As it is Good Friday, I was thinking of posting something about Christianity, but I think you would all be better served to go to ABC Religion Online. An astonishing volume of excellent columns have gone up in the last 48hrs.
I you choose to ignore this suggestion, I offer the following. The only thought I've had today as we enacted a communal remembrance of the crucifixion, was that it is easy to do the actions and not be in them. Kierkegaard was fiercely committed to the importance of inwardness, but it is all too easy to think of looking into one's self and tending to it. But this is something in which it is easy to self deceive. Corruption and pride take refuge with one as one stands apart from one's self and criticise it. Past actions are regretted, desires for better desires are imagined, and we think we have stepped ahead into the light. But, (I think Hegel says) the darkness was still in the gaze like the inky black of your pupil, your subjectivity remains a problem.
Kierkegaard believes that the solution comes when we make a defining commitment, when we let a commitment to another become the unifying principle for our divided self. The inwardness of this commitment comes as more and more elements of outerness are accepted into the self. The defining commitment means that the self critique is a complete, undistanced 'ownership' of the self, a recognition that, disgusting though it was, it was and still is me, through and through. Inwardness is not at bottom a direction of attention, but rather an openness to oneself, to welcoming all the fractured and bruised little pieces of your personality into fellowship. Inwardness is related, I think, to my earlier theme of liability (here and here) - to saying 'This is me, right here.' To doing things, and being in them.
...and having being in them, if I may add my own end to your last sentence. I think SK would have demanded the drive to being through the ownership of ones own actions.
ReplyDeleteAdd away, by all means. My Kierkegaard is pretty rough and amateur (though it doesn't stop me - I've posted another irresponsible hack job).
ReplyDelete'Having being' though, seems to express distance or to make optional 'being', eh? I meant 'being in the acts' or 'accepting what you do is expressing who you are.' Is that what having being is about?
As I read SK, though, he portrayed the Religious B sphere as the highest form of life, as though being is really only found in that sphere. In the Aesthetic sphere, there is a parallel to Badiou's claim that without Truth the human is a human animal, not yet a subject and without being. I think that existentially, being is something one can claim through an act of will, or reject through (for want of a better phrase) absent-mindedness.
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