Soren Kierkegaard

On October 30, 1849, Peter Christian was at the Roskilde Pastoral Con-
vention. It had actually been his intention to comment on a declaration that
had been issued by some rebellious pastors down in Slesvig, but instead he
hit on comparing “two peculiarities of our recent literature, Magister
S. Kierkegaard’s well-known works and Professor Martensen’sDogmatics
and his work on dogmatics generally.” The talk was a sort of improvisation,
and Peter Christian started out by asking his audience to excuse him, be-
cause “I now must offer you something that first came to mind yesterday
evening and that I prepared in haste.”
The comparison between Professor Martensen and Magister Kierkegaard
was daring for a number of reasons, but Peter Christian went whole hog:
The professor was made the representative of “sober-mindedness,” while
the aforementionedmagisterwas the exponent of a purely subjective con-
ception of the faith in which he came close to “ecstasy.” Basing himself on
2 Corinthians 5:13 (“For if we are ‘beside ourselves,’ it is for God; if we
are in our right mind, it is for you”), and occasionally making use ofFear
and Tremblingand thePostscript, the elder brother pointed out how his little
brother was so captivated by “the power of passion” that he avoided every-
thing that did not involve “exertions requiring the greatest energy.” And
this was why his younger brother maintained “faith’sindependence from com-
pelling proofs” and continually insisted that “faith is tried in battleand
strengthened indanger.” Consequently, as Peter Christian noted in an at-
tempt at wit, “he isgladto cool off now and again (especially when the
blood rises to his head and the thoughts within crisscross one another with
dizzying speed) by a leap from the mainmast of speculation in order toswim
in ‘70,000 fathoms of water.’ ”
On this same occasion, Peter Christian gave assurances that he had noth-
ing against having an “ecstaticmonastery brother,” nor was he blind to the
merits of his brother’s writings, even though at this point the writings had
a quite negative effect on him—which, however, he turned into a positive
point: “An hour of reading those writings has, in fact, almost exactly the
same effect upon me that a shower used to have upon my physical constitu-
tion. For a moment, it is as though the life in me were gasping for air, and
then I am breathing deeply and freelyagainin the fresh breezes offaith,
while the legions of the intellect retreat to their subordinate position as the
servants of life, and the head is again satisfied to be a head instead of wanting
to be the entire person.” There were many ways to twist and turn if one
wantedto saythatSøren Aabyehadtoomuch intellectandtoo littlebody—
and this was Peter Christian’s venture in the genre. And now that he was
speaking of things that were distorted and baroque in their disproportions,
he would not shrink from pointing out one of the slightly droll paradoxes