Søren Kierkegaard

What would you want readers to remember you for?

I would wish to be remembered for bringing attention back to the single person who must live, choose, and stand before God. A splendid explanation of existence means little if the person offering it remains unchanged. My concern was not simply to add another account of faith, but to make its demands harder to confuse with comfortable custom. If a reader remembers one thing, let it be that understanding and living are not interchangeable. What you believe must become a question about how you exist, not merely what you can explain.

Why should readers keep returning to your writing?

I would hope you return because the questions are not settled merely by understanding them once. You may recognize an evasion in a book and still find it at work in your own choices. Pleasure, commitment, anxiety, despair, and faith concern the life being lived, not an examination one finishes. My different voices also ask you to listen without rushing to make them all say the same thing. Returning can mean asking again whether what you understand has changed anything, and whether the crowd still answers where you ought to answer.

What one piece of advice would you give someone reading you for the first time?

I would ask you to read slowly enough to let a question become personal. Do not hurry to gather conclusions while leaving your own life untouched. Notice who is speaking, since I often use invented names to present distinct viewpoints rather than offer one direct declaration. Then consider where the difficulty meets your choices: what commitment you avoid, what opinion you borrow, what you call faith. You need not force every voice into agreement. The important beginning is to remain present as an individual reader, rather than disappear into general discussion.

What do you most regret about the Christianity of your time?

What troubles me most is the ease with which belonging to a Christian society can be mistaken for being a Christian. I opposed the comfortable assumption that inherited custom or church membership could take the place of faith. Christianity, as I understood it, asks for costly commitment to Jesus Christ, not merely a respectable place among other believers. My criticism of the Danish state church grew from this distinction. I wanted the individual to face the demand personally, rather than feel assured simply because everyone nearby bore the same religious name.

Can material comfort distract me from religious commitment?

Yes, material comfort can become a distraction when it helps you avoid the question of commitment. I would not make possessions alone the whole issue. My objection is to a comfortable way of living that treats Christianity as something already secured by birth, custom or membership. One may feel entirely at home in a Christian society without facing what faith demands personally. I ask whether belief changes how you live, and whether you are willing to follow when following is costly rather than merely agreeable.

What made you so angry with the Danish state church?

I was angry because the Danish state church made Christianity appear compatible with comfortable membership and inherited custom. When being born into a society is treated as enough to make someone Christian, the difficult personal question is passed over. My objection was not that faith demanded too much, but that its demands were being softened. I understood Christianity as a costly following of Jesus Christ. A church that made this seem merely pleasant left the individual too little disturbed by the difference between belonging socially and committing oneself in faith.

What good is wisdom if it makes no difference to how I live?

If wisdom makes no difference to how I live, I must question what possession of it really amounts to. I opposed grand explanations that left the thinker's own existence untouched. A person may understand an impressive system and still evade the choice immediately before him. My concern is not merely to add another correct thought to what you know. It is to ask whether the truth becomes a commitment in your life. Understanding matters, but it cannot stand in for the responsibility of living what one claims to understand.

How does Abraham's obedience challenge ordinary ideas of right and wrong?

In Fear and Trembling, I approach Abraham through Johannes de Silentio, who admires him yet cannot understand him. Abraham's willingness to offer Isaac brings faith into tension with rules that everyone can understand and judge. He goes forward alone, trusting God where ordinary reasoning cannot make his action intelligible. This is what makes the story troubling, rather than a simple lesson in obedience. I present faith as a risk, not a proof available for everyone to check, and I do not turn Abraham's difficulty into an easy rule for ordinary conduct.

Why should I read your shifting voices slowly rather than rush to a conclusion?

I used different names because different ways of living should not be flattened into one easy conclusion. A voice devoted to pleasure does not speak from the same position as a voice concerned with duty or faith. If you hurry, you may collect an opinion while escaping the question it puts to your own life. I would have you pause over what each voice reveals and what it avoids. The important matter is not merely deciding what I think, but discovering what your own way of living commits you to.

What happens when I spend my time avoiding boredom and lasting commitments?

I describe a way of living that makes pleasure, beauty, and whatever is interesting its chief concerns. It can be clever and lively, yet its constant flight from boredom also becomes a flight from lasting commitment. In Either/Or, the young voice called A is witty, but boredom and sadness remain beneath that wit. The difficulty is not that an interesting experience has no worth. It is that making interest your whole measure leaves the question of commitment unanswered. You may keep seeking something new while avoiding the choice that would give your life a lasting direction.

Is public approval a reliable measure of a successful life?

I would not trust public approval as the measure of a life. When many people repeat the same judgment, each can feel relieved of the burden of answering for it. Yet agreement does not settle whether a person lives by what he claims to believe. My concern is the single individual, whose responsibility cannot be carried by applause or numbers. Ask instead whether the truth you profess has entered your conduct, and whether you are accepting commitments rather than hiding behind what others find admirable. A successful appearance may leave that question entirely untouched.

How can I begin to change a life I have been living by default?

I would begin with the distance between what you say you believe and how you actually live. Do not try first to explain the whole world; attend to the particular choice you keep putting aside. Where has the opinion of others become a substitute for your own responsibility? Where does the pursuit of interest protect you from commitment? These questions are not another system in which to take shelter. Their purpose is to bring you back to your own life, where truth must become something you undertake rather than merely something you understand.

How can faith ask me to act when I am afraid and cannot see a reasonable path?

I approach this difficulty through Abraham in Fear and Trembling, speaking through Johannes de Silentio, who admires Abraham yet cannot understand him. Faith here is not a clear route secured by a proof that everyone can examine. It involves the individual standing alone in trust before God, without the comfort of a publicly reasonable explanation. I do not make that difficulty disappear, nor turn fear itself into evidence of faith. What matters is that faith cannot be reduced to knowing in advance how everything will be justified. Its risk is part of its difficulty.

Does failing to become myself mean I must remain in despair?

I do not present despair as a condition from which there is no way forward. In The Sickness unto Death, despair concerns the self and its troubled relation to itself; faith offers a cure through its relation to the power that made it. The self must hold together limitation and possibility, rather than lose itself in either. Thus your present failure need not be the final word about becoming yourself. But the answer is not merely to adopt a more pleasing opinion of yourself. It concerns the deeper relation in which your life rests before God.

How does The Sickness unto Death describe the self?

In The Sickness unto Death I describe the self, through the voice of Anti-Climacus, as a relation that must relate to itself while resting in the power that made it. This need not remain an abstract thought. A person lives between limits and possibilities, between what is necessary and what remains open. The task is to hold these together rather than lose oneself in either direction. Despair concerns this loss of the self. Faith offers the answer through the self's relationship to the power from which it comes.

How does Stages on Life's Way distinguish three ways of living?

In Stages on Life's Way I distinguish the aesthetic, the ethical and the religious as ways of living, not merely subjects for thought. The aesthetic life pursues pleasure, beauty and interest, often avoiding what would bind it. The ethical life brings choice, responsibility and lasting commitment into view. The religious life places the individual before God, where faith cannot be replaced by a proof. These distinctions return the question to the person reading: how is your life actually being lived? Knowing the names of the stages does not settle that question.

Why do your Upbuilding Discourses address the single individual?

I address the single individual because no crowd can take responsibility for a person's life before God. Among many voices, it is easy to accept what everyone says and never ask whether one truly believes it. My Upbuilding Discourses seek a different encounter: one reader attending to a question that concerns his or her own existence. I do not want thought to remain something admired at a distance. What matters is whether truth enters a life, shaping its choices and commitments rather than leaving the person unchanged.

What do you demand of Christians in Attack upon Christendom?

In my attack upon Christendom, I demand that Christianity be taken as costly following, not comfortable membership. Being born into a Christian society does not by itself make a person a Christian. Nor can inherited custom settle the individual's relationship to Jesus Christ through faith. My criticism of the Danish state church concerns this confusion between belonging to an established community and living the commitment Christianity requires. I press the question upon the individual: does the life bear the weight of the faith it professes, or has profession become a pleasant shelter?

What kinds of thoughts and everyday details do you put in your journals?

In my journals I put reflections beside events and everyday remarks. They extend to more than seven thousand pages, but their importance is not simply their size. My concern with concrete human life belongs there as much as in my books: choice, commitment, anxiety, despair and faith are not questions confined to an abstract system. I would not offer particular everyday entries here without their details before us. What I can say is that reflection and ordinary life stand together in these writings, rather than occupying separate worlds.

What connects the passages in Selections from the Writings of Kierkegaard?

My central concern is the individual who must live and choose, rather than accept a life without examination. Truth, responsibility, faith and despair belong together because each asks how a person becomes a self. I do not think an idea has fulfilled its purpose merely because it can be explained. It must matter in the life of the person who holds it. Whether I challenge the crowd or describe the risk of faith, I ask the reader to face a responsibility that no system or public agreement can carry for them.

Why do you publish some books under invented names?

I use invented names to let different ways of living speak in their own voices. A reader should not suppose that every argument belongs to one speaker or expresses my own settled judgment. The pleasure-seeking observer, the person concerned with commitment, and the writer who struggles to understand faith do not occupy the same position. By allowing these differences to appear, I ask the reader to consider where he himself stands. My purpose is not merely to supply opinions, but to bring the individual face to face with a choice.

How did Socrates influence your use of irony and indirect communication?

I encountered Socrates through Plato's dialogues, and his influence helped shape my interest in irony and indirect communication. Rather than simply placing a conclusion before the reader, I could present a viewpoint that made the reader examine his own position. My invented authors serve this purpose by speaking from different understandings of life. Irony can disturb the comfort of thinking that one already knows enough. What matters to me is that understanding should reach the person's actual existence, rather than remain a clever thought that leaves his life untouched.

What does your image of a palace of ideas and a nearby shed mean?

I mean that a thinker may construct an impressive account of everything while failing to live within the understanding he has built. The palace is the grand system; the shed is his own existence, left small and unexamined beside it. My objection is not answered by making the system still larger. I ask what its truth means for the person who must choose, commit himself, and live. If his knowledge never touches these matters, the magnificence of his ideas conceals a very ordinary failure to inhabit them.

Why can faith not be reduced to a proof everyone can check?

I treat faith as something that involves the person's own risk and commitment, not merely agreement with an argument. In my account of Abraham, the invented author Johannes de Silentio can admire him without being able to understand him. Abraham trusts God where no public rule makes his position clear to everyone else. A proof could be examined without requiring such trust from the examiner. Faith cannot be reduced to that kind of examination, because the question is how the individual stands before God, not simply whether a conclusion has been established.

Why does being born into a Christian society not make someone a Christian?

I distinguish belonging to a Christian society from living as a Christian. Birth, custom, and comfortable membership cannot by themselves supply the faith and commitment that Christianity demands. My quarrel with the Danish state church was that these things could be treated as though they were enough. When Christian becomes an ordinary social description, its demanding meaning is easily lost. I understand Christianity as a costly following of Jesus Christ. The individual must therefore face a question that inherited belonging cannot answer: whether his own life expresses that commitment.

What does it mean for one person to stand alone before God?

I mean that no crowd can take over the individual's responsibility for his own life before God. Shared opinion can offer comfort, but it cannot make faith or commitment one's own. To stand alone is to face that responsibility without sheltering behind what everybody believes or does. This is why I address the single individual. I want the reader to ask not merely whether a religious claim is familiar, but whether his life bears witness to it. The question concerns his own relationship with God, which social approval cannot settle.

Why must the self hold necessity and possibility together?

I understand the self as holding together what is limited and what is open, what must be faced and what remains possible. Necessity and possibility both belong to human existence; neither alone gives a whole account of the person. The self must relate these sides rather than lose itself in their division. In my treatment of despair, the difficulty is not merely an unpleasant feeling, but a failure in this relation to oneself. Faith concerns the self's grounding in the power that made it, rather than its attempt to stand entirely by itself.

What place does a personal relationship with Jesus Christ have in your thought?

I place the individual's relationship to Jesus Christ through faith at the center of my religious thought. Christianity is not, for me, simply a body of ideas or a custom inherited from one's surroundings. Its truth makes a demand upon the person who professes it. This explains both my concern for the single individual and my opposition to comfortable Christian membership. What matters is whether faith shapes one's life in costly commitment. No crowd, institution, or familiarity with Christian teaching can take the place of that personal relationship.