                           20020212.00

     As I read about Religiousness A and Religiousness B in the
second part of the Concluding Unscientific Postscript, it occurs
to me that the recent controversy on this List about pluralism
and dogmatism, far from being irrelevant is a most pertinent
exegesis of Kierkegaard's writing and indeed of his own situation
where Religiousness A is approximately equivalent to pluralism,
inasmuch as it provides for a religious experience accessible to
the oekoumene, to all men, whereas religiousness B, accepting the
paradox of Jesus' uniqueness in history, endorses or expresses in
fact many of the premises and many of the conclusions of the
dogmatism of Christian orthodoxy.

     When one thinks about Religiousness A and Religiousness B,
one cannot help but to see the analogy with Either/Or, where
another dichotomy between an A and a B was proposed, a dichotomy
not in two types of religiousness, but one might say in two types
of aesthetics, the aesthetics A of Don Giovanni and the
aesthetics B of Judge Wilhelm; in the Postscript Religiousness A
corresponding to the tolerance of Lessing and Religiousness B to
the orthodoxy of Lessings partner in controversy, Hauptpastor
Goetze.

     It is tempting to seek to find in Kierkegaards thought a
movement, a "development" from A to B, as correspondents with
this List have suggested.  In the case of Either/Or, the
interpretation that A was an uncommitted, dissolute seducer of
women, whom Judge Wilhelm as B admonishes to repair his ways,
that Judge Wilhelm admonishes him to repent to a life of
responsibility commitment and true love; much as in the
penultimate scene of Mozart's opera, Il Commendatore thrice
admonishes Don Giovanni "repentiti", before it is too late,
before his soul should be destroyed in the everlasting fires of
damnation.

     Similarly correspondents with this List have suggested that
Religiousness B is the refutation of Religiousness A, and an
improvement over it, the recantation of subjectivity and
inwardness in favor of a faith more conventionally anchored in
the historical givenness of the incarnation.

     But it is also possible to purport to identify in the
aesthetics B and in religiousness B respectively, vitiating
threads of the antagonistic principle that each presumes to have
overcome.  In the case of Either/Or one may reasonably question
the aesthetic validity of Wilhelms own marriage since by his own
admission not only does his unnamed wife appear unattractive to
him before mid-afternoon, but he is unable to confide in her to
the extrent that he is able to confide in his recalcitrant pupil
A, to whom he admits an unabashedly erotic attachment.  Thus
rather than taking Wilhelms pieties at face value, or one may
point out that although Wilhelm claims to love his wife above
all, he actually loves A more...  castinga shadow of doubt upon
the aesthetic validity of marriage.

     In the case of the Postscript, one may reasonably question
the spiritual validity of Religiousness B, entailing as it does
the incorporation of the absurd into the psyche of the believer.
But the absurd represents a metabasis eis allo genos.  Faith in
the absurd becomes necessary only with the abdication of the
spirit to outwardness.  For historical validity is outward
validity.

     I conclude that Kierkegaards writing on these issues is
inconclusive.  The uncertainty of the writing reflects the
uncertainty of Kierkegaard's life.  The Romantic notion that life
itself is the ultimate object of art.  The absurd is the
capitulation to dialectical tension The absurd is the repudiation
of dialectic.  The dialectical process is anything but absurd

     One returns to the hypothesis of Kierkegaard behind the
pseudonyms as a more or less disinterested artist, who, without
promoting any agenda of his own, permits the actors, in this
instance not persons, but ideas, their independent existences on
the intellectual stage, without passing judgment on them. Indeed,
the central question of the Fragments, to what extent eternal
happiness may be grounded on an historical datum, this question
is posed specifically to be considered and to be left unanswered.

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