Soren Kierkegaard

excuse for the way in which I use ‘I’ in these lectures....Tomywayof
thinking it is my weakness and imperfection... that I do not venture more
daringly to use my ‘I.’ One of the unfortunate aspects of modern times is
precisely that ‘the I,’ the personal I, has been abolished. And for this very
reason it is as though genuine ethical-religious communication has disap-
peared from the world. For ethical-religious truth is related essentially to
the personality and can only be communicated by an I to an I. As soon as
the communication becomes objective, truth becomes untruth. Our desti-
nation must be the personality. And I would say that my merit is that by
having produced poetically created personalities who say ‘I’ in the midst of
the reality of life (my pseudonyms), I have contributed to getting the times
accustomed once again to hearing, if possible, the voice of an ‘I,’ a personal
I (not that fantasy of a pure I and its ventriloquism).”
Thus ethical and religious truth can only be communicated personally,
and this was why Kierkegaard had his pseudonyms say “I” in the midst of
“the reality of life.” So far, so good. His own countermove, however, is a
markedly modern one inasmuch as the “reality” in which the pseudonyms
say “I” is preciselynot“reality,” buttext. Thus, properly understood, want-
ing to reinstate the “I” in its rightful place by using pseudonyms is such a
paradoxical practice that the result will necessarily lead to more “ventrilo-
quism.” If Kierkegaard was goingto succeed in reestablishing subjectivity—
thetrue“I”—thenhehimselfwouldhavetotaketheplaceofthepseudony-
mous “character.”
This was gradually taking place, but one day in the early summer of 1847
Kierkegaard believed that he had received orders to the contrary: He must
act as a sort of agent provocateur in the service of a higher cause. “Just as
I was about to dismantle the dictatorship in Copenhagen, orders arrived,
informing me that I was to appear in a new role: the persecuted. I must
make every effort to play it equally well. It has been said that in our times
a person cannot succeed in being persecuted. Now we will see. But I am
sure that if I succeed, people will say ‘it is his own fault’—and they will be
the same people who fault the times, saying that one cannot even be perse-
cuted. O, human stupidity, how inhuman you are!”
The voice was that of H. H., but the hands were Kierkegaard’s. And this
division of labor is typical of a great many journal entries from the late
1840s, where the pseudonyms constitute authorities to whom Kierkegaard
compareshimself, sometimespositioninghimselfabove apseudonym,other
times below. “Like the river Guadalquivir,” he wrote, recycling the meta-
phor he had used in 1839, “at one point I plunge under the earth, so there
is a stretch, the edifying, that bears my name. There is something lower
(the aesthetic) that is pseudonymous, and something higher that is also