Kierkegaard's Use Of Irony

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So, the effect of irony on an inhabitant of Christendom should be such as to move him or her out of the habit of constant reflection affecting the dispassionate moderns. This, sers him or her to strive to “become simple” – that is, to be come one – with the ideal of Christian living. Crucially, reaching simplicity does not abolish the use or need for reflection: to become one with the Christian form-of-life is not to return to a condition of childish innocence. On the contrary, reflection is redeemed by being subsumed into the Christian life. This, we can gather from a journal entry dated 1848 which I shall quote at length: ‘it has generally been thought that reflection is the natural enemy of Christianity and would destroy it. With God’s help …show more content…

Just like the unconscious sea-creature bites the next meal and is thus baited out of the water, so the one living in Christendom will approach – say – Either/Or as just another literary-philosophical curiosity. This way, unexpectedly, he or she will find the way out of pure reflection. It must be noticed how reflection includes the practice of irony: Kierkegaard’s works which present non-Christian forms of life as a reflective way to simplicity with Christianity have irony as their core. Again, texts like Either/Or argues ironically against their readers’ pretense, triggering the move from reflection to aporia: from aporia, one can find the way to simplicity with the Ideal. Moreover, irony appears as an element of reflection both during the process through which one is baited out of Christendom and later when reflection is fully and organically part of …show more content…

As we have seen, religious witnessing is a form of direct communication mixed with elements of indirect communication in that it points beyond itself and towards God as the true originator of its content. The category of simplicity allows us to add an element to this picture. The religious witness points to God and to its ideal as outside itself. At the same time, where we have genuine religious witnessing it must follow that the ideal is in some degree present and achieved because of the simplicity implied by direct communication. Therefore, the religious witness – precisely insofar as he or she is such a one - can claim to have some degree of communion and achievement with respect to the ideal. Subsequently a Christian is able to communicate the Gospel in simplicity to the extent in which he or she embodies the Gospel: he or she is communicating him- or herself, insofar as the doctrine is the same as him- or herself. This condition, I believe, is testified by the fact that when Kierkegaard resorts to write a thorough presentation of Christian living – I am thinking of his text Practice in Christianity - he does not dare to take responsibility himself for this work. Rather, he “entrusts” this discussion of what is the essence of “being-Christian” as well as act of accusation against Christendom to a pseudonym, Anti-Climacus, who is said to be a perfect Christian.31 As much as

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