                           20020412.00

     The recent exchanges on this List about introducing
Kierkegaard into the academic curriculum are yet another
indication of the breadth of the spectrum of us who for one
reason or another are concerned with Kierkegaard's writings, and
a reminder that these writings are not only the chronicle of one
man's spiritual and intellectual life, but that these writings
serve also as a virtual mirror reflecting images of each one of
us readers, or potential readers, or non-readers, reflecting the
objective truth that, from him who passionately identifies his
own experience with Kierkegaard's writings to him whose only
articulated response to them is the laconic, dismissive, and
perhaps disdainful "unsubscribe", thoughtlessly addressed to all
the rest of us, we are each of us very different from the other.

     It would be correspondingly as incongruous to insinuate or
even to insist that our interpretations of Kierkegaard should
coincide, as it would be to demand that our reflections in plates
of silvered glass should resemble, not to speak of being
indistinguishable, one from the other.  It would be both rude and
foolish even to imply that any one mode of interpretation is the
correct, or even the only correct one.  It is possible, however,
be discerning and critical in a non-pejorative sense without
being judgmental.

     To inquire how one would "test" familiarity with
Kierkegaard's writings by means of multiple choice or true and
false questions, i.e. by means of formulas which require the
student to endorse one of two or more pre-defined alternatives,
is in a dialectical way eminently appropriate in the context of
Kierkegaard studies, where the inescapable "aut aut", "enten
eller", "either or", reflecting the logical indefiniteness of
experience, is the unifying theme that pervades almost all of the
writings of Kierkegaard that I have read.  Multiple choice
questions would "test" only such knowledge about Kierkegaard as
is objective, as can be agreed upon by diverse individuals, as
can be expressed in the indicative statements of language,
information which Kierkegaard would probably have considered
irrelevant to that essential intellectual experience which he
called subjective truth, irrelevant to the ultimate concern of
the individual for his own spiritual integrity, for his own
"eternal blessedness".

     The proposition that ones understanding of Kierkegaard's
thought might be "tested" by means of mechanical multiple choice
questions may make it obvious to some that being devoid of any
pretense to objectivity, Kierkegaard's thought is insubstantial
in to a degree that makes it unsuitable for academic instruction;
one cannot "test" for the subjective truth that Kierkegaard
purports to engender.  Understanding Kierkegaard's meaning can't
increase your test scores, and what can't increase your test
scores isn't worth learning.  Alternatively understanding
Kierkegaard might make it obvious that any knowledge which can be
adequately tested by means of "multiple choice" questions is
trivial and spurious, a jejune scholasticism that contents itself
with the congruence of mere words, words which are empty insofar
as they derive their meaning only from "common sense", i.e., from
an implicit social consensus, instead of from the (passionate,
infinitely interested) (existential) experience of the
individual.

     To the extent that the foregoing interpretation is valid, it
poses a challenge of trying to reassess the meaning and the
validity of "factual" knowledge, "true and false", "multiple-
choice", also in non-literary disciplines such as the natural
sciences and mathematics.  Concerning these disciplines, the
question arises whether in the absence of (passionate)
understanding, the mere ability to identify a factual statement
as true or false, or to reproduce from memory a symbolic formula,
should be valid criteria of knowledge; as distinct from the
ability to apply, to derive, to expand or to interpret such facts
and formulas, and as distinct especially from the ability
dialectically to reconcile the limitations and contradictions of
such facts and formulas with their purported "truth".

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