Text, Identity, Subjectivity

scalar.usc.edu /works/text-identity-subjectivity/kierkegaard-pietism-and-existentialism-eighteenth-century-
pietism-as-the-origin-of-twentieth-century-existentialism

This paper will argue that twentieth-century existentialism developed out of eighteenth-century Pietism by way of the
Danish philosopher Sren Kierkegaard (1813-1855), validating and extending Hermann Deusers insight that the
existential concretization of religion that always emanates from the biographical details of Kierkegaards life and
toward which his entire work ultimately aims is the Christian piety drawn from Lutheran theology and Pietism. While
Kierkegaard did not acknowledge dependence upon Phillipp Spener, who as the author of Pia Desideria is widely
recognized as the father of Pietism, he makes occasional reference to Arndt and to his True Christianity for whose
works Speners Desideria was originally written as a preface. Kierkegaard quotes from True Christianity, for
example, in Purity of Heart, and he makes an oblique reference to it in Concluding Unscientific Postscript as one of
the old devotional books by which his contemporaries might have revealed to them, indirectly, the religious
delusions of their era.

The Pietist structure of Kierkegaards religious consciousness comes into view when Arndts and Speners thought is
compared to Kierkegaards on three points: an orientation against intellectualism in religious belief and practice,
criticism of the state church, and an emphasis upon sincere faith defined by inwardness that is manifested in action
and decision. Kierkegaards psychologizing of these fundamental characteristics of Pietist thought in his
pseudonymous authorship inaugurated existentialism just as Speners Pia Desideria inaugurated Pietism. The
dependence of subsequent authors such as Jaspers, Heidegger, and Sartre upon Kierkegaard for fundamental
concepts such as anxiety, boredom, and despair as the salient features of modern inwardness translate
Kierkegaards psychologizing of Pietist thought into twentieth-century existential philosophy, perhaps most
particularly in Heideggers Being in Time.

In current scholarship, Pietism has been defined narrowly in terms of religious groups or movements directly
influenced by Spener, and broadly in terms of Protestant groups influenced by Medieval mystical writers such as
Tauler and Thomas Kempis through Arndt. I will be working with a broader definition of Pietism, as it includes
under its umbrella groups such as the Moravians, the religion of Kierkegaards own family. Halle Pietism arrived in
Denmark in the late seventeenth century, at the onset of the absolute monarchy. The Danish state church was
officially Lutheran, so Halle Pietisms rather conservative willingness to work within established structures allowed it
to gain a foothold in Denmark. Christopher Barnett in Kierkegaard, Pietism and Holiness (2011) argues that Halle
Pietisms initial foothold in Denmark helped pave the way for the early eighteenth-century arrival of Moravian
Pietism, a type of Pietism more separatist than Halle Pietism and one that became more popular among Denmarks
rural populations.

Kierkegaards father, Michael Pederson Kierkegaard, grew up in an area that was welcoming to Moravian Pietism
though Halle Pietism was predominant. M. P. Kierkegaard demonstrated his allegiances by establishing
connections with Moravian groups upon his initial arrival in Copenhagen (Barnett, p. 49-50). By the time the elder
Kierkegaard moved to Copenhagen, Danish Pietism had grown increasingly annoyed with the rationalism
dominating Denmarks state church. This rationalism, finding expression in new catechisms and hymnals by this
time, met with Pietist resistance in the form of singing wars in which older Pietist hymns were sung over the newer
hymns during services.

However, this annoyance with rationalized Christianity existed from the beginning of Pietism. Spener rejected a
convivo intellectus or conviction of truth as a primary expression of Christianity, claiming that it is far from being
faith (p. 100). Arndt similarly complains that Many of those that nowadays apply themselves to the study of divinity
suppose it to be a mere notional and speculative science, or some piece of polite learning so much in vogue among
scholars (p. xxv). Reading Kierkegaard can leave the impression that Hegel caused the rationalization of the

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Christian faith, but Pietist polemic suggests that the rationalization of the Christian faith laid the groundwork for
Hegel. This anti-rationalist impulse in Pietism was developed and expanded by Kierkegaards pseudonym Johannes
Climacus through his emphasis upon paradox and its accompanying crucifixion of the understanding in Concluding
Unscientific Postscripts description of Religiousness B. Climacus argues that the individual who passes into
Religiousness B has fully comprehended the absurdity of Christian belief, particularly belief in the incarnation of
Christ, so has chosen belief fully and completely at the expense of reason in his or her embrace of Christianity.

Kierkegaard further clarifies his stance on the limitations of intellect in Point of View. Even within his signed
authorship, he makes reference to the coils and seductive uncertainty of reflection (Kierkegaard, 1962, p. 34) even
as he describes reflection as a necessary precondition to becoming a Christian: This, in Christendom, is
Christianly the movement of reflection; one does not reflect oneself into Christianity but reflects oneself out of
something else and becomes more and more simple, a Christian (Kierkegaard, 1998, p. 7). Kierkegaard hopes that
the complex process of reflection provided by his authorship will lead his readers out of reflection, into simplicity, and
into Christianity. Kierkegaards work, then, intensifies and existentializes Pietist anti-intellectualism into an
individually-defining moment of choice, the point at which one consciously, individually, and deliberately becomes a
Christian rather than accepting Christianity as a part of ones national, social, and familial identity.

Kierkegaards concern that ones Christian identity be existentially appropriated rather than socially communicated
was anticipated by Speners belief that too many German Lutherans are concerned with making Lutherans rather
than genuine Christians to the very core (p. 100). Speners critique of each of the three estates focused on
corruption in various forms, but his critique of the clergy is that which would be expected of a socially-established
state church. In his view, the clergy were ambitious, so seeking advancement; too comfortable; and more interested
in intellectual innovation or theological disputation than in faith and obedience (pp. 44-57). He once again mirrors
Arndt on these points, who complained: Fain would they have for themselves such a Christ, as would be
magnificent, splendid, wealthy, pompous, fashionable, and conformable to all the airs and humours of the age (p.
xxvii). This concern led more radical Pietist groups to call for a complete separation of church and state, while
relatively moderate groups such as the Moravians still appeared separatist as they emphasized the importance of
meetings held independently of state church services. This emphasis on separation leads Barnett to argue that
early Pietism reveals monastic influences.

The Pietist concern that conferring official status upon Lutheran churches corrupted the faith finds its equivalent in
Kierkegaards work. Climacus consistently assumes an audience that already considers itself Christian, but a
[cheap] edition of a Christian who is baptized, has received a copy of the Bible and a hymnbook as a gift and
therefore might ask, is he not, then, a Christian, an Evangelical Lutheran Christian? (p. 557). In Climacuss
thinking, state Christianity is closely affiliated with educational achievement, so that he too can criticize clergy for
rationalizing Christianity into a system of speculative thought while assuming an audience who has the opportunity
for deeper inquiry (p. 170). Early Pietist critique of a rationalized Christianity as a comfortable, socially-acceptable
Christianity which as yet only implied critique of the state church while still assuming its existence becomes in
Kierkegaard an explicit criticism of culturally disseminated Christianity. It is widespread cultural acceptance itself
that has become the problem as it interferes with development of inwardness.

Inwardness is the third point of contact between Pietism and Kierkegaard that is later taken up by twentieth-century
existentialism. Both Speners and Arndts work is replete with an emphasis on inwardness; when Spener expressed
the desire to see German Lutherans made Christian to the core, he was echoing Arndts preface to True Christianity
in which he asserts that he has undertaken

to write this piece of Practical Christianity, that it may serve for an instruction, how true
repentance must needs proceed from the inmost centre of the heart alone, how it
entirely changes the mind and affections, together with the other faculties of the soul,
and conforms in fine, the whole man to Christ and to his holy gospel, renewing him day

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 by day, into a new creature. (p. xxv, his emphasis)

Spener and Arndts understanding of inwardness appears to be one of internal conformity to an external image
(Christ), thus anticipating Judge Wilhelms presentation of the ethical in Either/Or II and subsequent commentary on
the limitations of the ethical by Climacus and Kierkegaards other pseudonymous authors.

Kierkegaard also intensifies and existentializes the Pietist treatment of inwardness as he has received it.
Kierkegaards pseudonym for The Concept of Anxiety , Vigilius Haufniensis, yokes earnestness to inwardness in
describing his conception of an integrated religious self. He begins with Karl Rosenkranzs definition of disposition
in his Psychologie (1837) as a unity of feeling and self-consciousness (Kierkegaard, 1980a, p. 148). Self-
consciousness leads one to claim ones feelings as ones own. Feeling is the immediate unity of its sentience and
its consciousness, and sentience is unity with the immediate determinants of nature (Kierkegaard, 1980a, p. 148).
Sentience, feeling, and self-consciousness, each progressively folded into the other, is disposition, an idea which
Haufniensis feels is a fairly complete conception of a concrete personality (Kierkegaard, 1980a, p. 148).
Haufniensis embodies his ideal for a concrete consciousness in a person who not only understands what he is
saying, but also understands himself in what is said (Kierkegaard, 1980a, p. 142). Thought and being are united in
one who has self-consciously synthesized his or her multiple capacities.

Earnestness is the deepest expression of disposition. Haufniensis defines it as the acquired originality of
disposition, a means by which individuals recognize themselves as distinct, unique selves who have become so
over time (Kierkegaard, 1980a, p. 149). Individuals are therefore original, but this originality is acquired.
Earnestness, being what makes individuals themselves, comes to be identified with the personality itself
(Kierkegaard, 1980a, p. 149), the primary identifier of ones inwardness.

The opposite of acquired individuality in Haufniensis is the demonic, those without a self. More common
manifestations of the demonic are those who have lost themselves in a social identity:

He [the person in despair] now acquires a little understanding of life, he learns to copy
others, how they manage their lives and he now proceeds to live the same way. In
Christendom he is also a Christian, goes to church every Sunday, listens to and
understands the pastor, indeed they have a mutual understanding; he dies, the pastor
ushers him into eternity for ten rix-dollarsbut a self he was not, and a self he did not
become. (SUD)

Heideggers Being and Time mirrors this description:

The Self of everyday Dasein is the they-self, which we distinguish from the authentic
Self that is, from the Self which has been taken hold of in its own way. As they-self,
the particular Dasein has been dispersed into the they, and must first find itself. This
dispersal characterizes the subject of the kind of Being which we know as concernful
absorption in the world we encounter as closest to us. (p. 167)

The they in Heideggers thought is formed on the basis of rational activity, articulating the boundaries and nature of
ones being for ones own self by a calculation of averages: Dasein is for the sake of the they in an everyday
manner, and the they itself Articulates the referential context of significance. . . Proximally, factical Dasein is in the
with-world, which is discovered in an average way (p. 167). The language we are given and our calculating abilities
our rational capacities collude with culture in creating a self that is purely cultural, oriented toward an external
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ideal, so inauthentic.

What is most revealing, however, is not the continuity among Pietism, Kierkegaard, and twentieth-century
existentialism, but the source of their differences, which come from disparate attitudes toward spirit. However much
Pietism influenced him, Kierkegaards own attitude toward it was ambivalent. He could say in one journal entry that
Pietism is the one and only consequence of Christianity (no. 86), while in another claim that he has never, not in
the remotest manner, suggested or attempted trying to extend the matter into Pietism, into pietistic strictness and the
like (no. 6685). Barnett argues that Kierkegaards positive attitudes reflect his opinion of Moravian Pietism while
his negative ones reflect his opinion of Halle Pietism. He makes a compelling case, but I think that there is more to
be said.

Arndts and Speners Pietism always demanded an externally visible demonstration of conversion; Spener
emphasized this point perhaps even more than Arndt. This emphasis upon conformity to an outward ideal is
reflected in the description of the ethical personality in Either/Or II:

The self the individual knows is simultaneously the actual self and the ideal self, which
the individual has outside himself as the image in whose likeness he is to form himself,
and which on the other hand he has within himself, since it is he himself. Only within
himself does the individual have the objective toward which he is to strive, and yet he
has this objective outside himself as he strives toward it. (Kierkegaard, 1987, p. 259)

Ethical selves, in the process of becoming ethical, continually compare their internal reality to their external ideal,
inwardness being defined by the conformity of the internal self to its external ideal. The ethical is therefore fully
realized when it becomes the universal (pp. 255-6). The activity of spirit is denied by the ethical subjectivity: ought
implies can, so the presence of the command implies the ability to carry it out without consciousness of subsequent
Divine support. Haufniensis criticizes the ethical subjectivity for attempting an impossible task, one leading either to
despair, insanity, or faith (p. 16), defining the ethical stance of a religious subjectivity as one aware of its own
weakness and dependence upon God. Ought, in Haufniensiss thinking, implies individual inability accompanied by
Divine assistance.

Heidegger, at the other end, denies spirit: Yet mans substance is not spirit as a synthesis of soul and body; it is
rather existence (p. 153). Heidegger is here making an oblique reference not just to common Christian belief but to
Kierkegaards specific way of describing it in the opening pages of The Sickness Unto Death: A human being is
spirit. But what is spirit? Spirit is the self. But what is the self? [. . .] A human being is a synthesis of the finite and the
infinite, of the temporal and the eternal, of freedom and necessity, in short, a synthesis (p. 13). Kierkegaard is
therefore caught between the ethical disregard of spirit in early Pietist writings and the existential denial of spirit in
Heidegger, which perhaps makes him the most engaging figure. The crux of the matter is the ability of a culturally
given self to achieve individuality. Kierkegaard argues that this achievement is only possible for a self that has an
active foothold outside time in eternity, a self that is transcendent by nature. He would identify both the denial or
disregard of spirit, then, as a form of despair, the sign of a self that is unwilling to be itself. The as yet unidentified
reasons for this despair are perhaps most important of all.

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