Kierkegaard

[Slavoj Zizek's Balls]

Title. What can you tell me about him and his relevance? How does his form of Christianity relate to Nietzsche's philosophy? As sources of meaning, what makes Kierkegaard's faith any better than Sartre's Anarchism and/or Marxism?

[exeexe]

Yeah, he reduced himself to not care about anything:

I do not care for anything. I do not care to ride, for the exercise is too violent. I do not care to walk, walking is too strenuous. I do not care to lie down, for I should either have to remain lying, and I do not care to do that, or I should have to get up again, and I do not care to do that either. Summa summarum: I do not care at all.

Example:
People are starving to death but right nearby a shop is selling food to extreme prices so people cant afford it: Søren Kirkegård would not have cared

[Creative Destruction]

Yeah, he reduced himself to not care about anything:


Example:
People are starving to death but right nearby a shop is selling food to extreme prices so people cant afford it: Søren Kirkegård would not have cared

you seem to be misreading him. Kierkegaard struggled with depression through most of his life. this is what he is talking about here. he didn't "reduce himself" to anything. that was likely his disease talking. he goes through this quite a bit in Either/Or, to a point where you can tell what parts of the book he wrote when he was in a depression.

[Creative Destruction]

Title. What can you tell me about him and his relevance? How does his form of Christianity relate to Nietzsche's philosophy? As sources of meaning, what makes Kierkegaard's faith any better than Sartre's Anarchism and/or Marxism?

most of his significance to a socialist, with regards to religion, has to do with his criticism of organized religion. he primarily maintained that religion and spirituality are intensely personal and should not be subject to influence from, or for it to influence, the state.

other that that, he's really not much of significance to anarchism or Marxism. he was critical of the German Idealists, so i guess you might be able to read some criticisms from Kierkegaard as -- maybe -- similar to Marx's criticisms (but Marx attacked Hegel from a different perspective, so maybe not.) i also doubt that Marx would have read Kierkegaard, since Kierkegaard's books weren't translated outside of Danish until well after Marx had already mounted his philosophical attacks on Hegel. (i don't know if Marx could or couldn't read Danish.)

Theodor Adorno wrote a pretty horrible critique of Kierkegaard, which i would suggest reading as a good example of how not to read a philosopher. i know that Sartre had some things to say about Kierkegaard, but i'm not sure what. i never looked into that, so i apologize that i can't be much of help there (or that i probably wasn't much help to begin with.)

[Slavoj Zizek's Balls]

most of his significance to a socialist, with regards to religion, has to do with his criticism of organized religion. he primarily maintained that religion and spirituality are intensely personal and should not be subject to influence from, or for it to influence, the state.

other that that, he's really not much of significance to anarchism or Marxism. he was critical of the German Idealists, so i guess you might be able to read some criticisms from Kierkegaard as -- maybe -- similar to Marx's criticisms (but Marx attacked Hegel from a different perspective, so maybe not.) i also doubt that Marx would have read Kierkegaard, since Kierkegaard's books weren't translated outside of Danish until well after Marx had already mounted his philosophical attacks on Hegel. (i don't know if Marx could or couldn't read Danish.)

Theodor Adorno wrote a pretty horrible critique of Kierkegaard, which i would suggest reading as a good example of how not to read a philosopher. i know that Sartre had some things to say about Kierkegaard, but i'm not sure what. i never looked into that, so i apologize that i can't be much of help there (or that i probably wasn't much help to begin with.)

What you've said has been useful, don't worry (mainly in confirming what I knew).

I'm not sure of something with him though. Why be a Christian (in the Kierkegaardian fashion)? I know there's the irrational side, the leap TO faith from the Esthetic/Ethical Stages to the Religious Stage (so maybe there is no "why", merely "is"... but then why Christian and not Muslim?). Nietzsche's walking of the opposite path makes more sense to me (as an atheist he criticised Christianity's origins in St. Paul, its inability to promote self-growth etc.) and he explains why one ought not to have faith in God.

So... why be a Kierkegaardian Christian?

[Creative Destruction]

i never got the impression that he was ever trying to convince someone to be a Kierkegaardian Christian (i've never heard this term before.) his philosophy is very individualistic and is presented as a take it or leave it line of thought. in the end, it didn't matter to him one way or another. he even said once, to the effect of: "i'd rather be regarded as a poet than a prophet." this stands in stark contrast to, say, the aggressive atheism of Nietzsche, who had some personal stake in trying to convince people that he was right. or even with Marx, who had a political interest in convincing people of his description of capital and exploitation. this wasn't really a concern of Kierkegaard. he practiced a kind of passive, leave-me-alone kind of individualism.

since his Christianity was deeply personal and not really to be a shared experience, i'd figure his argument would be applicable regardless of religion. it was an extreme kind of "no religion at the dinner table" sentiment. i mean, Kierkegaard believed in the supremacy of Christianity as far as it went with him personally, but his attacks on the Church of Denmark could easily be adapted into an attack on any organized or state-backed theology.

to your question "why be a Kierkegaardian Christian?"...i don't think he would've had an answer to that. he probably would've told you that you would need to figure out why you needed to be one, and to whenever you chose or figured it out; to keep it away from him.

[Dean]

Kierkegaard is really on the fringes of philosophy. He often implies ideas but rarely addresses them outright. To some extent this could be seen as a channeling of Hume - he adds his emotional uncertainty to everything by emphasizing narrative forms and vaguer language.

As a result, his work is rather poor imo for anything more than example.

[Creative Destruction]

i found his writings to be cathartic when i was going through my intense period of depression. so, he was useful for that, personally. but, yeah, if you're looking for some incredible world changing philosophical considerations, kierkegaard wasn't much on the front of that.

[Rafiq]

All modern revolutionary epochs, from the Jacobins to the Bolsheviks were led by what Kierkegaard described as knights of faith. Sure you can misconstrue this as an assertion that they were literally religious fanatics - a closer look reveals that substituting God with ideological universality - ideological wholeness is perfectly possible. Be they the idea of bourgeois civic virtue or the truth of Communism itself (as far as the real nature of things go, as far as understanding exploitation, whatever).

We take this for granted. The Communist ideological universe is true, but true only insofar as it is a socially based phenomena.

[Five Year Plan]

Did Tsar Nicholas II knight the Bolsheviks? I am familiar with Sir Paul McCartney, but not Sir Vladimir Lennon.

[Slavoj Zizek's Balls]

i never got the impression that he was ever trying to convince someone to be a Kierkegaardian Christian (i've never heard this term before.) his philosophy is very individualistic and is presented as a take it or leave it line of thought. in the end, it didn't matter to him one way or another. he even said once, to the effect of: "i'd rather be regarded as a poet than a prophet." this stands in stark contrast to, say, the aggressive atheism of Nietzsche, who had some personal stake in trying to convince people that he was right. or even with Marx, who had a political interest in convincing people of his description of capital and exploitation. this wasn't really a concern of Kierkegaard. he practiced a kind of passive, leave-me-alone kind of individualism.

since his Christianity was deeply personal and not really to be a shared experience, i'd figure his argument would be applicable regardless of religion. it was an extreme kind of "no religion at the dinner table" sentiment. i mean, Kierkegaard believed in the supremacy of Christianity as far as it went with him personally, but his attacks on the Church of Denmark could easily be adapted into an attack on any organized or state-backed theology.

to your question "why be a Kierkegaardian Christian?"...i don't think he would've had an answer to that. he probably would've told you that you would need to figure out why you needed to be one, and to whenever you chose or figured it out; to keep it away from him.

I meant Kierkegaard-esque. As in why his Christianity is worth the leap to faith. Why God is worth the leap to faith, especially when Kierkegaard ascribes a universal of sorts to it? The interesting thing was that he was convinced that other Christians were not Christians at all, that Christendom was an empty shell. This suggests that he was out to share or universalise (to some extent) his experiences, which explains his rather ingenious use of deception in his writings that used indirect communication as a means of expressing various views on the religious, ethical and aesthetic stages one could be in. He distanced himself as a means of letting the reader sort out h/her own views, yet at the same time suggests that the religious stage is the superior one. Completely anti-thetical to someone like Stirner who took Hegel's philosophy to a logical extreme with a similar individual intent, yet ending up at the aesthetic stage as the highest form ridiculing the ethical and religious.

So why is Christianity worth the leap to faith? Indeed why is Egoism (in Stirner's sense an understanding and acting on one's own dialectical or two-way self-interest with many parallels to the aesthetic stage) worth the leap to faith? After all, egoism is a matter of faith also as it ultimately resides on a certain way of seeing oneself, one that cannot be proven empirically.

[Rafiq]

Did Tsar Nicholas II knight the Bolsheviks? I am familiar with Sir Paul McCartney, but not Sir Vladimir Lennon.

Yes Kierkegaard's Knight of Faith is literally an actual knight. Just stop.

[Decolonize The Left]

Title. What can you tell me about him and his relevance? How does his form of Christianity relate to Nietzsche's philosophy? As sources of meaning, what makes Kierkegaard's faith any better than Sartre's Anarchism and/or Marxism?

Kierkegaard and Nietzsche have very little in common other than a severe distaste for organized religion. Kierkegaard breaks humans down into three basic stages: aesthetic-ethical-religious and posits that the 'leap of faith' is necessary to achieve the final stage and become a 'knight of faith.' This is all related back to depression and anxiety: the leap of faith is a final renunciation of depression and sadness (a leap into the abyss, as Nietzsche might put it), or a final absolution into oneself as God/subject. He also tries to mix doubt and faith together by claiming that one necessitates the other and hence his religion isn't the kind of abject dogmatism that one might find in the church but rather a personal, softer, belief.

Nietzsche would look at this as pure slave morality. What strength is there in Kierkegaard's philosophy? Well, very little, really. There's strength in not becoming a peon of the church or of any major institution - Kierkegaard's religion was indeed a very personal and subjective one. But Nietzsche would argue that that very religion is itself anti-human and backwards; it is filled with resentment: an inability to accept human beings and nature as it is without needing to posit beyond it for acceptance and meaning. Kierkegaard requires outside meaning (God) in order to create a meaningful life for himself. For Nietzsche, this is weak and sad and demonstrates a philosophy of slavery (to God) and self-hatred.

To carry the metaphor: Nietzsche would say that leaping into the abyss is shameful and pathetic, a final renunciation of life and all its splendor. Instead, one ought construct a bridge over the abyss, with oneself as the bridge, in order to reach a place where a human being can be born without the abyss beneath (the 'superman'). To renounce oneself, for Nietzsche, is to renounce life and humanity, to renounce the future and the world. If you recall that, in Nietzsche's philosophy, we are the world-mirror, then this makes perfect sense as the world cannot renounce itself.

Sartre is a whole other ballgame and I don't think he's a very good example for anarchism or Marxism.

[Rafiq]

Manoir, what if in the process of radically operating for an outside meaning, you are in reality actualizing yourself in the highest potential? To consciously exalt ourselves we effectively destroy ourselves, we reduce ourselves into nothingness - in ourselves we can only find a lie. This "outside meaning" is the collective manifestation of our social complexity, be it a god, or the Communist universe itself. Without our social relationships to production we are effectively nothing - animals. Truth can never be found within ourselves, we have to find something greater than our own consciousness which can only translate to reflections of our social reality: Ideology. Ideology which is a lie only insofar as it is held by those whose interests it does not embody.

Also we recognize such an otherness as nothing short of deriving from ourselves as humans. So what if the Nietzschean notion of superhuman is impossible when it is pursued in a direct, conscious manner?

We have seen that those who are truly able to operate "independently from the world" are those who put this blind faith in some sort of otherness, an external other that claims universality as a whole. While Nietzsche would recognize this universality as not reflective of objective reality what we can recognize is that this is wrong. In a way it is, as it is reflective of a social reality, just not linguistically in a direct manner.

[Decolonize The Left]

Manoir, what if in the process of radically operating for an outside meaning, you are in reality actualizing yourself in the highest potential? To consciously exalt ourselves we effectively destroy ourselves, we reduce ourselves into nothingness - in ourselves we can only find a lie. This "outside meaning" is the collective manifestation of our social complexity, be it a god, or the Communist universe itself. Without our social relationships to production we are effectively nothing - animals. Truth can never be found within ourselves, we have to find something greater than our own consciousness which can only translate to reflections of our social reality: Ideology. Ideology which is a lie only insofar as it is held by those whose interests it does not embody.

Is this 'outside meaning' anything other than 'truth?' And if not, why not call it as it is? There is nothing inherently wrong with idealism just as there is nothing inherently wrong with an apple tree. But the apple tree can take bad root, can produce bad fruit, and can sicken one just as easily as it can provide sustenance and shade.

The question is not whether or not the apple tree is good or bad, or true or false, the question is what kind of ground is it rooted in? What kind of water does it receive and from where? Is it well lighted? In short, the question is about health. God as an ideal is unhealthy for reasons clear to us both. Communism as an ideal is much healthier as it is rooted here on earth - but even it varies in its degrees of health. For many things can conceal disease and rot all the while appearing to be in tact and supple.


Also we recognize such an otherness as nothing short of deriving from ourselves as humans. So what if the Nietzschean notion of superhuman is impossible when it is pursued in a direct, conscious manner?

Indeed - excellent question. I'm not sure one can directly and consciously pursue the superman. What it would seem is that one can pursue the bridge, i.e. one can pursue the construction of healthy meaning within and above the modernity of nihilism.


We have seen that those who are truly able to operate "independently from the world" are those who put this blind faith in some sort of otherness, an external other that claims universality as a whole. While Nietzsche would recognize this universality as not reflective of objective reality what we can recognize is that this is wrong. In a way it is, as it is reflective of a social reality, just not linguistically in a direct manner.

As you appear to have surmised, for Nietzsche, "independently of the world" is a laughable phrase. The world necessarily encompasses everything as we are but mirrors of it ourselves. The "self" is the world looking at the rest of it, perhaps in the way that a finger could look at the rest of the body should it have sensory organs and a nervous system enough to conceptualize a 'self' of its own.

So this sort of "otherness" would seem to be a conceptual tool used by one or another to formulate the meat of their personal linguistic story. Why not claim universality as a whole ourselves?

Finally, if indeed this 'otherness' (truth, perhaps) is reflective of a social reality, we must ask ourselves: why is this otherness necessary? What is it about our social reality which demands that we posit such an otherness? Is this otherness itself not testimony to some misshapen root of our metaphorical tree?

[Rafiq]

I think that you're right, it really does boil down to the question of why the otherness, ideology, is necessary. Is it possible that our distinct consciousness itself - as humans, necessitates ideology? That as social animals (and not neutral specters with no interests other than to know), we can never truly walk the walk to the tune of objective reality? The social reality itself seems to never suffice - if classes think they are simply fighting to exert their interests, rather than in the name of some kind of otherness which embodies their interests, which has the whole world to claim, wouldn't this be improbable?

But interestingly enough this might lead us to other questions: What if ourselves, rather than being this false-ego of our individual selves (as those vulgarists of Nietzsche would claim, like Ayn rand), can be collective class consciousness or our pure social being, rather than delusions of individual interests that do not coincide with social interests? I think questions like this make Nietzsche someone not to be dismissed among Marxists, especially since we have trouble with the paradox of being unable to be beyond ideology.

[Decolonize The Left]

I think that you're right, it really does boil down to the question of why the otherness, ideology, is necessary. Is it possible that our distinct consciousness itself - as humans, necessitates ideology? That as social animals (and not neutral specters with no interests other than to know), we can never truly walk the walk to the tune of objective reality? The social reality itself seems to never suffice - if classes think they are simply fighting to exert their interests, rather than in the name of some kind of otherness which embodies their interests, which has the whole world to claim, wouldn't this be improbable?

I think this demands questions into: what do we mean by reality? So here we are discussing otherness (ideology/truth) in relation to what we are calling "objective reality." We are almost assuredly in agreement that by objective reality we mean material reality: that which is material and happening: that which is the case. So if we mean this then we have already posited that "otherness" (ideology/truth) is not a part of this (as we are questioning the relationship between the two as distinct things).
But we are also likely to say that material reality is truth. We, being communists, also believe that ideology is a part of this material reality, this truth, as it is constructed from it and contextualized by it always. It is, as I see it, our story writ larger upon history as humans as agents.

So in my mind we have two stories, both of which embody truth:
- Rafiq was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, to a mother and father, etc... the facts of the case as they are and were. Material reality.
- Rafiq believes in communism as a reasonable explanation for their situation as a human. A normative claim about material reality - still a part of said reality but stating an opinion about it. Ideology/agency.

Regarding classes, the notion that classes are 'merely fighting to express their interests' seems to be the same thing as doing so in regards 'to some otherness which embodies their interest.' The "otherness" in this case is merely an extension of ideology, a longer, perhaps more nuanced, story. The real ideology is class interest: I am a person who works, hence a worker, hence a part of the working class, this class has an interest, etc.. The "otherness" is fluff on top of the story itself as writ, it is superficial at best, and unnecessary weight at worst.

As I'll argue below, the best drive for change as a class is not "collective class consciousness" but, rather, a deeply individual perspective upon class and one's relation to the world. Class consciousness is acted out, not possessed.


But interestingly enough this might lead us to other questions: What if ourselves, rather than being this false-ego of our individual selves (as those vulgarists of Nietzsche would claim, like Ayn rand), can be collective class consciousness or our pure social being, rather than delusions of individual interests that do not coincide with social interests? I think questions like this make Nietzsche someone not to be dismissed among Marxists, especially since we have trouble with the paradox of being unable to be beyond ideology.

I guess the way I see Nietzsche being useful to communists is quite simpler: if one were to reduce Nietzsche's philosophy down to its very essence, to the simplest statement one could find, it would be something like "create meaning in one's life such that lives a life worthy of living again, forever, and exactly as one has lived it." Take this general and very personal claim and it suffices on an individual level. But on a social level it takes a new dimension for we know from Marx that our social lives are determined by these material conditions and hence, in order to adopt Nietzsche's point, we must change them.

In short, Nietzsche's personal and individual philosophy is arguably the best reason to be a communist: the only way to "create meaning in one's life such that lives a life worthy of living again, forever, and exactly as one has lived it" is precisely to liberate ourselves from the shackles of capital and thereby open the doors to social and economic possibility. Overcoming nihilism is, in essence, the establishment of communism.

[Rusty Shackleford]

This was a great thread. I wish I had something to contribute besides an applauding bump.