Lasse Horne Kjældgaard

What It Means to Be Immortal

One of the major issues around which Johannes Climacus’ reflections upon Christianity revolve in Søren Kierkegaard’s Concluding Unscientific Postscript (1846) is the question of the immortality of the individual soul. This article examines this question in the Postscript within the context of the German and Danish intellectual history of the 1830’s and 1840’s. In particular, it focuses on how this question pertains to issues of art and communication in the writings of Johan Ludvig Heiberg and Poul Martin Møller, and the extent to which the Postscript can be said to continue their negotiations. The articles then traces the dispute surrounding the immortality of the soul into the Postscript and finally, looks at immortality in relation to its emphasis on the indispensability of aesthetic communication. The Concluding Unscientific Postscript was released in late February 1846 as the eighth volume of pseudonymous writing to appear from Søren Kierkegaard’s hand. It is written by a thirty-two year-old man who was preparing himself for death. Because of the curse that was believed to hang over his family, Kierkegaard was convinced – not the least by the strong precedent of his five deceased siblings – that he probably would not make it past his thirty-fourth year. The strong epitomizing tendencies of the Postscript can be understood in terms of this predicament; it reads, at times, as an adieu and an epilogue to the preceding pseudonymous writings. It does, however, also form a sequel to one of these publications in particular, Philosophical Fragments, which had come out two years earlier in the name of the same pseudonymous author: Johannes Climacus. The longer title of the text, Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments, testifies to this connection. And actually, the point of departure for the Postscript is a question that had already been addressed, and which has, in fact, been lifted directly What It Means to Be Immortal 91 from the title page of Philosophical Fragments. The question at the centre of the Postscript is a profound one: “How can something historical be decisive for an eternal happiness?”1 The historical something alluded to is the event of the incarnation, the appearance of the eternal one in historical space and time, which would remain eternally inaccessible to human understanding, according to Climacus. Theologically speaking, one could say that Climacus rephrases the communicatio idiomatum – the coexistence of mutually contradictory attributes in Christ – as a temporal paradox, emphasizing the contradiction between his temporal and eternal natures. This intersection of time and eternity constitutes a focal point for Climacus’ considerations both in Philosophical Fragments and in the Postscript. In musical terms, the latter may thus be considered a variation of a theme that had been treated before. Featured as the absolute paradox, the incarnation holds a place of prominence in the Concluding Unscientific Postscript – as well as in the history of reception of this work; for it has entered nineteenth century Protestant theology as one of Kierkegaard’s controversial contributions.2 There is, however, an aspect of this question carried over from the Philosophical Fragments which has almost escaped attention in Kierkegaard scholarship, namely, the question of the immortality of the soul. According to Climacus this is really, what is at stake for any individual who wants to commit himself to Christianity. “How can Christianity, based upon the historical event of the incarnation, be the foundation of any expectations of a future life, of a hereafter, of eternal salvation?” would be another way of stating the question that Climacus pursues in the Postscript after having posed it already in Philosophical Fragments. This issue of the immortality of the soul is, as we shall see, inextricably intertwined with the question of the incarnation resumed by Climacus; that it is a matter of vital concern for him is obvious from his preliminary self-presentation: I, Johannes Climacus, born and bred in this city and now thirty years old, an ordinary human being like most folk, assume that a highest good, called an eternal happiness, awaits me just as it awaits a housemaid and a professor. I have heard that Christianity is one’s prerequisite for this good. I now ask how I may enter into relation to this doctrine.3 As is apparent from this opening statement, the immortality of the soul, or the attainment of an eternal happiness, is put at the head of Climacus’ personal agenda. The priority of this issue is confirmed by similar 1 CUP1, 94. 2 See Louis Dupré Kierkegaard as Theologian. The Dialectic of Christian Existence, New York: Sheed and Ward 1963. 3 CUP1, 15f. 92 Lasse Horne Kjældgaard statements of purpose, imitating juridical-contractual discourse with the rather pedantic specification of the antecedent of the personal pronoun (“I, Johannes Climacus”). This is repeated throughout the Postscript as a reminder that it is a purely personal matter that motivates the publication, namely, the question of how Climacus “may enter into relation” to Christianity [hvorledes kommer jeg i Forhold til denne Lære] and its promise of a future life as the summum bonum. The quotation marks around the statement are placed there cautiously by Climacus himself in order to stress that he is not posing the question for real but only citing a hypothetical example of how the question could be posed – “using myself in an imaginatively constructing way [experimenterende],” as he says. This is in keeping with the general shift of emphasis in the Postscript that boldly attempts to turn the focus away from “the truth of Christianity” to the “individual’s relation to Christianity.” In his effort to articulate the practical implications of this change in course, the question of the immortality of the soul plays an important role which I will consider in this article. Bringing up the issue of the immortality of the soul was, in the historical context of the Postscript, a gesture with unquestionable polemical importance. In the preceding decade in Germany, the Christian dogma of the immortality of the soul had become one of the most hotly contested topics in intellectual life. In the wake of the death of G. W. F. Hegel in 1831, the question of whether the individual soul was immortal or not had moved to the center of both public and philosophical debate. Hegelians divided into two branches according to what stand they took on the issue: left Hegelians denied the immortality of the individual soul but maintained a belief in the immortality of the collective spirit, whereas right Hegelians endorsed Christian orthodoxy on this point and on several other issues. The left emphasized the incompatibility of Hegelian philosophy and Christian theology, whereas the right held on to a conception of Christianity as the source and foundation of Hegelian philosophy – as well as culture in general.4 The German intellectual historian Karl Löwith noted sixty years ago that it “is today very difficult to imagine the liveliness of the controversies on the question of the devine-human nature, the personality of God, and the immortality of the soul, so familiar are we with the destructive out4 For an account of these divisions of Hegel’s followers, see William J. Brazill The Young Hegelians, New Haven: Yale University Press 1970, and, for a detailed study of the significance of the controversies over the immortality of the soul, Wilhelm Stähler Zur Unsterblichkeitsproblematik in Hegels Nachfolge, Münster: Universitas Verlag 1928. What It Means to Be Immortal 93 come of the criticism of religion accomplished by Hegel’s pupils. The debate, concerned with these theological questions, was no less significant for Hegel’s continuing influence than that which stemmed from his theory of the state, as developed by Ruge, Marx, and Lassalle.”5 Imagining the intensity in the debate has not become easier for us in the meantime. Nonetheless, this issue was an inescapable element in the intellectual horizon of Kierkegaard’s formative years as the eschatological controversies spread to Denmark during the 1830’s. I will now survey this historical horizon and look at the role played by the question of the immortality of the soul in the mind and imagination of two Danish intellectuals who had a profound influence on Kierkegaard’s education during the 1830’s: Poul Martin Møller and Johan Ludvig Heiberg. In particular, I want to focus on how the question pertained to issues of art and communication. These issues are closely interrelated in the Concluding Unscientific Postscript where they are important to Climacus’ development of the concept of existence communication. The nexus between art and the immortality of the soul that is assumed by Climacus in the Postscript is one with a previous history in the local context. The question of the immortality of the soul was indeed of great significance to aesthetic theory since, in Denmark at the time, the conception of art hinged upon it. One could say that it was a time of epistemological turbulence when the boundaries between different social systems – art, philosophy and religion – were renegotiated, and in these negotiations I will argue that the question of the immortality of the soul held a supremely important position.6 What I will attempt to do here, therefore, is to look at the Concluding Unscientific Postscript as an intervention into the ongoing dialogue in Danish intellectual life of the time over this question. The Immortality of the Soul and the Death of Art Although the commotion caused by the left Hegelian movement in Germany reached Denmark, it would be unwarranted to assert that it gained any strong footing in Copenhagen intellectual circles. It did not 5 Karl Löwith From Hegel to Nietzsche. The German Spirit During the Nineteenth Century, New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1964, p. 54. 6 This way of s