246 Essays in Anarchism and Religion: Volume 1
As an expression of “human egotism on a large scale and in great
dimensions”, the state organises and subordinates all “individual
egotisms” in such a way “that these must egotistically understand
that egotistically it is the most prudent thing to live in the state.”
Kierkegaard thus labels the state as “a calculus of egotisms”.^28 If
the state, as expressing Sittlichkeit (Hegel’s “ethical order”, embod-
ied in the ideal State), is the manifestation of a collective Spirit
(Geist), then it stands in tension with Kierkegaard’s notion of Spirit
(Ånd) as individual selfhood, as singular freedom before God. But
even this individual self before God does not stand above, on top
of, or in violation of others. Rather it stands alongside in radical
equality with all other singular selves, who are themselves equally
entitled to Spirit. “Before God” becomes the paradigm of all indi-
viduality and equality which is, as divine, never mine to ascribe or
refuse but is always and already God’s gift given in love.
Therefore, as a derivative of theonomy, individual equality is
no one’s to bestow or deny. It is a divine command which binds
all individuals together as equal in God’s love: not simply as “the
other” but as “the neighbour”.^29 Kierkegaard therefore rejects the
quasi-Providential human notion of a “pyramid-union” of human-
ity, at the peak of which stands “a super-king” who is the closest to
God, who has the ear of God, even to the inevitably revolutionary
point of being able to dethrone God. Christianity, according to
Kierkegaard, teaches that God opposes, even despises, this pyr-
amid structure of power. By contrast, “Christianly, God chooses
and is closest to the despised, the castoffs of the race, one single
sorry abandoned wretch, a dreg of humanity.” Since “God is in-
finite love”, God “readily sees how cruel this human pyramid-idea
can easily become toward the unfortunate, the ignored, and the
like in the human race”. In defence of those who bear the weight
of the base of the pyramid, and in opposition to the self-apotheosis
of the one who stands at its pinnacle, “God pushes over the pyra-
mid and everything collapses”, though lamentably “a generation
later man begins the pyramid business again”.^30
In contrast to this hubris of the pyramidal state, Kierkegaard
asserts the theological meaning of Spirit as individual and per-
sonalised freedom. “Voluntariness is the precise form for quali-
tatively being spirit”.^31 The freedom of will as Spirit is expressed