Live Your Truth?
Kierkegaard’s View of the Self, Postmodern Self-Obsession, and The Christian Ethic
“Live your truth” is a phrase which, while common today, would be completely incomprehensible if uttered only a few centuries ago. The rise of individual identity formation in our postmodern, post-Christian society has given rise to seemingly new ways of conceptualizing and speaking about the self and about how one ought to relate to the world around them. But are these seemingly “new” ideas all that new? During the Enlightenment era, one key factor which contributed to Western society’s current conception of the self is what is called “the turn to the subject.” This idealism, in short, is the assertion that reality is constructed and organized in the mind of the subject, the one who perceives it. This “turn to the subject” has massively impacted not just the way in which we today concieve of mind-independent reality (if we even consider it to actually exist), but also ourselves. Yet how does one get from Enlightenment period philosophical idealism to “live your truth?” Enter the Danish father of existentialism: Soren Kierkegaard. While not intending to do so, Kierkegaard’s existentialism sheds much light on how individuals in our postmodern society perceive themselves. So, by understanding how Kierkegaard understood the self within his philosophical framework, we can further understand how the way we see ourselves has been shaped by the progression of philosophical thinking on the subject. In this article, I will seek to explain Kierkegaard’s social and historical context in which he wrote, communicate his understanding of the self, and draw some relevant connections between his thinking and the postmodern view of the self. Finally, I will take a brief look at how Kierkegaard’s view of the self impacts religious self-conception, particularly within the Christian faith.
Kierkegaard’s Historical Context
In order to fully appreciate Kierkegaard’s view of the self within his philosophical framework, we must first understand the historical context in which he was living. In general, there were two primary factors which greatly impacted the way he expressed his concept of the self. Firstly, Kierkegaard was immersed within the dead orthodoxy of the 19th century Danish Lutheran church. This point is crucial, as the purpose of all of Kierkegaard’s work in the view of many scholars was to, in a sense, reintroduce Christianity to Christendom. According to Leo Stan, “the foundations of his thought are of a religious extraction, bearing witness to the last vestiges of the premodern worldview that survived through the first half of the nineteenth century.” Since Kierkegaard was thinking within a Christian worldview, his thinking on the topic of the self was shaped primarily by the Christian understanding of the imago dei. This is why, according to C. Stephen Evans, “Kierkegaard became increasingly convinced that establishment Christianity in Denmark, as embodied by the official Lutheran church, made authentic Christian life difficult and even impossible.” Evans explains that in the mind of Kierkegaard, there must be a distinction between Christendom and Christianity. Christianity, according to Kierkegaard, is personal; it requires a choice, a “leap of faith” into the unknown, to go against everything the world is saying is correct and be willing to suffer the opposition of the world in order to follow Jesus and embody in full the imago dei. On the other hand, Christendom is the culturally-cleansed version of Christianity which deals in abstract concepts and deems assent to those concepts as faith, without the requirement of self-sacrifice and distinction from the world. This is crucial for his understanding of the self, as it reveals that Kierkegaard emphasized the individuality of faith in contrast with the Christendom of his day.
Another key historical piece which helps set Kierkegaard within his historical context is the Industrial Revolution arriving in Denmark. William McDonald writes,
“prevailing educational and cultural institutions tended to produce stereotyped members of ‘the crowd’ rather than to allow individuals to discover their own unique identities. This problem was compounded by the fact that Denmark had recently and very rapidly been transformed from a feudal society into a capitalist society. Universal elementary education, large-scale migration from rural areas into cities, and greatly increased social mobility meant that the social structure changed from a rigidly hierarchical one to a relatively “horizontal” one.”
In other words, in Kierkegaard’s view, industrialization threatened the uniqueness of individuals and their ability to make a choice for themselves of what they seek to be as individual persons. Because of the rapid industrialization happening in Denmark, society as a whole was being trained to be a part of the crowd, to be a part of a homogenous whole. This created, in Kierkegaard’s mind, a loss of personal identity, which compounded with Kierkegaard’s struggles with Christendom, created a personal burden too much to bear if accepted as is. In short, Kierkegaard was afraid that there would be no significance to the individual human experience, that every person would homogenized into a cog in the machine of a capitalistic, quasi-religious society. These critiques, reminiscent of Marx’s critiques of capitalism, reveal some of the driving forces behind Kierkegaard’s thinking. Kierkegaard sought to reimagine within this context how the individual could still be uniquely significant before God and within society, when every aspect of society was pushing for sameness and homogeneity.
Kierkegaard’s View of the Self
In light of the historical context reviewed above, we now move to Kierkegaard’s view of the self. Amber Bowen points out that “[Kierkegaard] explores the way the self’s structure appears within the context of existence.” In his writing, as a reaction to the abstraction of Christianity in his day, Kierkegaard ensured that he was explaining the self that was connected to the real, human experience, and not just an idealized version of it. Bowen adds that his view of the self is “fundamentally relational,” which means that within the self, there exist multiple relations which make up the structure of a person. In Kierkegaard’s view, according to Bowen, there are three layers of relationship within the self. Firstly, there are three polarities of the self: finite-infinite, which deals with the basis of the self’s existence in regards to teleology; temporal-eternal, which deals with the nature of the self in regards to time; and necessity-freedom, which addresses the constraints upon the self’s ability to choose. The second layer is self-consciousness of these polarities, in which the self seeks to harmonize the three polarities with its existence. The third layer is ability of the self to relate to the power that established it, namely Christ. All of these layers are accessed along the progression of time as the self grows and become aware of these polarities and tensions that exist between them. This view of the self is in stark contrast to a view of the self which is static. Rather, according to Wanda Warren Berry, “Kierkegaard oriented his thought toward ‘becoming.’”
Given that the self is realized more and more throughout the progression of time, how exactly does the self change? According to William Johnson, there are two stages of life which the self experiences. The first is what Kierkegaard called the “aesthetical.” Johnson explains, “If man persists that which is proximate to comprise the whole meaning of his life, then man is aesthetically.” In other words, if all a person does is let the circumstances of life dictate the totality of his being, he is subject to despair because he is no longer living in a way that allows him to have choice. But, according to Johnson, “If, on the other hand, man seeks to find meaning in his life of the basis of a decision, a projection into the future, then he is living ethically.” In other words, in Kierkegaard’s view, if a person acts on the basis of a decision, to “choose himself” and to find purpose for his life, then he is living a meaningful, “ethical” life. However, when a person chooses themselves, it may also lead to despair in that they come to “the realization that man has based his life upon transitory values. Man must ‘choose himself’ as he is in reality, but it’s do so with the soul possibility that his life does not have a relationship to eternal validity.” For Kierkegaard, this is the crux of where faith begins. In order for life to have any eternal validity, it must be based upon the absolute reality for which it was made, which is God as revealed in Christ. Johnson points out that “Man’s spiritual nature distinguishes himself from all that is in creation which cannot live in relationship with God… Man worships the Creator, not the created.” For Kierkegaard, the fulfillment of the self was found in only God and having faith in him, although he is hidden from man’s sight.
As can be seen in this section, Kierkegaard’s view of the self is subject-centred. It deals primarily with the actions of the self rather than factors external to the self. Berry explains that Kierkegaard was reacting to the Hegelian view of the self, which is much more objective in its approach. According to Berry,
“‘Dialectic’ here identities the process of rationality which is, for Hegelians, the process of reality… reality is here seen as ‘Becoming,’ the rational process in which the given implies its opposite, and the logical intolerability of contradiction is the dynamic which moves reality toward unified development through the mediation of opposites… Kierkegaard does appropriate the Hegelian focus upon ‘process’ and ‘becoming,’ although he rejects any objective speculation about the ‘Absolute’ and ‘world-historical process,’ and turns our attention toward existential process.”
This paragraph by Berry represents the “turn to the subject” which is crucial for understanding the development of the Western, postmodern view of the self in the present age. Kierkegaard rejected the objective, “world-historical process” as a meaningful method of understanding human change and significance, but rather appropriated the Hegelian dialectic to show how the self can find meaning in God. Kierkegaard rejected this objective, abstracted view of the self as it fits into reality, but rightly understood that there must be some sort of Absolute in which the self can root meaning and significance in this life. Instead of overreacting to the deadness of the Danish Lutheran church, Kierkegaard turned the philosophy of his day on its head by connecting it with the human experience of the search for meaning and significance in a world which demanded sameness.
Kierkegaard’s Self and Postmodern Self-Obsession
At this point, having laid the groundwork for Kierkegaard’s view of the self, I want to now explore the relationship between Kierkegaard’s view of the self and the prevailing view of the self which exists today. More specifically, I want to trace the progression from Kierkegaard to the present day by highlighting the key similarities and differences that exist between the two views, with the aim that relevant connections can be drawn for a deeper understanding of the postmodern view of the self.
The first relevant similarity between Kierkegaard and the prevailing notion of the self that exists today is that they both begin with the self as the starting point for knowing reality. Paul W. Kurtz writes that existentialism, the brand of philosophy which Kierkegaard fathered, “refers to the concrete existing individual who is the starting point of all knowledge and being.” Both in Kierkegaard’s thinking and in the present day, the self is the beginning of the journey to knowledge and self-discovery.
Another key similarity between Kierkegaard and the present day is the focus upon the experiences of the self as hampering the ability of the self to be “objective.” Again, Kurtz summarizes Kierkegaard’s thinking, “Rational philosophy is divorced from life, and rational religion from religious experience. Philosophers all too often want to discourse on what Christianity is, its objective side, its cognitive aspect — yet without knowing what it means to be a Christian.” The lived experience for Kierkegaard was crucial for any understanding of truth, as he distinguished between the “inwardness” and “outwardness” of the self. It is one thing to critique an idea from the outside looking in, but another entirely to critique the idea when you believe it to be true. In context, Kierkegaard is talking about Christianity and the rationalistic ideas assailing it in his day. In a similar way, our postmodern society has extrapolated upon Kierkegaard’s thought and has appropriated it to all spheres of life (this will be expanded upon later).
A third similarity between Kierkegaard’s view of the self and the postmodern view of the self lies in the underlying psychology of the self assumed in both. It is undeniable that the postmodern view of the self has been strongly influenced by Carl Jung, a psychiatrist whose work has impacted the way postmodern society has conceived of itself on a psychological level. Jeffery G. Sobosan compares Jung and Kierkegaard and concludes that there are many overlaps in their thinking. For example, he writes, “Kierkegaard and Jung are also convinced that freedom lies in the knowledge of the becoming self. For the more one knows himself, the more he is a self. And the more knowledge he has, he freer he is.” One of the reasons for the explosion of popularity in personality tests in the present day is because of what Sobosan rightly points out as a similarity between Kierkegaard and Jung; both philosophically and psychologically, the primary path to freedom from the troubles of life is knowledge of the self as it is in the process of becoming.
After examining a few of the many similarities between Kierkegaard’s view of the self and the postmodern view of the self, it is worthwhile to ask: are there any major differences between the two conceptions of the self? The answer to this question is affirmative. The biggest difference which needs to be addressed is that of religious orientation. In Kierkegaard’s framework, because he was a Christian, the fulfillment of his view of the self was found in God alone. Kurtz explains of Kierkegaard’s view,
“There is a ‘fear and trembling,’ a ‘sickness of the spirit unto death’ that will devour me — unless, that is, Christ is truly the mediator and Son of God, the light, the way, the truth for all men, but especially for me… my finitude can be transcended and I can be made whole only by my faith which provides a bridge to God.”
The fulfillment of all that Kierkegaard wrote about regarding the self was centred around God as revealed in Christ. This is where the key difference between Kierkegaard and the postmodern self lay. As noted earlier, postmodernism as a system has taken Kierkegaard’s view of the self and has expanded it to all spheres of life. However, at the same time, it has removed God as the objective source and fulfillment of the self and has elevated the self to the place of God. The self has become the source and fulfillment of the self. Therefore, self-expressionism as a way of life has become the norm of Western society. This is why social media is not the cause of postmodern self-obsession; it is the result of postmodern self-obsession, stemming from a view of the self that is elevated to the place of God. Uniqueness and individuality are the only way of life, as it most expresses the desires of the self and allows for people to feel valuable apart from having any ontological value before God.
Stemming from this reality, another key difference between Kierkegaard’s view of the self and the postmodern view of the self is that Kierkegaard firmly believed in a “spiritual” side of the person, whereas postmodern society is prone to boil down the issues of a person to their psychological makeup. Sobosan points this out when he compares Jung and Kierkegaard, “It is at this point where consciousness and unconsciousness, or the finite and infinite come together that human problems arise. To Jung these are psychological problems; to Kierkegaard they are theological ones.” While discussing the similarity between the two, Sobosan points out the key difference between Kierkegaard and Jung, which is representative of the difference between Kierkegaard and the postmodern self. Since the problem of humanity is primarily theological in Kierkegaard’s framework, the solution is as well primarily theological. For Jung, since it is psychological, the solution is correspondingly psychological. However, given the elevation of self to the place of God, the psychological aspect of a person is not just a part of the human experience; it is the only way human experience occurs. Therefore, the solution to the existential issues people face is not God, but rather therapy. Failure to self-express or self-actualize the ideal life is devastating, but because the issue is primarily in the mind, the solution is to fix the mind in order to continue in the attempt to “live your truth.” It is clear then, that while the postmodern view of the self can trace its root back to Kierkegaard, it has taken out the key element of Kierkegaard’s system which made it cohesive; the God who creates and fulfills the longings and tension that exist within the self.
How Christians Can Learn From Kierkegaard
Given the connections between Kierkegaard and the postmodern age in which we find ourselves, it is important that Christians learn from Kierkegaard in order to speak more meaningfully into the society around them. As shown, the postmodern self and Kierkegaard’s self share much in common, with the key difference being belief in a God who brings ultimate fulfillment of the self. As Christians, we can learn from Kierkegaard about how we conceive of ourselves in a religious sense in order to speak more meaningfully to the postmodern society and their view of the self.
The first way which Christians can learn from Kierkegaard is to consider the role of patience in his view of the becoming self. Bowen explains,
“There is a structural element of selfhood given. But selfhood is also a task — an ongoing development. The soul — or the ‘self’ — is formed into what it is by virtue of what it repeatedly gives itself to over time… the self’s continuity is a gift that we continually re-receive from the power that establishes us.”
What Kierkegaard continually communicates in his writings is that the self is always in the process of becoming, which means that the self in Kierkegaard’s view is inextricably linked to time. The continual process of becoming is what life, and especially the Christian life, is all about. In Kierkegaard’s view, this becoming has the fulfillment of it’s trajectory in Christ, but it is worthwhile to consider that, as Merold Westphal writes, “faith is the task of a lifetime.” The life of faith is lived moment-by-moment, always seeking meaning from the God who decreed that faith into existence.
Another way which Christians can learn from Kierkegaard’s view of the self as they seek to witness to the postmodern world is in the area of mission. It should be noted that, as Olli-Pekka Vainio writes, “Kierkegaard seems to be more concerned about the mission in Denmark than in actual pagan countries (for in his view, Danish Christian’s were to a degree pagan).” However, this does not mean he was unaware about the need for non-Christians to hear the gospel. The question for Kierkegaard is how that mission was fulfilled in relation to the self. Vainio asserts that in opposition to a postmodern view of the self, which many people interpret Kierkegaard to be communicating, he takes as a personal view of truth. As Vainio summarizes, “Who is your master? Is it the Apostle or is it an adjunct professor whose speculation takes control over Christian faith?” The one to whom we submit and give ourselves over to as individuals is the same one whom we are declaring to others that our lives revolve around. Essentially, truth is a matter of impact on the individual. Vainio concludes, “We come to understand life and by truly living in them. For Kierkegaard, Christianity or Christian mission cannot be “‘a doctrine’ or a mere theory because it is a practice.” The implication for the Christian mission, therefore, is to live so convinced of the truth of what we believe that others will also be convinced by how we live that what we believe is true.
Live Your Truth — A Christian Ethic?
In light of all that has been discussed, what then do we make of the phrase “live your truth?” After examining Kierkegaard’s view of the self in comparison with the postmodern view of the self, it can be concluded that Kierkegaard would respond with “live the truth.” For Kierkegaard, truth by nature must be lived out. While Kierkegaard would not be a postmodernist in the truest sense of the word, as he still believed in an ability to judge between worldviews, his view of the self lends itself to the necessity of the lived experience in relation to the truth. As Christians, do we believe that truth must be lived in tangible, real ways in our tangible, real lives? Or, like the dead Danish church of Kierkegaard’s day, are we content with a Christianity merely full of intellectual propositions that require no more than a nod of the head in affirmation?
Jesus said, in one of his most famous statements, “By this all people will know you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” (John 13:35, ESV). The truth of what we proclaim, the identifying mark of us being followers of Jesus is the lived obedience in day-to-day life of loving God and loving one another. As Christians in a postmodern world obsessed with the self, it is worthwhile to study philosophers like Kierkegaard; to consider what it means to be truly human, so that we can communicate what it means to have significance that comes from God’s redemption in Christ, and to live that truth for the world to see.
