Soren Kierkegaard and the Common Man

Soren Kierkegaard and the Common Man. By Jorgen Bukdahl. Translated, revised, and edited by Bruce H. Kirmmse. Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2001. xviii + 154 pages.

This book contends that impressions of S0ren Kierkegaard's political conservatism are unfair. Various proofs of his openness and respect for the "common man" are given from his writings. The fact that he never had to work for a living in an age of bourgeois domination, and that he did not trust great movements of history to make people happy, makes him vulnerable to accusations of "status quoism." Jorgen Bukdahl, in this little book written in Denmark in 1961, explores what Kierkegaard wrote about his sympathy and courtesy towards the poor. The author shows that Kierkegaard radicalized freedom and the ethical task in an "unabridged notion of equality."

The expression "Common Man" (den menige mand) is misleading, because the word "common" seems derogatory. (Of course, it is meant to include women and children who formed the vast majority of peasants and slum dwellers of the time.) "Ordinary" is equally demeaning. The Swensons used "plain" in their translations. The eighteenth century would have said citoyen - "citizen." But what is meant is people who have to work at menial tasks, for whom unemployment means malnutrition and starvation, and who are virtually powerless in society except as a mob. "The Worker" might be the best designation. It means in this context that Kierkegaard had a sense of dignity and kindness towards the poor.

Sigurd Ostrem of Oslo explains: "In the army the menige has the lowest position, and they are the ones there are the most of. So, menige like 'the many' means most people, excepting the ones of a higher rank, like officers. Back then, most people were poor, and the expression menige didn't include the royal family, bishops, successful businessmen, and other rich people, with a higher position." "Common Man" implies cultural and social exclusion, because in Kierkegaard's lifetime (1813-1855), it meant the oppressed class.

Kierkegaard was not a man of the right, politically. he responded to industrialized poverty and ideologies of insurrection through his literary struggle for the dignity of all people before God. Romantic literature from Dickens's Hard Times or John Ruskins's Unto the Least of These to Hugo's Les Miserables painted a grim picture of the social reality. But Kierkegaard was no Romantic, because he saw the hypocrisy of the bourgeoisie towards the "common man." Bukdahl relates his criticism of the state church and his exposure of a sham Christendom as solidarity with the "man in the street" who had no influence or social reputation. Biographers speak of the rural poverty in which Kierkegaard's father was reared, and it is a likely reminiscence when he writes in his journals and papers of his love for the people. he suffers from their rejection and mockery.

In 1848, there was revolution in every capital of Europe, successful only in Denmark, where a limited constitutional monarchy was achieved. It failed everywhere else, although the ground was laid for new nations coming into being. That was the year of the Communist Manifesto by Marx and Engels. It was also the generation of socialists: Saint-Simoniens, Owenites, Fourierists, and frequently jailed militants like Louis Auguste Blanqui. Charitable institutions were being created following the example of Jean Frederic Oberlin and lay missionary societies. Kierkegaard's writing of the alienated individual was addressing the same sociocultural and economic condition. he grasped the issues of his time but did not publish political analysis as such, even in his literary review called Two Ages: The Age of Revolution and the Present Age. His hope for the members of the proletariat was not mass movements or generosity on the part of the rich, but "essential inwardness," the fulfillment of individuality through faith in God.

Like Karl Marx, he did not believe the middle class revolutions against monarchies would really help the working class. A different kind of liberation was needed. For Marx, it was economic; for Kierkegaard, it was religious. For both, it was spiritual and personal, related to authentic community and quality of life. The comparison supports the theme of this translation from Eerdmans.

Soren Kierkegaard and the Common Man is a refreshing study of this well-known Christian intellectual whose profound humanity is repeatedly illustrated by the expression "humanness is human equality" (25, 74, 86). His social critique is seen in the concreteness of his doctrine of the love of neighbor, a reaction to the mutilation of human beings by capitalism and the fiction of Christian charity. For him, class differences are not decisive. Theodor Adorno, in Harold Bloom's Modern Critical Views (1989), says that Kierkegaard's paradoxical faith has a Utopian tendency - "the consciousness of possibility"(31). As Bukdahl implies, there is the hope of transfiguration of the world by individuals turning back to themselves in a change of heart.

By not supporting revolution and the violence and distraction of "the public," Kierkegaard avoided the deceptions of what often turned out to be failed struggles for power by the rising middle class. But he was more truly radical in knowing that it was an illusion to expect a changed life for workers under successful alliances of republican vested interests. For him, the liberation of the individual "common man" by existential self-worth was the realistic challenge to exploitation, and the hope for that awareness is personal decision in relation to God. As former colleague Joe R. Jones has written, "Even with great civil freedoms, people still have to decide how to live in a morally compelling way."

The complexity of Kierkegaard's writings and thought requires a lifetime of study, but the addition of Bruce Kirmmse's translation of Seren Kierkegaard and the Common Man is a welcome clarification of his sense of justice and community. Sixteen pages of endnotes assure accuracy by reference to abundant sources. There is a brief guide to Kierkegaard's works in English and a helpful index.

William J. Nottingham

Christian Theological Seminary

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