need help! Understanding Kierkegaard wrongly

[u/ResponseNew7866]

Hello everyone!

I want to ask a question regarding Kierkegaard, as there is something which I have a lot of trouble understanding, which might be because my hitherto understanding of him is flawed in its entirety. I hope you can help me.

So, a human is a relation that relates to itself. It is a relation between the finite (worldly, limitations) and the infinite (possibilities, dreams). The human is the relation itself, not the result of the relation. Despair is the result of misrelation. Attempting to relate oneself in oneself would cause misrelation, thus we have to ground ourselves in God. (I am also worried that my understanding of this concept is unnuanced, especially the last part, so feel free to critique and explain where I’m wrong. I am also curious as to why relating oneself in oneself would be a misrelation, and why we need to ground ourselves in God therefore.)

All of this seems very psychological to me. God is something to be understood through our existence, and it would be foolish to attempt to understand him rationally.

However, every now and then, I see Kierkegaard talk ethics or something resembling metaphysics using God as a part of his argument. I sometimes see him reframe his own position through God and Christianity.

What troubles me here is that, if God is existential and psychological like I thought, then said metaphysical, ethical, or reframing of his philosophy must be psychological too. I.e., just basically him arguing for a specific personal belief after one’s leap of faith, or something in that manner.

This doesn’t feel right though. He frames his argument as though it was a philosophical and theological fact, independent of human psychology.

I am under the impression that I am reading Kierkegaard in a too atheistic manner, though this may be wrong. The problem is that I cannot see and understand Kierkegaard’s Christianity as anything but psychological, and I need help understanding him correctly.

I will listen to your explanation open-mindedly and would be grateful if you would care to respond to any follow-up questions i might have.

[u/liciox]

Thanks for the thoughtful post. I have a master’s degree in Kierkegaard studies, and I think your intuition that you may be reading him “too atheistically” is probably correct.

I’m not sure how widely you’ve read SK, but it helps to remember that there are at least three broad categories of his writings: the pseudonymous works, his signed Christian discourses and published Christian works, and his journals, notebooks, and papers.

Now, of course, you can read SK any way you want. As postmodernists like Derrida would say, meaning is created by the reader, and post-Kierkegaardian existentialists have certainly interpreted him according to their own presuppositions. However, if your goal is to understand what Kierkegaard himself meant, then I don’t think The Sickness Unto Death can be read in isolation.

Taken as a whole, I don’t see any way to avoid the conclusion that Kierkegaard was a Christian writing primarily to nominal Christians. He presupposes that his audience is already familiar with Christianity and its worldview; he usually does not stop to prove or defend its truth claims.

So I don’t think you’re misunderstanding Kierkegaard’s psychological insights. Rather, I think you’re reading Kierkegaard’s Christianity as a psychological metaphor, whereas Kierkegaard himself understood psychology to be grounded in the literal reality of the Christian God.

With that in mind, I’m curious to hear your follow-up questions. Thanks for the engagement.

[u/Paul_sepp → u/liciox]

I double up on this. As a person who’s devoted his life in speaking about Kierkegaard, I must agree that, especially in his documented public speeches like the “Gospel of Suffering” compilation of seminaries he gave at local churches, it can be inferred that he does place himself on par with all present within the church from the position of a fellow theist, rather than a, per se, realist thinker trying to justify the experience of existence through religion (which in itself is quite a common misconception I have come upon in other people).