entlypolitical movement isat roota repressed need for religion. Here, as
earlier, the more or less unspoken precondition for the reversal is the pres-
ence of a person who takes action. In this connection Kierkegaard mentions
Socrates, who, if the truth be known, did not stop a political vortex, but
he did stop something similar, a “sophistical vortex.” And the consequences
of stopping it did indeed cost Socrates his life, since death was the most
important part of the realization of his plan: “The dead Socrates brought
the vortex to a halt, which the living Socrates had been unable to do; but
the living Socrates had understood intellectually that only a dead man could
win—a sacrifice—and he understood ethically that he must stake his entire
life on becoming just that.”
Kierkegaard appears to have understood something similar. He, too, be-
lieved that only a dead man could win, and in this letter he communicated
as much—albeit rather indirectly—to the dignified gentleman who accom-
panied him on his walks, though the latter apparently did not grasp the
entire point. In his next letter Kierkegaard therefore formulated himself
with less beating about the bush. Kolderup-Rosenvinge had expressed con-
fidence in the dictatorial Jean-Baptiste Cavaignac, the leader of military
forces during the “June Days” of 1848 in Paris, in which eight thousand
workers were killed by thirty thousand soldiers and guardsmen, and in re-
sponse to Kolderup-Rosenvinge’s sentiments Kierkegaard wrote: “You are
expecting a tyrant, while I am expecting a martyr.” It could hardly have
been expressed more directly—unless Kierkegaard had added that, if the
truth must out, he was himself the person he expected.
In other words, what lay behind the text about the inevitability of martyr-
dom was something quite other than mere academic interest. On the con-
trary, in the truest sense, it was a matter of dire seriousness. Martyrdom is
the “sufferingaction” that provides the power to make real a utopia. In
October 1848, when Kierkegaard had to compose a preface forA Cycle of
Ethical-Religious Essays, the situation got endowed with a special significance
of its own: “The catastrophe... will help me to become better understood
than I have been until now, or at least to be more passionately misunder-
stood. The question is not about a unicameral or a bicameral or a ten-
chambered legislature; it is not about the convening of a committee or the
naming of ministers....Governance has lost patience and will not tolerate
it any longer....Theproblem is a religious, a Christian problem....Be-
cause, if eternity can be recovered for us, the prospect of it at every instant,
its earnestness and its blessedness, its relief; if eternity can be recovered for
every individual person: then there will be no need of bloodshed.... In
many ways the times will be reminiscent of Socrates’ time (except that these
times are much more passionate and violent, because this is the sophistry of
romina
(Romina)
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