Soren Kierkegaard

we leaf through the packet of neat little coupons, with their elegant pen
flourishes, and learn that on October 26, 1850, he—as it is stated—“paid
his generously subscribed contribution” of three rixdollars for membership
in the Women’s Association of 1843. We ask ourselves whether his mem-
bership in these latter two societies was a form of benevolence or simply an
expression of subtle irony.
It is easier to understand his membership in the Music Society. Kierke-
gaard had played a somewhat droll role in its founding. After a gala perfor-
mance at the Royal Theater in honor of the composer C.E.F. Weyse, who
celebrated his sixty-second birthday on March 5, 1836, some of those who
had been present at the theater gathered at the Student Association where
they decided to form the Music Society, which would have the promotion
of Danish composers as one of its aims. According to the physician and
amateur musician J. L. Lorck, as early as March 16, 1836 the society had no
fewer than 141 members, so Lorck and Edvard Collin sat down to draw
up bylaws that would govern the group’s future activities. Since the two
gentlemen wanted to be sure that their regulations had been properly
thought through, they turned to a “friend and associate” whose “dialectical
acumen they trusted greatly”—Søren Kierkegaard. So one evening the three
men assembled at Lorck’s apartment over a glass of punch and presented the
young dialectician with a draft of the proposed bylaws for the society: “Søren
Kierkegaard apparently took the matter very seriously and launched into a
discussion of the details. But soon his skills at dialectical dissection took the
wind out of the sails of the two legislators, who had hardly considered the
consequences discovered in their bylaws by the philosopher they had sum-
moned. With heads swimming, they left their adviser.”
Kierkegaard himself was the first to admit to his profligacy. In a journal
entry with the dramatic heading “Judgment upon Myself,” he thus wrote:
“God knows that I have been extravagant. I willingly acknowledge it and
confess my guilt....Myextravagance is nonetheless essentially related to
my productivity, which I understood as my only possibility and at the same
time saw as the indescribable grace of God that gave my life such signifi-
cance. So everything was lavished in order to keep me in a state of produc-
tivity. It would have been more pleasing to God or more truly Christian if
I had behaved in precisely the opposite fashion and had been frugal. I under-
stand this now, but at the time I neither understood it nor do I believe it
would have been possible for me. On the other hand, it is certain that I
have turned to God, that I have prayed to him, every time I had to resort
to an expensive diversion, and it is certain that I had the youthful sense that
this was permissible. I prayed to God that I might truly enjoy myself on
such excursions, and I left the matter to him.” Here he at least seems to be