I thank Per Kongsdal for his reply to a recent letter
of mine:

> 	Mister Ernst wrote:
> 	"In the last two years of his life, Kierkegaard 
> became a journalist."
> 
> 	Hmmmm.
> 	
> 
> p.e.r. Kongsdal d.E.

To Per Kongsdal, and to all others for whom correspondence
in English might be awkward, I suggest writing to the List
in Norwegian, Danish, German, French or Latin, with the
expectation that one of his readers, a member of our List,
might provide the rest of us with the requisite translation.
(I myself should be pleased to translate from or into German.)

My observation that in the last two years of his life
Kierkegaard became a journalist, was intended to be
descriptive rather than deprecatory. I try as best I
can not to permit epistemic belief or ideology to color
my interpretation.  During those last two years
Kierkegaard published twenty-one articles in the
Copenhagen newspaper "Faedrelandet". He also wrote ten
pamphlets (The Moment) for periodic publication to which he
invited subscriptions. These writings certainly satify
the dictionary definition of journalism: 1) the collection
and editing of material of current interest for presentation
through news media; 2) writing designed for publication
in a newspaper or popular magazine.  The dictionary also
defines a journalist as a) one engaged in journalism, or
b) a writer who aims at a mass audience. I believe that
these criteria were satisfied by Kierkegaard, and that our
understanding of his writing in these two years is enhanced
by considering the extent to which they had the quality of
journalism.

Three pertinent characteristics of Kierkegaard's writing come
to mind: 1) the propagandistic attempt to convince a mass
readership of a set of purportedly valid facts, i.e. the claim
that contemporary Christianity was alien to the Christianity
of the New Testament. 2) the polemical intent of his publications,
hence the absence of reflection, of dialectic; the failure to
consider an opposing or diverging point of view. 3) The
implicit (?idolatrous) reduction of what is real to what is
publicly stated. In the 19th and early 20th centuries there must
have been many individuals to whom only those events were real
which were described in newspapers, just as today there are many
for whom reality is dominated by what they see on television. 

In issue no 304 of Faedrelandet, Saturday, December 30, 1954,
Kierkegaard wrote, (and again I translate freely from my
German text):

    "That Bishop _Mynster_ is represented from the
pulpit as a Witness to Truth, one of the genuine witnesses,
that one assigns to him a place in the holy chain (of
witnesses), etc., (these assertions) require objection;
and that is that."

"Dasz man von der Kanzel herab Bishof _Mynster_  als
Wahrheitszeugen darstellt, einen von den echten Wahrheitszeugen,
dasz man ihm einen Platz in der heiligen Kette zuweist usw.:
Dagegen musz Einspruch erhoben werden; dabei bleibt es."
(XIV, 15)

Why, one may ask, do these assertions demand objection?
Does not God see what is hidden? Does the explicit objection
diminish the reality of that which is objected to? Is it
because Truth requires to be stated explicitly, in newspapers,
advertisements, inscribed on bumper stickers and T-shirts
in order to retain, - or perhaps even in order to acquire
its validity?

In another tract (XIV 85) Kierkegaard purports to put his
readers on notice, in a quasi-legal style, of their wrong-doing
if they continue to attend church.

      "This must be said; then let it be said.
Dec. 1954

      This must be said. I place no one under an obligation
so to act, for I have no such authority. But by having heard it,
you have been made responsible, and must now act at your own
risk as you deem it justifiable before God. One (of you) will
perhaps hear it in such manner as to comply with what I say.
Another will deem it pleasing to God, and believe that he is
rendering God a service, if he participates in raising hue and cry
against me. Neither the one nor the other concerns me. all that
concerns me is that it must be said."


      Dies musz gesagt werden; so sei es denn gesagt

Dez 1954

      Dies musz gesagt werden; ich verpflichte niemanden, danach
zu tun, dazu habe ich keine Vollmacht. Aber dadurch dasz Du es
gehoert hast, bist Du verantwortlich gemacht und muszt nun auf
eigene Verantwortung handeln, wie Du glaubst, es vor Gott
verantworten zu koennen. Einer wird es vielleicht dergestalt hoeren,
dasz er tut was ich sage, ein anderer dergestalt, dasz er es
als Gott wohlgefaellig versteht, glaubt, Gott einen Dienst damit
zu erweisen, wenn er daran teilnimmt ein Geschrei gegen mich zu
erheben. Keines von beiden geht mich etwas an; mich geht nur an,
dasz es gesagt werden musz."
(XIV 85)

At first reading, the foregoing might seem to fit the literary
genre of the Protestant sermon, an exhortation to the hearer
to do the will of God. But his alienation has removed Kierkegaard
from the sphere of the pastoral; for what is a shepherd who tells
his flock, "I don't care what you do. All I care is to make a
proclamation." Could it be that such a pastor has become 
a journalist?

It is not I, but Kierkegaard, who makes an ethical issue
of journalism. It was he who wrote: "The lowest depth to
which people can sink before God is defined by the word
Journalist". I do not endorse Kierkegaard's judgment.
I wish only to point out what I see as the tragic paradox
of Kierkegaard's position. My meditation on this issue
is very much experimental, and I am ready to be converted
to any more consistent alternative interpretation.
However, I am allergic to hero worship and ideology;
if contributors to this list wish to read Kierkegaard's
diatribes as an apogee of agape and the apotheosis of
theology, it doesn't make any difference to me.
In this sense I, too have become a journalist.

Kevin Solway asks:

> Would you say that Jesus too was a journalist? 
> Because he too did his share of investigative work
> in uncovering the hypocrisy of the religion
> of his day, and made his discoveries public.

 "Investigate work" and "uncovering hypocrisy" are
concepts that are only incidental to a definition
of journalism as I understand it. As for whether Jesus
was a journalist, the Gospels present far to variegated
a picture of Jesus to warrant that conclusion. However,
it seems to me that Jesus' denunciation of the pharisees
in Matthew 23; 13-35, for example, has many of the
characteristics of journalism, in that Jesus demonizes
a class of human beings who, however deformed their minds
may have been by ideology and dogma, were children of God,
and beloved by him, nonetheless.

Ernst Meyer
review@netcom.com