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PWR 1: Modernism
October 14, 2010
An Examination of the Ongoing Academic Discussion
Surrounding Søren Kierkegaard’s use of Indirect Communication
Rough Draft!
In western philosophy, Søren Kierkegaard stands out not only for his critical role in
founding the existential movement, but also for his complicated and indirect literary style. Prior
to the modernist era of the 19th and 20th centuries, philosophers treated truth as a single,
immutable entity, an idea that Kierkegaard found both impersonal and unfulfilling. In his
extensive works, Kierkegaard rejected this view of objective truth along with the Hegelian notion
of logical mediation, arguing instead that genuine significance and fulfillment could be achieved
only through self-reflection, subjectivism and the ultimate development of authentic faith. Just as
Kierkegaard’s ideas deviated radically from the accepted cultural paradigm of objectivism, his
writing style was unprecedented in the 19th century. In his works, Kierkegaard abandoned the
structure of the straightforward philosophical discourse and embraced instead a style of
ambiguous argumentation and indirect communication. To this day, Kierkegaard’s reasons for
creating such complex structure and style remain controversial. On one hand, the majority of
scholars seem to share similar views on Kierkegaard’s intended effects on his readers, but the
manner in which Kierkegaard used indirect communication as a mode of self-expression
continues to be a topic of ongoing academic debate.
Traditionally, Kierkegaard’s use of indirect communication has been interpreted at least
in part as a means of undermining his readers’ faith in objective truth. According to Christopher
Norris, a professor and prominent literary critic at the University of Cardiff in Britain,
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Kierkegaard uses indirect communication to construct logically based yet contradictory
arguments in order to demonstrate the inherent flaws of logical thought. As Norris writes in his
essay Fictions of Authority: Narrative Viewpoint in Kierkegaard’s Writing, “[Kierkegaard’s]
aesthetic production was a means of ensnaring the reader in fictions and speculative arguments
which would ultimately self-deconstruct … The reader would thus be brought to comprehend the
inherent limitations and self-imposed deceits of a purely aesthetic attitude to life” (87). In his
essay, Norris goes on to explain why indirect communication is not only effective in
accomplishing this goal, but necessary. For any reader that has lived a life based in objectivity, a
direct counterargument against this “bedrock of authenticated truth” (89) faces the possibility of
immediate and unequivocal rejection. According to Norris, Kierkegaard adopts indirect
communication largely as a means of circumventing this initial resistance with the ultimate goal
of weakening his readers’ belief in the universal value of reason and logic.
Building off this view, many scholars have focused on Kierkegaard’s goal in indirect
communication to not just undermine objectivism, but to prompt his readers into self-reflection.
Jacob Golomb, a professor of philosophy at the University of Jerusalem, discusses this idea in
his article Kierkegaard’s Ironic Ladder to Authentic Faith. As he writes, “[Kierkegaard’s]
indirect tactics (notably irony) … entice the reader into pursuing authenticity” (Golomb).
Kierkegaard does this by describing the despair, loneliness, and insignificance of the aesthetic
way of life, and contrasting this negative state with the fulfillment, tranquility, and joy attainable
through subjectivism. Finally, having created strong emotional, logical, and credible arguments,
Kierkegaard either refuses to provide his readers with an explanation on how to achieve true
faith through subjectivism or undermines his entire argument through contradiction and selfdenunciation. If Kierkegaard’s strategies are effective, the result is that the reader, disillusioned
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with the aesthetic stage of life yet not knowing how to achieve true faith, must reflect deeply
upon his life, his conception of truth, and his relationship with God. Thus, Golomb points out,
Kierkegaard does not just relate to his readers the importance of self-reflection, but rather writes
with a structure and a style that actually stimulate it.
While most scholars accept these two interpretations of Kierkegaard’s reasons for his use
of indirect communication, others have attributed his indirect style to an inability to
communicate subjective truths directly. This idea is the major focus of James Kellenberger, a
professor of philosophy at California State University, in his article Kierkegaard, Indirect
Communication, and Religious Truth. According to Kellenberger, the purpose of direct
communication is to “communicate what one believes, what one understands the facts to be”
(153). Kellenberger refers to the process by which facts are transferred from one person to
another as reduplication. Yet while facts can be reduplicated through direct telling, reactions,
which form the basis of subjective thought, cannot. Rather, they “must be awakened or evoked in
the hearer or reader” (154). For instance, Kierkegaard recognizes that simply stating the idea that
objectivism is unfulfilling and insignificant will do little to undermine his readers’ faith in the
objective view of truth. Instead, Kierkegaard uses analogies, pseudonyms, first person narratives,
and emotional appeals to plant a seed of doubt in his readers that, when paired with careful selfreflection, has the potential to lead to the abandonment of objectivity. Kellenberger notes that,
for Kierkegaard, indirect communication is most important when speaking of God. In his
writings, Kierkegaard condemns the attempts of the Church to simplify, understand, and
ultimately explain aspects of the Christian faith that he views as simply incomprehensible to man.
For Kierkegaard, these truths cannot be written down, understood, or taught. The only aspect of
them that can be communicated is one’s own emotional and spiritual reaction to their
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incomprehensibility, and these must necessarily be communicated indirectly. Thus, for
Kellenberger, Kierkegaard’s use of indirect communication is primarily the result of an inability
to communicate his ideas directly.
In his article Kierkegaard’s Ironic Ladder to Authentic Faith, Jacob Golomb recognizes
the validity of all of the aforementioned interpretations of Kierkegaard’s use of indirect
communication, but rather than accepting these interpretations as the ultimate goals of
Kierkegaard’s writing, he argues that they represent a means of guiding his readers toward faith.
As he writes, “the distinction between the semantic problem of attempting to express the
inexpressible and the pragmatic or performative aim of this attempt is artificial with regard to
Kierkegaard’s ultimate goal to entice his readers to embrace the authentic faith” (65). Golomb
recognizes Kierkegaard’s use of indirect communication to undermine “the rational ethos of
objectivity” (68). However, he argues that Kierkegaard does this not simply to reject the value of
logic and reason, but more importantly to remove the readers’ foundation for understanding truth.
If Kierkegaard’s strategy is effective, his readers abandon objectivity and must begin
constructing new subjective worldviews. Yet, Kierkegaard has already denounced logic, reason,
objective knowledge, and cultural traditions, and thus his readers are left with no apparent moral
code or universal truth around which to base their new perception of the world. Therefore, when
Kierkegaard finally does examine the importance of faith in God, he is presenting his readers not
with a means of understanding religious thought, but with a foundation for all thought and all
truth in all realms of life. Only once the individual has accepted faith in God as the foundation
for truth does he realize that any attempt to logically understanding religion is pointless. More
importantly, he recognizes that when logic and faith do contradict each other, logic must always
be suspended if he is to maintain his perception of truth. In his article, Golomb describes how
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indirect communication is essential to this aspect of Kierkegaard’s writing and conversely how
Kierkegaard’s goal of authentic faith drives his use of indirect communication.
These four interpretations of Kierkegaard’s use of indirect communication, although
different, all coincide in some way. Norris’s argument that Kierkegaard uses style to undermine
his readers’ faith in objectivism forms the basis for Golomb’s argument that, having disillusioned
his readers with objectivism, Kierkegaard uses contradiction and self-denunciation to stimulate
self-reflection. Kellenberger’s interprets Kierkegaard’s style as a result of the impossibility of
communicating subjective truths directly, a view that contradicts neither Norris nor Golomb.
Finally, Golomb unites all three views when he claims that, once Kierkegaard has undermined
his readers’ faith in objective truth, thereby forcing them into self-reflection in order to find their
own subjective worldview, he presents the idea of personal and authentic faith as a foundation
around which his readers can build a new conception of reality. In his article, Norris recognizes
Golomb’s view of self-reflection, while Golomb similarly acknowledges Kellenberger’s views as
valid. In fact, though Golomb, Norris, and Kellenberger disagree on the relative importance of
each of these motives to Kierkegaard, all seem to recognize that each contributed to
Kierkegaard’s use of indirect communication. This trend of concurrence extends beyond these
three professors to the academic community at large.
While the majority of Kierkegaardian scholars seem to agree at least in part, on
Kierkegaard’s use of indirect communication to affect his readers, views vary greatly on
Kierkegaard’s use of indirect communication to serve himself. According to Professor Daniel
Berthold of Bard College, Kierkegaard’s indirect writing style is not only a means of conveying
his philosophy to his readers, but also of retaining his autonomy as an individual. Like many
aspects of Kierkegaardian philosophy, Kierkegaard’s use of language expresses a backlash
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against Hegelian thought. In his works, Hegel describes language as a way to deliver the
individual from the self-enclosure of the purely inner, thereby broadening his mind and
perspectives. In contrast, Kierkegaard, while accepting the necessity of language as constitutive
of humanity, continuously laments the forsaking of the interior. He despises the way language
can lead the individual to attach his inner self and personal conception of the truth to the ideas
and reactions of society at large. In his article Kierkegaard’s Seduction: The Ethics of
Authorships, Berthold argues that Kierkegaard uses pseudonyms and writes with ambiguity and
contradiction in order to conceal at least partially his inner self. As he writes, “the author
(Kierkegaard) behind the author (pseudonym) sacrifices himself, and thus retains his
unapprehended inwardness by remaining hidden” (get pg. number). Only through this complex
method of indirect communication, Berthold argues, can Kierkegaard relate his ideas to his
readers while preserving the privacy of his own inner thoughts.
Professor Alastair McKinnon of McGill University has a very different opinion on
Kierkegaard’s use of indirect communication. According to McKinnon, this writing style, in
particular the use of pseudonyms, is the result of Kierkegaard’s own exploration and
development of his ideas. In McKinnon’s words, “real life usually allows us to become one
thing; it forces us to choose one direction or another. But the world of literature makes it possible
for us to become all things; given the necessary talent, it allows each of us to develop each of our
potentialities to its full perfection” (117). McKinnon claims that, in creating so many
pseudonyms, each “significantly different from the others” (get pg. number), Kierkegaard is able
to fully develop and annunciate often contradictory ideas in order to judge their merit. When read
in this way, Kierkegaard’s willingness to reveal inconsistencies and contradictions in his own
arguments can be interpreted both as Kierkegaard’s examination of the limitations of his own
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ideas as well as a means of revealing these limitations to his readers. Because Kierkegaard
naturally grows to favor some viewpoints over others, McKinnon argues that Kierkegaard’s use
of pseudonyms presents the reader with a hierarchy of progressively more complete and
developed ideas. Thus, for McKinnon, indirect communication serves Kierkegaard in that it
allows him to explore his own ideas, yet simultaneously serves his readers by presenting them
with an examination of a variety of beliefs and stages of thought.
Unlike the analogous interpretations of Golomb, Norris and Kellenberger, the arguments
of Berthold and McKinnon exist in radical opposition to each other. While Berthold interprets
Kierkegaard’s use indirect communication as a means of hiding his inner nature, McKinnon’s
interpretation assumes Kierkegaard’s desire to reveal to both his readers and himself every part
of his inner nature. While Berthold views Kierkegaard’s pseudonyms as pre-conceived and
calculated, McKinnon argues that these pseudonyms change in relation to Kierkegaard’s own
mental and spiritual advancements. In fact, upon further examination, Berthold and McKinnon’s
views seem so opposed that acceptance of either one necessarily negates the validity of the other.
As in the case of Golomb, Norris, and Kellenberger’s agreement, this obvious disagreement can
be seen as representative of the academic community at large.
When viewed on a larger scale, the trend in interpreting Kierkegaard’s use of style and
structure seems clear. In terms of Kierkegaard’s use of indirect communication to affect his
readers, the majority of scholars agree, at least in part, on Kierkegaard’s motives. However,
when it comes to Kierkegaard’s use of indirect communication to serve himself, interpretations
are strongly opposed. Before any agreement can be reached on this topic, it seems that an
understanding of Kierkegaard’s true thoughts and nature is essential. Yet, in more than a century
and a half of analysis and interpretation of Kierkegaard’s works, such an understanding remains
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elusive. Perhaps, Kierkegaard never does reveal his whole self in his writings, and the ongoing
academic debate over his use of indirect communication is indicative of the fact that such an
understanding will never come.
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Works Cited
Berthold, Daniel. “Kierkegaard’s Seductions: The Ethics of Authorships.” MLN. Spec. issue of
Comparative Literature. 120.5 (2005): 1044-1065. Web.
Golomb, Jacob. “Kierkegaard’s Ironic Ladder to Authentic Faith”. International Journal for
Philosophy of Religion. 32.2 (1992): 65-81. Web.
Kellenberger, James. “Kierkegaard, Indirect Communication, and Religious Truth.”
International Journal for Philosophy of Religion. 16.2 (1984): 153-160. Web.
McKinnon, Alastait. “Kierkegaard’s Pseudonyms: A New Hierarchy.” American Philosophical
Quarterly. 6.2 (1989): 116-126. Web.
Norris, Christopher. “Fictions of Authority: Narrative Viewpoint in Kierkegaard’s Writing.”
Criticism: A Quarterly for Literature and Arts. 25.2 (1983): 87-107. Web.