Kierkegaard by Stephen Backhouse

Author:Stephen Backhouse
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Zondervan
Published: 2016-05-31T16:00:00+00:00

Armed Neutrality. If my relation were to pagans, I could not be neutral; then in opposition to them I would have to say that I am a Christian. But I am living in Christendom, among Christians, or among people who all say they are Christians. . . . This is why I keep neutral with regard to my being a Christian. . . . The task, then, is to present the ideal of a Christian, and here I intend to do battle.

Two foundational books in Søren’s neutrally offensive arsenal are Sickness unto Death and Practice in Christianity, both substantially written in 1848 but published separately in the ensuing years. Before it was printed, Søren referred to Sickness unto Death as an “attack upon Christendom” and Christendom an “altogether un-Christian concept.” Early plans for the book included publishing it together with another essay titled “An Attempt to Introduce Christianity into Christendom.” The book deals primarily with different forms of despair, original sin, and becoming an authentic self. It was published in the summer of 1849, but not before Søren indulged in yet another extended round of to-ing and fro-ing over what name it should be ascribed to.

Søren’s journals and his posthumously published Point of View relate the awkward relationship to the pseudonyms the Corsair and the collision with Christendom had put him in. Before, Søren had been able to stand above his characters, writing books the content of which he personally may or may not have agreed with. In any case, the point was for readers to weigh and decide for themselves, not look directly to the author for guidance. The signed religious works and the constant presence on the streets was a way of distancing himself from these books. Now, all eyes were on Søren, and the distance between his person and his writing collapsed. What is more, his writing scheme had come up to the point where the highest Christian categories needed to be elucidated, a stage higher than Søren himself felt he occupied. It must not look like he himself was the Christian he was describing in his new books.

Thus a new character, Anti-Climacus, was born with a position and relationship to Søren hitherto unseen in the literature. Although there is a clear connection to Johannes Climacus, Anti does not simply mean “against.” Instead, the anti (as in “anticipate”) connotes something greater or prior. Much as a great house will have an anteroom from which all the other doors and corridors lead, so too Anti-Climacus is invested with thoughts and positions higher and more central than that of the other pseudonyms. Anti-Climacus is not intended to hide Søren’s involvement (he lists his name as the editor) but it does provide the necessary distance Søren felt he needed between the work and himself. If the readers of Christendom felt weighed and found wanting by this ideal Christian, then so too did Søren. “I would place myself higher than Johannes Climacus, lower than Anti-Climacus.”

Days before Anti-Climacus was due to hit

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