CxD Books of '23 #8: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Philosopher of the Heart: The Restless Life of Soren Kierkegaard ❤️
A biography of a philosopher who said to the Christians gathering in the churches of Denmark: you call this Christianity? Does Christianity even still exist?
Before Kierkegaard began his authorship, he had learned from Socrates that ‘there is nothing that requires as gentle a treatment as the removal of an illusion’ — for a direct confrontation only makes people more defensive and resistant, and strengthens their self-decptions. It is not easy to correct a mistake that concerns a person’s entire existence. As a Socratic missionary, he has tried to teach his readers ‘not to comprehend Christianity, but to comprehend that they cannot comprehend it.’ And so he entered into their illusion in order to draw them out of it: ‘One does not begin directly with what one wishes to communicate, but begins by taking the other’s delusion at face value. Thus one does not begin in this way: It is Christianity that I am proclaiming, and you are living in purely aesthetic categories. No, one begins in this way: Let us talk about the aesthetic.” This was, he now admits, a ‘deception’ for he entered the aesthetic sphere only ‘in order to arrive at the religious.’
What makes this biography extra riveting, beyond a brilliant interpretation of how The Diary of a Seducer —one of Kierkegaard’s most famous pieces of writing alluded to above —is that this biography is not written chronologically, but moves backward and forwards in time, synthesizing ideas and reflections the way a truly integrative rather than causal thinker does. You think you understand your life, do you? Have you thought of it in this way, though? That was K’s way of living philosophy.
Kierkegaard like Nietzsche aimed straight for where it hurts, and reading their biographies back-to-back filled me with profound respect and awe at all that is possible in this one short human life— if we fully put our hearts into living it.