I have been studying the writings of Soren Kierkegaard (SK) lately. Now, I am not a big fan of different philosophical theories. I have studied a little of Nietzsche and many people believe themselves to be gods today. This belief is at the core of Nietzsche’s ideas. Now Nietzsche was an existentialist and one of the most popular. But  Soren Kierkegaard was the father of existentialism. I wondered how that was possible as I thought he was a Christian philosopher. This confusion has led to me do the some more reading about Kierkegaard.

I discovered that he was an existentialist and that he loved God in the middle of all of that. I also discovered that he had a very interesting history and that he was a geek a lover at heart. He did believe that life was absurd. He also believed that we are called by God to do things which appear absurd. We are called to build giant arks in the middle of nowhere and we are called to march around an enemy’s walls singing songs. However, the one Bible story that SK kept going back to was the story of Abraham sacrificing Isaac. The fact that Abraham agreed to do it, just because he was commanded by God to do it, made Abraham what SK called, “A Knight of Faith”. This is because Abraham had to take a true leap of faith to do it.

I agree we look absurd and are called to do the absurd. We are called to worship a god we cannot see, who we cannot control like a genie, and who dwells in mystery and shadow. And just like those stories in the Bible, sometimes we are commanded to do things that look absurd.

In SK’s most famous book, Either/Or he describes what he believed is the natural progression of human spiritual development. Piaget had his stages of intellectual development and Erik Erikson had his stages of psychosocial development. SK had his levels of spiritual development. He believed that man (and woman too) starts as the Aesthetic, meaning we are consumed with pleasures and the aspects of the physical world: those things we can taste, touch, smell, see, etc… Later, (if he is lucky)  he becomes the Ethical Man. The Ethical Man is concerned with civic and family duty. He finally ends up as the Religious Man, looking to God for answers of right and wrong and living an authentic life as a true individual, as Abraham did. Many people do not reach that level of self-actualization.  According to Kierkegaard you must progress through each stage sequentially and you cannot be an Ethical Man and have any aspects of the Aesthetic man or vice versa. According to SK, it is either/or, hence the title of the book.

Personally, I believe there is much truth in this philosophy and we can see it in the modern world. If I could add a footnote to SK’s philosophies, modern (relatively) examples would be Huxley’s Brave New World shows the life of a Aesthetic Man and Orwell’s 1984 shows the Ethical Man, both taken to extremes. I believe that both the Aesthetic and the Ethical stages are full of absurdity and in and of themselves, lead to lives that deserve suicide. However, I believe that the Religious Man where we take responsibility for our family and civil duties and we use the brain’s that the Lord gave us and where we are called to be happy and faith and like children. Having said that, I do not agree with everything that Kierkegaard wrote.

Other aspects of SK’s philosophies are his desire for other people to become full individuals by seeing themselves in relationship to God, his hatred and warnings against institutional or civic Christianity, and his admonitions to Christian love for the neighbor.

I do believe that it is important to understand what great thinkers like SK wanted us to see.

Romans 12:2: Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.

—————————————————————-W.