Soren Kierkegaard

tion was better in the middle of the hierarchy, which was populated by
average intellectual types, historians and natural scientists, who, however,
generally kept so busy that the Faustian element did not really emerge—
indeed, if this was to happen with these people, their “energy must first be
paralyzed in some way or other.” The topmost position was occupied by
an exclusive group that “intuitively attempts to comprehend the infinite
multiplicity of nature, of life, of history in a total view.” Since knowledge
grows so explosively in the modern world that no one, not even the most
determined person is able any longer to kee pu pwith it, “the Faustian
element appears as despair at the inability to comprehend the entire devel-
opment in an all-embracing vision of the whole.”
Kierkegaard’s hierarchy is not particularly strong on nuances, but it is
interesting because it demonstrates how intellectual doubt veers in a psy-
chological direction, thus becoming related to the despair that is really the
province of the Wandering Jew. Indeed, in a journal entry from late March
1835 Kierkegaard wrote: “You often hear people say that someone is a Don
Juan or a Faust, but not often that he is the Wandering Jew. But shouldn’t
there also exist individuals of precisely the sort that have too much of the
essence of the Wandering Jew in themselves?” The question was rhetorical.
Such individuals do in fact exist, and it is clear that Kierkegaard identified
himself with the figure. A figure such as the Wandering Jew did not fit into
the system, and this suited Kierkegaard just fine, because his interest in
Faust stemmed in large measure from theincompatibilitythat typifies the
intellectual in the modern world. In that respect he is an intellectual relative
of the romantic ironist whose sufferings are caused by weltschmerz—a con-
dition as unconquerable as it is untranslatable and that generally leads to
catastrophe and sudden death. This sort of Faust must insist on his rights as
an exceptional individual, and must consequently oppose the monumental
philosophical system that has abolished all sorts of contradictions, just as he
must entertain an almost obsessive hatred for the naı ̈vete ́with which the
bourgeois philistine accommodates himself to the worldas ifit were a tracta-
ble, reasonable place and the meaning of life could be found in the well-
upholstered bosom of family life.
As time went on, a Faust characterized by this great irreconcilability
loomed larger and larger in Kierkegaard’s journals, pushing Goethe’s more
conciliatory version of the figure into the background. Thus, even as early
as his epistle to P. W. Lund, Kierkegaard noted that “it is surely a sin against
the idea [of Faust] when Goethe allows Faust to be converted.” Similarly,
exactly five months later, on November 1, 1835, Kierkegaard wrote: “It
would have made me very happy if Goethe had never continuedFaust.I
would then have called it a marvel. But here he has been felled by human
weakness... ; the conversion is precisely what drags him down to the more