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What did Kierkegaard learn from his study of Socrates? Why is this connection between Socrates and Kierkegaard still relevant in the world today?
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Kierkegaard saw in Socrates the ultimate prototype thinker who introduced irony into the world (The Concept of Anxiety, p. 134). An archetype who was worthy of being emulated. Kierkegaard endeavoured to explain through his writings the Socratic method and saw it his personal task to apply this method in his own cultural context. Kierkegaard’s adaptation of Socratic irony is as relevant in the present day as it was in the times of Socrates.
Kierkegaard introduced what he learned from Socrates in his Master’s thesis “The Concept of Irony”. Through his analysis of Socrates, Kierkegaard explores the value of negation as a means to advance knowledge within the Socratic method. The Socratic method was one of engaging knowledgeable people under the pretence of wanting to learn from their insights. He never doubted the claim of his interlocutors but always assumed that their wisdom would be able to eradicate the inconsistencies raised by Socrates. In order to gain the trust of his interlocutor he flattered them in order to entice them to impart their knowledge. However, Socrates was not an easy student who accepted knowledge on face value and he would consequently start to penetrate for a deeper understanding through questioning. Through his questioning he sought to highlight inconsistencies, contradictions and paradoxes with an expectation that they would be resolved by his interlocutor. Socrates did not attempt to provide an alternative answer or solution but aimed his questions at highlighting ignorance and arrogance in those who claimed to possess knowledge. In a sense he subtly unmasked falsified claims about knowledge without any claim of his own to having a better knowledge that would provide an answer.
Going further than the Socratic method, Kierkegaard took Socrates as his personal sage and claimed that Socrates fortified the concept of individualism in his society. He went against the notion of accepting what was put forward as accepted knowledge by the collective and asserted that the individual has the obligation to assimilate his/her own knowledge. Indirectly Socrates’ method helped people to help themselves and make them free to think for themselves rather than rely on passive acceptance of dished-up knowledge. Not claiming any specific knowledge himself, Socrates downplayed his own role by uplifting the other person to find his own way to truth; often without even being aware of the help given through this method.
Socrates’ daimon taught Kierkegaard the value of negation and that not all questions have to be resolved and that there is value in leaving a question unanswered as a means to remain open for new knowledge to emerge. As demonstrated in “Stages of life” p. 482, in a discussion of sin and forgiveness, the contradiction must rather be highlighted than pushed aside for a falsified truth. The tension created by the exposed contradiction outweighs the value of soothing it away with ignorance. As an individual, personal knowledge does not have to be defended against the masses, since individual knowledge does not impose any transfer of knowledge to others. It fixes the responsibility to gain knowledge squarely on the shoulders of the individual.
The main goal is to point to the absolute irreducible value of the individual as an individual. In “The Concept of Irony” p.177 Kierkegaard reflects on the meaning of the phrase “Know thyself” that was written above the portal of the temple at Delphi and concludes that it means: “Separate yourself from the other”. The individual’s point of view must be respected if it contains no inconsistencies while the popular point of view must be crushed if it is plagued with contradictions. Socrates modelled a life to Kierkegaard where the pursuit of truth is resolute and might come at the cost of being outcast as eccentric. Even worse, the cost might be to become a martyr for truth. Like Socrates one must be willing to die rather than give up on the pursuit of truth.
Kierkegaard also looked for the pattern provided by Socrates to rectify erroneous interpretations of the concept of irony. He used Socrates to propose the idea of controlled irony to counter the totalization of doubt by German Romantics. The German Romantics applied irony to anything and isolated themselves from actuality by doubting everything. In the satirical work “Johannes Climacus or De omnibus dubitandum est”, which was never published, Kierkegaard expounds on the fallacy and dangers of bringing everything into question; showing that it leads ultimately to despair. Kierkegaard pointed out that Socrates accepted certain practices in his cultural context and was surgical in pinpointing irony like a laser beam on specific questions. In “The Concept of Irony” p.205, the failure of the Sophists to make a distinction, ultimately led to a wrong conclusion that truth is seen as a contingent truth, depending on how the truth is argued from a point of self-interest. The result of this relativism towards knowledge is the decay of traditional values and ethics. “The Concept of Irony” p. 242 spells out that a new form of irony is needed that “must result from the assertion of subjectivity in a still higher form…a subjectivity’s subjectivity, which corresponds to reflection’s reflection”. Questions that were in essence challenging the current day notion of relativistic ethics is the prime target behind controlled irony.
Kierkegaard saw the need in his own time for society to return to Socratic ignorance to provide ironic ethical correction to obsolete and/or outmoded patterns of thinking. In “The Concept of Irony” p.253 the saliency of irony is defined in that it has “the subjective freedom that at all times has in its power the possibility of beginning and is not handicapped by earlier situations”. Kierkegaard was not simply looking to adopt the Socratic method but carefully demonstrated how it can be adapted to his own circumstances. In the process he showed that irony as it gained expression in the Socratic method is not something frozen in a particular epoch of time but that it should form part of a perennial philosophy where negation is valued as a valid means of advancing knowledge without providing any particular positive solution itself. Irony must ultimately lead to ethical correction.
In examining modern-day society we see a proliferation of experts claiming “knowledge” of all kinds across different social media platforms. These claims stretch globally and have a greater ability than ever to reach out to those who are naïve and gullible in accepting knowledge at face value. Today more than ever people have succumbed to the discombobulated state of having forgotten what it is to be an actual existing human being searching for truth. Faced with constant change towards progress people are more and more forced to rely on online sources of information rather than an individual assimilation of truth. Actuality must be faced! Kierkegaard writes in “The Concept of Irony” p. 263: “Face to face with the given actuality, the subjectivity feels its power, its validity and meaning”. Human thought has imploded towards a focus on changing the physical world with technology and gadgets rather than changing the self. Consequently post-modernism externalized the centre of gravity of human experience. Kierkegaard in his application of Socrates’ method pushes the centre of gravity back to be internalized within the constitution of the individual’s subjective thinking.
Kierkegaard’s description of the aesthete in his book “Either/Or” resembles accurately post-modernism with its focus on immediacy, a life that lacks continuity, specialization, judging content based on its level of interest and a concern for the external. These are the conditions that lure modern man away from seeking ethical significance and personal meaning. Like Socrates, Kierkegaard does not just apply irony for his amusement but rather to force his contemporaries back to an ethical life, stripped from false arrogance. That same challenge is extended to the present day for man to redefine himself in the context of individual ethical significance. Socrates’ willing suicide, was a requisite sacrifice to maintain his own individual significance; Kierkegaard made it his Socratic task to prepare the ground for humanity to enter through irony into expressing a higher level of ethical existence which he saw manifested in the way he defined true Christianity. He wrote in Concluding Unscientific Postscript vol 1, p. 383: “The introduction that I take upon myself consists, by repelling, in making it difficult to become a Christian and understands Christianity not as a doctrine but as an existence-contradiction and existence communication”. His point is that there is an incomprehensible contradiction at the heart of Christianity that must be accepted in order to move beyond doctrine to an actual experience.
The challenge to return to a validation of the individual’s value as an individual is as prevalent today as in the past. More than ever the modern person has the responsibility as an individual to sift through the volumes of knowledge for personal truth. Irony and wit are the tools offered by Kierkegaard and Socrates as a way of opening up points of significance that are essential to develop personal truths without alienating oneself from the world itself. Kierkegaard in his Journals and Notebooks (Princeton University Press 2008, vol 1, p. 44, AA:41) sees this alienation from the world as symptomatic of modern man as he reflects on parallels between Faust and Socrates.
With an increase in information the tendency towards relativism is increasing. It is not quintessential to provide solutions but rather to utilize irony as a means to expose contradictions that maintain a culture of complacency through merely copying knowledge rather than actually exploring the underlying validity. “The Concept of Irony” p. 326 states “It may be maintained with the same right that no genuinely human life is possible without Irony”. Irony is the tool empowering the individual to dismantle the preconceptions of the collective in order to help the collective to advance itself.
More than ever, negation will become a valuable tool to use in the individual’s quest to ascertain the validity of knowledge for themselves. In a world of social media where one is bombarded with messages and opinions on a moment by moment basis, a review of Socrates and Kierkegaard supports the theory that the Socratic Method is applicable in the present day context. In doing so, we must not allow the voice of the individual to get lost in mass communication but must always value the individual for his/her own uniqueness and insight. To truly exist, reason, if followed honestly, will free the individual from inner and outer crutches and stand firmly on the strength of his/her own irreducible ethical individuality.
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