The Paradoxical Rationality of Søren Kierkegaard by McCombs Richard

Author:McCombs, Richard
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780253006578
Publisher: Indiana University Press

The Power of Direct Communication and Its Correct Use

Kierkegaard differs from Climacus in stressing that subjectivity sometimes requires direct communication. When subjective thinkers address people who are receptive to the truth, Kierkegaard recommends the use of direct communication. But “when an illusion is involved,” so that the subjective thinker’s targeted audience is unreceptive to the truth, Kierkegaard recommends indirect communication (PV, 8). This is to say that direct communication is helpful for people whom Climacus calls simple (CUP, 160, 170, 181–182). For simple people listen with open hearts and minds to plain, straightforward advice, and, if they judge the counsel to be sound, do their utmost to apply it to their lives. Such people obviously have no need of being deceived into the truth by indirect communication. Used on such simple folk, indirect communication is at best a confusing distraction and at worst a seduction.

One form of direct communication, witnessing to the truth by risking persecution, is according to Kierkegaard often appropriate even when the audience is not friendly to truth. For a person who is willing to suffer and die for the truth often has the power to penetrate through deaf ears into stubborn souls. Thus direct communication, according to Kierkegaard, is not just a regrettably necessary corrective to the weaknesses and limitations of indirect communication, but a crucial and powerful means of spreading the Gospel.

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