age of revolution and the 1840s which she calls the present age so the book
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appeared as you said in 1845 or 1846 something like this at the time that denmark was an absolute
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monarchy and it would become a constitutional monarchy as political reforms swept across europe in
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the tumultuous year of 1848 and that of course is the year that marx published the communist manifesto
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but the author's impression of life in the present age which kierkegaard shared was that the energetic
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passion of the revolutionary age had given way to a kind of bourgeois superficiality and triviality
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and this is you know after the french revolution things had in certain respects settled down many
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features of the modern state had emerged that are with us to this day so for example napoleon
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instituted legal codes that advanced advanced equality under the law government was centralized
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and bureaucratized education was expanded and under the control of the state and so forth
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and this contrast between the two ages that's brought up by the novel two ages is what interested
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kierkegaard and his reflections on this contrast occupy more space than his review of the novel i think
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the review of the novel is like 35 pages and if you haven't read the book two ages which i have to
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confess i haven't you know he kind of summarizes it and talks about it but the really interesting
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stuff is his reflection on these two ages so there are two other things that need to be said about the
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historical context and i think that are important for understanding kierkegaard one is the influence
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of hegel and the other is kierkegaard's battle with a satirical publication called the corsair
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so with regard to hegel in kierkegaard's day the intellectual world world of denmark and indeed i
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would say of europe as a whole was dominated by the thought of the great german philosopher gwf hegel
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and hegel's philosophy was highly abstract and systematic his highest principle was not god but
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reason you can sort of think of hegel as kind of translating religious history into philosophical
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history and reason unfolded in history and according to hegel history was a necessary and rational
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process and it had reached its goal its ultimate goal of human freedom in the post-napoleonic liberal
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states of europe now this view by the way was embraced not just by danish philosophers but by
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leading theologians and kierkegaard thought that this triumphant social philosophy gave the age a kind of
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smug self-satisfaction right here we stand at the end of history right human striving has reached its
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goal and he thought that it debased christian faith and in some sense even made it impossible
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and hegel's idea of history is behind the notion of the demands of the times which kierkegaard
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criticizes in two ages he starts his book two ages by talking about the demands of the times
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and this applies to our time today you know it's common to hear people today talk about being on the
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right side of history but you see this phrase being on the right side of history assumes that
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we understand the mysterious mechanism of history which we don't and anyway very often people on the
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right side morally right the side of what is good and just are trampled underfoot by the march of
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history and what's more the implicit assumption of people who talk about being on the right side of
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history is that human beings should change to keep up with the demands of the times and kierkegaard
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thinks this is completely backwards he says that to be human is to learn from the older person who
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remains true to himself and what kierkegaard admires about the author thomasin gulenborg is that she
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remained true to herself he writes that nothing has ever been so cruel as the demands of the times in the
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mouth of the young okay so last thing that the uh the corsair this magazine or the corsair was a
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magazine that was established in 1840 as an organ for public opinion and the founding editor said
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when it first appeared that in spite of the name right in corsair means a pirate ship this publication
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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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
00:59:06.900
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00:59:10.520
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