                           20020114.02

     Antony Aumann asks why I am "so hasty to attribute to
Kierkegaard that which is so emphatically presented from a
"center of gravity" (viz. that of Assessor Wilhelm) that is most
likely not the one that he himself maintained."

     I am sorry that I did not make myself clear when I wrote:
"... it is a mistake to attribute to Kierkegaard consistency or
constancy in his life, in his thought, and even, ultimately, in
the religious experience reflected in his writings.  Thus it is
relatively meaningless to say that Kierkegaard was or was not a
religious pluralist. Better to say that in some contexts he
appears as one, in other contexts he appears as the other; and
although he entitled his early book: "Either-Or", to my mind his
writings become much more intelligible if one translates either-
or into both-and."

     More specifically, I prefer not to attribute to Kierkegaard
any position or opinion at all. Kierkegaard said of himself that
he was a poet. I read Kierkegaard as I read Shakespeare.  I do
not think it is meaningful to ask whether Shakespeare really
liked Hamlet, or whether Shakespeare felt sorry for Macbeth, or
whether in the quarrel of Act I, Scene 1, of Richard II,
Shakespeare favors Bolingbroke or Mowbray. If Shakespeare had
been partisan, or sentimental or opinionated, he couldn't have
written the plays.  Similarly, it seems to me beside the point to
presume to ascertain Kierkegaard's dogmatic opinion about any
matter, be it religious pluralism or truth or subjectivity.  Had
Kierkegaard been preaching - or lecturing - to us, we probably
would not find it worth our while to pay attention.

     The specific passage for which Antony Aumann took me to
task, as being "so emphatically presented from a "center of
gravity" (viz. that of Assessor Wilhelm) that is most likely not
the one that he himself maintained," was as follows:

     Sp/org Dig, og hold ved at sp/orge, indtil Du finder Svaret;
thi man kan have erkjendt en Ting mange Gange, anerkjendt den,
man kan have villet en Ting mange Gange, fors/ogt den, og dog,
f/orst den dybe indre Bevaegelse, f/orst Hjertets ubeskrivelige
R/orelse, f/orst den forvisser Dig om, at hvad Du har erkjendt,
tilh/orer Dig, at ingen Magt kan tage det fra Dig; thi kun den
Sandhed, der opbygger, er Sandhed for Dig.

     Ask thyself, and continue to ask, until you find the answer;
for one may have recognized a thing many times, have acknowledged
it, one may have willed a thing many times, tried it, and yet,
first the deep inward emotion, first the heart's indescribable
feeling, first they will assure you that what you have
recognized, belongs to you, and no power can take it from you;
for only the truth, which edifies, is truth for you.

     These concluding sentences of Either-Or are not from the pen
of Assessor Wilhelm. They are from the sermon of yet another
pseudonym, a friend of Assessor Wilhelm's, a country parson,
outwardly jolly but inwardly grave, academically mediocre, but of
great intellectual originality, a man whose personality, in other
words, corroborates at the end of Either-Or, the theme of its
introduction: that the inside is not to be inferred from the
outside.

     Assessor Wilhelm concurs with the sermon, and forwards it to
A, stating that he, Wilhelm, could not have expressed its
sentiments as fluently.  Wilhelm then concludes:

Tag den da, laes den, jeg har Intet at tilf/oie,
uden at jeg har laest den, og taenkt paa mig
selv, laest den, og taenkt paa Dig.

Take it then, read it, I have nothing to add,
nothing but that I read it and thought of myself,
read it, and thought of you.

You, being the unnamed author "A" of the first part of
Either-Or.

     The title of the sermon that Wilhelm forwards to "A":

DET OPBYGGELIGE, DER LIGGER I DEN TANKE, AT MOD GUD
HAVE VI ALTID URET.

The Edification that lies in the thought, that
against God, we are always wrong.

     Although formally incorporated into the second part of
Either-Or, conceptually the closing pages, styled "Ultimatum",
span, suggestive of a rainbow of peace and reconciliation, the
ultimate concerns of both A and B.  It is significant that the
sermon asserts not that you, not that I, but that we, are always
in the wrong before God. In endorsing the sermon and forwarding
it to A, Wilhelm is in fact qualifying his own argumentative
position, and is placing himself on an equal level with A as
being in the wrong before God.  Wilhelm's endorsement of the
sermon is with respect to A, a message of, and with respect to B,
a prayer for forgiveness. A spiritual equilibirum between the two
is finally achieved, when B places himself vis a vis God in just
that position which his laborious exhortations had implicitly
ascribed to A: in the wrong.

                            * * * * *