Søren Kierkegaard Newsletter — Issue 37: January 1999

Hans L. Martensen, Between Hegel and Kierkegaard: Hans L. Martensen’s Philosophy of Religion, trans. Curtis L. Thompson and David J. Kangas, introduction by Curtis L. Thompson, American Academy of Religion Texts and Translations Series, Number 17 (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1997), Cloth 0-7885-0348-0, Paper 0-7885-0349-9. Reviewed by Richard E. Crouter

Richard E. Crouter is the John M. and Elizabeth W. Musser Professor of Religious Studies at Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota.

Some years ago when I attended Union Theological Seminary Robert L. Horn taught a seminar, which he called, “Kierkegaard and his Contemporaries.” Horn’s passion was to crack open Kierkegaard’s relation to Hegel. He insisted that Kierkegaard had to be read contextually, alongside the contemporaries that shaped his theological and philosophical world. We didn’t read Hans L. Martensen (1808-1884), however, probably because the requisite editions of his work were not available. Only later did I realize that Horn’s dissertation was the only English-language treatment of Martensen, Kierkegaard’s teacher of dogmatics. Even today most readers of Kierkegaard remain relatively innocent of Martensen. To speak autobiographically, I once dipped into Martensen’s lectures on speculative dogmatics just long enough to convince myself that he was recognizably a Hegelian theologian and that Kierkegaard’s scorn for his teacher thus appeared warranted. Such practices will no longer suffice! The present volume, a significant joint translation effort by Curtis L. Thompson and David J. Kangas with an Introduction (1-71) by Thompson, makes a formidable bid to locate Martensen on the intellectual map, somewhere “between Hegel and Kierkegaard.”

The present book lifts all these musings to a new plateau. Its translators from the Danish have done us all a wonderful service by presenting readable and usable texts of three significant essays from Martensen, as he launched his career at the University of Copenhagen. Whether the world would know or be interested in Martensen apart from his connection to Kierkegaard remains a moot question. Yet the present work reveals his substantial work and contributions to early 19th-century theological inquiry in ways that make him far more than the caricature of a Danish Hegelian. The three substantive essays “The Autonomy of Human Self-Consciousness in Modern Dogmatic Theology,” (1841) “Meister Eckhart: A Study in Speculative Theology,” (1840) and “Outline to a System of Moral Philosophy” (1841) form a cluster that conveys a sense of the complexity, range of interests, and intellectual seriousness of Martensen, as philosopher, theologian, and historian of theology. It was still an era when classical theology was intact; his theological discourse takes its bearings through delightful well-considered Latin dicta (Augustine’s nemo credit nisi volens, 110) or hermeneutical wisdom (haec tibi dicta esse puta, 117). Throughout the essays one peers over Martensen’s shoulder as he positions himself theologically and struggles to present the rich context of German philosophy and theology to his Danish audience, all within a decade of Hegel’s death. Make no mistake, however. The essays are not light reading. At times they are downright tedious; it takes effort to orient oneself to Martensen’s categories and definitions. In a short review one can, however, indicate something of the content and direction of each Martensen essay, while offering some comments on the editorial apparatus and interpretive principles that inform the volume, which mainly draws from Curtis Thompson’s Introduction.

The first major surprise is that a reading of the three essays gives a picture of Martensen, then in his early thirties, whose philosophical orientation is not exclusively occupied with expositions of Hegelian teaching. Of the three, “Automony of Self-Consciousness” provides the most vivid positioning of Martensen as professional scholar in his theological setting. The work seeks to critique the modern Cartesian turn to subjectivity and the embrace of this turn by modern dogmatics, which results in a set of teachings that are nominalistic, i.e., invoke the language of Christian symbols without defending their objective reality. The core of this first treatise is concerned to critique Kant’s Religion (100-120) and Schleiermacher’s The Christian Faith (120-144), which mirror each other. Both thinkers are too caught up in finitude and have removed all theoretical determinations from religion. “The difference between Kant and Schleiermacher is only this, that Schleiermacher has posited pious feeling in place of Kant’s practical reason....” (132). Martensen’s own principles are in play in this work, even though muted. The treatise ends with only a cursory conclusion recommending the transition to a more rational, objective philosophy of revelation (his preferred characterization of Hegel), “Transition to the Autonomy of Human Self-Consciousness in the Form of Absolute Spirit” (144-147).

The essay “Meister Eckhart: A Study in Speculative Theology,” expresses a deep and profound interest in Western, largely Germanic mysticism. Here Martensen sees the significance of the claims of mysticism as lying behind many post-Enlightenment debates about religion, especially the ongoing status of claims about pantheism, acosmism, and forms of atheism. The essay combines actual texts from Eckhart sermons with searching commentary on the development of the German school of mystics (Tauler, Suso). Schelling and Hegel, he writes, “demanded that philosophical thought rejuvenate itself in the immediate knowledge of God and divine things found in mysticism” (154). In Eckhart, he writes, “one is often spontaneously reminded of Hegel” (183). Although he greatly admires the boldness of the mystical traditions, especially their willingness to take a radical stand on the side of the infinite, Martensen appears to signal that this tradition - when not guided by objective reason - ends up in post-Reformation times with Jacob Boehme’s theosophy, which he characterizes as a form of gnosticism and associates with Schelling (238-243). Speculative philosophy is needed to mediate these concepts and restore finitude to its rightful place. Martensen’s mysticism essay shows a singular ability to probe mystical consciousness in Western thought under the themes of mystery, revelation, the highest good and virtue. The essay repays careful study in view of today’s considerable interest in mysticism, quite apart from Johannes Climacus’ various asseverations regarding these monastic traditions in Postscript.

The third of these essays goes even further in showing the independence of Martensen’s mind and his orientation in philosophic thought. “Outline to a System of Moral Philosophy” takes on the task of developing an appropriately practical moral philosophy that will address individual personal morals. “However much this generation prides itself on its knowledge of God and knowledge of the world, still in one primary area it stands far behind that time, namely, in moral self-knowledge” (247). To Martensen, this task has not been sufficiently addressed or covered by Hegelian teaching, which subordinates ethical interests to the state. In lectures prepared for student use Martensen draws from Schleiermacher, Daub, Michelet, and Rosenkranz to develop an original philosophical defense of freewill as it relates to the Good as Law (269-280), the Good as Ideal (280-298) and the Good as Kingdom of Personality (298-313). Especially in its critique of fatalism and its depiction of sin (“Knowledge of sin is the first act in the inner crisis of consciousness....” 278), the text invites comparison with Kierkegaard’s stringent Socratic demand for self-knowledge and personal self-awareness.

Thompson’s useful Introduction has the task of moving a reader from virtually ground zero into a serious appreciative reading of Martensen’s work, while orienting the reader to the significance of these texts for the study of Kierkegaard. Following a mere five-page overview of the three translated treatises (17-22), it conveys a sketch of Martensen’s philosophy of religion (22-40) and his relation to Kierkegaard (40-70). After finishing my own reading of the essays, I sensed a certain incongruity between the Introduction and texts. I wished that the Introduction, and the book’s title, had not felt so obliged to place Martensen so overtly between Hegel and Kierkegaard, and wanted more analysis of the complicated positions and leading ideas of the treatises for their own sake. The reasoning for this is obvious; it arises from a need for greater contextualization of Martensen within the history of nineteenth-century theology. Even if we see Martensen’s importance in his influence on Kierkegaard, these essays did not construe his own intellectual world or task that way. So the framing of these particular essays, though understandable from a bookseller’s prespective, remains somewhat problematic. If one bases a view of Martensen on these texts alone, one sees him more between Kant/Schleiermacher and the German Romantics/Mystics, while trying to work out a sensible appropriation/response to Hegel. Direct engagement with Hegel is not present and Kierkegaard is certainly not part of his youthful mental landscape. Hence, to honor Hans Lassen Martensen most would be to allow him to speak mainly within his own orientation, leaving the possible links to Kierkegaard to be argued out on another time and place. Thompson’s effort to explore the Martensen-Kierkegaard relationship (40-70) thus rests on subsequent contacts and different texts from the one included here. As a result, the fascinating issue of whether and how the present set of treatises contributed to Martensen’s development, and by extension bear on his relationship to Kierkegaard, remain unexamined.

A few words on the technical features of this edition of Martensen. Although I did not compare them to the original texts, the translations from Danish read well and appear to lack idiosyncracies. Although they collaborated on the tasks, Kangas is chiefly responsible for the mysticism treatise, and Thompson for the two others. At times the translators’ deliberate choice of inclusive language (e.g., “Godself” to avoid male pronouns) seems anachronistic. The inclusion of original pagination to the Danish editions will serve other scholars well. Original German and Latin quotations remain in the texts, along with published English versions. One slip was noted, apparently where a translation of Rosenkranz was not at hand, and a footnote makes gibberish of the German (100, n.12). Ideally, one would have liked a full bibliography of Martensen’s works, as well as an index that is more based on concepts and ideas, with fewer references to individual words (“unity,” “end,” “beginning,” “history,” “time,” etc.), which can serve little purpose.