[MUSIC] The modern world makes many demands of us. Things are constantly changing and we're obliged to adapt and learn new things in order to be able to live in this changing world. In a certain sense, the modern world is coercive since it doesn't matter what I may happen to think of these changes, but rather, I'm in one way or another inevitably obliged to go along with them if I'm going to continue to be a participating member of society. But, what should I do if certain social or political changes come along that I have serious problems or disagreements with? Should I feel obliged to go along with these things that I don't agree to, or that bother my moral conscience or my ethical or religious convictions? There are some groups of people who feel alienated from certain aspects of their culture, so they make an attempt to separate themselves from the mainstream and set up their own small society ignoring the larger one around them as much as they can. This might seem like a good solution, but groups ff this kind often pay a high price for their separation, and for cutting themselves off from the mainstream. They're forced to live a marginalized and alienated existence in their own society. We've seen it in Hegel's analysis of the role of Socrates in ancient Greece, that traditional customary ethics is what governs mainstream society. But the key point is that the individual has the right to evaluate this with their own rationality and to assent to it or not, this is the right of conscience. Kierkegaard agreed with Hegel on this, and both of them viewed Socrates as a great revolutionary in his attempts to assert the rights of the individual. These are, however, not just issues of historical importance. Today, we talk about things like civil courage, where individuals stand up for what they believe in the face of a corrupt government or system. Journalists, political activists, and people of conscience today risk their lives, their reputations, and their livelihoods, by speaking out publicly about the injustices that they see around them. What should the rights of the individual be in such cases? Although Kierkegaard is generally known as a religious writer, his works also contain insightful considerations about issues of this sort concerning things such as politics and social theory. In the lecture today, we want to see how Kierkegaard, inspired by Socrates, explores some of these issues in the context of some of the first works after he concluded his degree and set off on his career as an author. After the successful defense of his masters thesis, the concept of irony and in the wake of his broken engagement with Regina Olson, Kierkegaard fled Copenhagen for Berlin, the capital of Prussia. He stayed in Berlin from October 25, 1841 to March 6, 1842. While he was there, he attended lectures at the university and considered what he wanted to do with his life. He rented a room on Jagerstraus of 57, just opposite Gendarmenmarkt. The big event at the University of Berlin was the new appointment of the old philosopher Freidrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling, who was the lone remaining survivor of the golden days of German idealism, with Victor having died in 1814 in Hegel in 1831. Throughout the 1830s and at the beginning of 1840s Hegel's students were having a profound influence on intellectual life. One group of these students known as the Left Hegelians understood Hegel to be critical of traditional religious belief and used this philosophical methodology to try to undermine Christianity. Among these students were important figures such as Ludwig Feuerbach, David Friedrich Strauss, Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, and Bruno Bauer. This was regarded as an alarming trend that was though to undermine both religion and politics. And so, the King of Prussia was determined to do something about it. He decided to appoint Schelling in order to combat it. Although Schelling had been one of Hegel's friends in youth. In later years, they criticized one another. So, he was, in a sense, well-suited for the job. Schelling had disappeared from the public eye for many years and so it caused a great sensation when people heard that he received an appointment at the University of Berlin. Soon some professors alike were keen to see the old philosopher and to hear his lectures for a major event in Berlin. Everyone was especially keen to see what Schelling would say about the Hegelians and what they would say in response. Everyone was talking about the lectures, and they were even reported on in local newspapers. Kierkegaard also attended these lectures. He records his notes to them in notebook 11. Kierkegaard seemed initially to be very enthusiastic about Schilling, but in time he grew tired of him and stopped taking notes altogether. In a letter to his brother from February of 1842, he writes, I quote, Schelling talks the most insufferable nonsense. I am too old to attend lectures just as Schelling is too old to give them. During the same time, Kierkegaard also attended lectures but the Hegelian theologian Philipp Marheineke. He took quite detailed notes to Marheineke's lectures on Christian dogmatics in his notebook nine and ten. He also attended a course offered by the Hegelian logician Karl Werder and took notes in the same notebooks. In addition to these academic pursuits, while he was in Berlin, Kierkegaard attended the theater and contemplated what he wanted to do with his life he had just completed his thesis on Socrates and irony and this provided him with a model. He was very attracted to the idea of following Socrates' example in his own Danish context. He decided to develop a series of writings that would incorporate a number of Socratic elements, not least of all, irony. He wanted to employ the same strategy as Socrates in order to undermine what he took to be the mistaken views of his own day. In his work The Point of View for My Work as an author, Kierkegaard gives an overview of all of his writings and explains his general authorial strategy. In this work, he somewhat says that his authorship began with Either/Or. That is, the work that he wrote after the concept of irony. In other words he oddly doesn't count his masters thesis, the concept of irony is a part of his authorship. In Kierkegaard studies this has often been interpreted to mean that Kierkegaard regarded his masters thesis as an immature early work a piece of juvenilia best left forgotten. For this reason Kierkegaard scholars have long focused on what have been regarded as his mature works. Such as fear and trembling or the concluding unscientific postscript and have neglected the concept of irony. This is unfortunate since this work is highly insightful for understanding what Kierkegaard regards as his official authorship. The key point to understand here is that Kierkegaard didn't exclude the concept of irony from the authorship since he didn't think it was a mature or important work. But rather because it appeared before he hit upon his general idea for the authorship and for this reason it didn't follow the same strategy of the other works in the authorship. But as we will see in the rest of this course. The concept of irony with its analysis of Socrates, provided Kierkegaard with the very model for his authorship. Indeed, it helped him to develop the idea for all of the works that he would write from 1843 until his death in 1855. So instead of being a part of the authorship proper, the concept of irony was a preparation for the authorship. But this means that it's importance has increased rather than diminished since this work provides an invaluable interpretive key to the authorship itself. While he was in Berlin, Kierkegaard began work on a new book which was to become Either/Or. He conceived of this work in the midst of animated discussions about Hegel's philosophy that were taking place around him in Berlin. In the second lecture of this course, we discuss the concept of Aporia in Plato's Dialogues. And in this context we noted that Hegel was critical of this element in Socrates' thought. Hegel thought that it was a mistake to stop with a negative result. Instead, the goal of philosophy was to see how the negative was necessarily related to the positive. Hegel believed that Socrates' negative method was important, but Socrates failed to take the important next step of constructing a positive philosophy. Hegel's Danish follower, Hans Lassen Martensen, thus encouraged his students to go further than Socrates. Hegel believed that philosophy was all about seeing the necessary organic relations between opposites. As we saw in the second lecture, being and nothingness are not two separate concepts, but rather each implies and presupposes the other. When a philosophy takes one side of such a dichotomy and holds onto it firmly, it fails to see the wider truth. Hegel refers to a one sided truth as dogmatism. In his book, The Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences, Hegel explains, I quote, dogmatism consists in adhering to one-sided determinations of the understanding while excluding their opposites. This is just the strict either-or, according to which, for instance, the world is either finite or infinite, but not both, here Hegel refers to the law of excluded middle which states that either something is X or it's not. In other words, either the house is red or it's not, but it must be one of the two. Hegel makes a shorthand version of this by simply calling it the either or. In Denmark in 1839 there was a debate about this point in Kierkegaard philosophy. The bishop of Zealand Jakob Peter Mynster who served in the church of our lady, criticized Hegel, arguing that the law of excluded middle had been one of the corner stones of logic and common sense ever since Aristotle, and it was absurd to deny it. In response to him, the Hegelian Martensen responded that key Christian documents such as the incarnation and the trinity could not be made sense of in terms of Aristotle's logic. According to this view, Jesus would have to be either God or human but not both. Martinson thus argued that some form of mediation must be presupposed that Hegel's logic can account for but which Aristotle would have to reject. Martinson writes, I quote, the central point of Christianity, the doctrine of the incarnation, the doctrine of the God man shows precisely that Christian metaphysics cannot remain in an either or, but that it must find the truth in a third which the law of excluded middle rules out. Kierkegaard followed this to be closely as a student at the University of Copenhagen. He seized upon the formulation of either or for the title of his new book. The work is divided into two parts by two authors part one is written by the anonymous A the astute and part two by B or Judge William. In the preface of the work the reader is told that the two texts were found by accident by Victor Arameta who decided to publish them as editor. With this work, Kierkegaard attempts to create two different world views, and juxtapose them to one another. He tries to create a kind of dialogue between the [INAUDIBLE], who makes a case for his carefree existence. And the judge, who argues for the virtues of living a stable, predictable, bourgeoise life. But like a Socratic dialogue that ends in Aporia, this dialogue doesn't come to any positive conclusion. Kierkegaard doesn't come in at the end and say who won the debate. Rather he seems to want to simply present two positions to the readers as two important views of the age and then leave it to them to decide for themselves which one they find more attractive. So with the work he presents in Either/Or and refuses to take the next step that Hegel demands by getting past the negation in constructing something positive. By choosing this title, Kierkegaard seems to indicate that one should embrace negation, opposition, and contradiction, and resist the urge to solve it. In this sense, he's following in the path of Socrates. Either/Or can be seen as a kind of Socratic dialogue between two opposing positions, a dialogue that ends in Aporia. Kierkegaard has the aesthete refer to this discussion at the beginning of the work in a short section entitled, Either/Or, An Ecstatic Discourse. The astute makes use of the long excluded middle a given thing must be either X or not X and derives in a number of different formulations some of them seemingly absurd. I quote, Marry, and you will regret it. Don't marry, and you will also regret it. Marry or don't marry, you will regret it either way. Here the dichotomy is introduced, either marry or don't marry. According to Hegel's logic, these oppositions must be resolved or mediated. But Kierkegaard insists on holding firmly to the opposition. With regard to Hegelian mediation, he writes, quote, but this is a misunderstanding, for the true eternity does not lie behind either or, but before it. In other words, the truth appears not when the dichotomy or opposition has mediated or resolved with the either or or behind it, but rather when one is confronted with it. The resolution of such conceptual conundrums lies in the realm of thought but cannot be done in life. In life, one is subject to such irresolvable oppositions. The goal is to remain in the Socratic negativity or Aporia and not go further. [MUSIC]
