Søren Kierkegaard Newsletter — Issue 47: February 2004

1.1 The present study, with which the author earned his doctorate (University of Greifswald) offers the reader a comprehensive, well written, and engaging academic inquiry which, in more ways than one, is long overdue. It has been established for some time now that it would be fruitful to compare Kierkegaard’s religious works with the writings of authors loosely defined as "post-modern." However, in comparison to the indirect tradition of influence the treatment of Kierkegaard’s direct reception by the idols of (here: deconstructionist) postmodernism – in the present case: Jacques Derrida – still remains in its infancy; this holds true, in particular, for the theological study of Kierkegaard.

Beyrich’s (henceforth: B) study is motivated by more ambitious goals than the mere retracing of direct lines of reception. Based on the assertion that not only superficial, but rather “more profound connections” (p. 5) between Derrida’s and Kierkegaard’s thought are recognisable, the author intends both a “re-reading of Kierkegaard from Derrida’s perspective,” (ibid.) and a “reading of Derrida from Kierkegaard’s point of view” (ibid.). A quick glance both at B’s fundamental methodological preferences and the content of the inquiry as a whole, reveals that his statement of intention promises too much, whereas the book’s subtitle (“Derrida Reads Kierkegaard”) promises too little. With the demonstration of ´profound connections´ between the two thinkers certainly more than a merely direct, but still less than a reciprocal reception study (which, under the given circumstances, would only be hypothetically re-constructible) is offered. Furthermore, it is not without a certain irony that B’s book has found its place in the rather prestigious monograph series of the Kierkegaard Studies, although its author frankly admits that one can hardly call his study a genuine “contribution to Kierkegaard research” (p. 18). Does this somewhat confusing break between communicative form and content immediately expose the reader to a deliberate, deconstructive 'disturbance of expectation' (cf. p. 363)? I am not sure but there is one thing that is certain: as a proponent of post-modern principles of writing and reading, the author is free to assert such a claim without believing it.

1.2 After a detailed Introduction (pp. 1-20) describing Kierkegaard as the ‘Socrates of postmodernism’ and placing him in relation to Derrida’s challenge to contemporary theology, B begins an extensive investigation (in all 369 pp. plus bibliography and index) and spells out in great detail the connections between both thinkers. B insists that neither Kierkegaard nor Derrida take any pains to formulate a new doctrine. Nevertheless, in chapters 1 and 2 (pp. 21 – 127) attempts to show that Derrida`s focus on the conditions of both the possibility and the boundaries of writing finds its Kierkegaardian counterpart in the Dane's reflections about the meaning, function, and importance of literary style in matters of communication. In this context, B bases the discussion on a thesis which seems to me to be the most interesting theological claim in the book. That is, B maintains “that the question of style in Kierkegaard … is [not only] fitted to his theological intention and literary gift, but also generates essential decisions in his theology,” (pp. 9f; cf. pp. 20f, 52, 75). This central thesis will be discussed again later. The extensive and topically structured Part II consists of chapters 3-5 (pp. 129 – 319) and offers a detailed interpretation of Donner la mort (1992), i.e. the book, in which Derrida explicitly and extensively refers to Kierkegaard, in particular to Fear and Trembling. In chapter 6 ("Kierkegaard’s Repetition") B scrutinises Derrida’s concept of `religion without religion´ and his principal challenge to Christian theology (as does Part III, pp. 321 - 365). B’s brief Afterword (pp. 367 – 369) invokes Kierkegaard’s repeated warning against the 'urge to go further'. This invocation is intended to thwart the objection that the book stops “at the foreword” instead of pushing on to theological “things themselves” (p. 368; cf. pp. 18 & 363). B makes this parrying move by pointing to the inevitably “preliminary character of anything like theology” (p. 369).

1.3. B’s inquiry is convincing wherever he succeeds in bringing certain (sit venia verbo) ‘central ideas’ of Derrida's ideas into a common perspective with Kierkegaard's thoughts such that the re-reading of the Danish thinker inspired by deconstructionism actually shows substantial parallels between his work and that of Derrida. This attempt sometimes fails because of a number of methodological shortcomings. The overall architecture of the book remains in certain parts opaque, and the lines of B's argument are muddled by repeated digressions. B’s conclusion (pp. 352 – 365), in which the fruits of his re-reading are concisely summarised, does much to make up for this obscurity. I cite the four most important results, the first of which concerns the book’s central question (‘Is faith repeatable?’). With this formulation, albeit at first somewhat strange, B alludes to Fear and Trembling, specifically to Kierkegaard’s question, whether a “[re-]appropriation of … Christian faith under the circumstances of his time” (p. 353) is possible or not. As a matter of fact, this question remains unanswered in Kierkegaard; however, according to B the theological point lies precisely therein. That it “remains uncertain, … whether that faith be repeatable, creates “precisely that freedom for repetition with which Kierkegaard is chiefly concerned” (ibid.); as such it does not call for the mere remembrance of a purportedly original and normatively established ´essence of Christianity´, but rather for a “self-responsible reinvention of faith by each individual … in his or her own existence,” (ibid.). In the author’s opinion, this conclusion resonates in important ways with Derrida’s central deconstructionist concerns. Generally speaking, a grammatology grown out of a critique of Western logo- or phonocentrism no longer roots the semantics of language signs in any transcendental significance, but rather in the process of endless ´supplements´ – a process, within which meaning can never be fixed once and for all, but only preliminarily, in a never-ending deferment (différance: cf. 74). This applies also and paradigmatically to the concept of religion. Insofar as it can be determined in its individual character as dependent on the tradition of sacred texts, it necessarily entails the “willingness for new interpretation and description of tradition ” (p. 354); for only then does religious faith have the chance “to remain faith: namely risk, decision and responsibility before God, the entirely other” (p. 355).

This formulation leads to the second central aspect, which B. summarises under the heading ‘God and mystery’: In and with that form of religious faith for which the Kierkegaardian Abraham (especially in “Problema III” of Fear and Trembling) is a model, God only comes into play where the individual can “keep a … secret between himself and God” (ibid.); and yet, precisely by willing to abjure from mediation of an ecclesiastical and/ or social sort, the individual deserves to be called an"individual" in the full sense. Derrida reinforces and surpasses this by drawing on an interpretation of faith which explains it as a relation to God which “leaves open who this god is” (p. 356). From the perspective of religious faith, God appears only as a name or place holder for the "totally other" and as such escapes all generalising representations; faith, however, stands for the “experience of unappropriable otherness in general” (p. 357).

The third point of comparison is concerned with Kierkegaard’s critique of ethico-religious teleology. The idea of the leap of faith represents the transgression of all salvation-historical speculations. The believer “does not make an exchange in any respect, but … gives without any in order to,” (p. 358). Derrida surpasses this ‘transeconomic’ structure of faith by means of what is called a “thinking of the gift” (ibid.). On the one hand the logic of the gift entails an absolute asymmetry in the (duty-)relation of man to God; on the other hand, it functions as the basis for a far-reaching claim about the problem of death in the history of western philosophy. According to Derrida, western thought from Socrates to Heidegger can be read as a misdirected attempt to ‘give death’ (donner la mort) to oneself, i.e.: to endow death with a meaning (more exactly: an ‘economically’ distorted meaning). This attempt ignores the basic fact that death can only be conceived of as an absolute gift, as a “spending with no return, … without being calculable in any way” (358f).

The fourth point of comparison integrates this diagnosis into the context of what can be labelled the ´ethics of the gift´. The fundamental idea of such an ethics can only be accentuated paradoxically, namely in terms of a certain ‘moral of morals’: Whereas, according to Fear and Trembling, the ethical qua universal is teleologically suspended only in exceptional cases and by virtue of a genuinely religious movement, Derrida holds that the ethical as such already – and paradoxically enough - begins “beyond the ‘universal’: wherever we deal with the demand of `the other’, we are always involved in Abraham’s paradox”(p. 360). It is the ethical perspective as such which confronts the individual with the disquieting possibility that ‘every other is the entirely other’ (tout autre est tout autre) – that is the other, to whom as such we are absolutely obliged against all exchange economy. Thus ethics is to be plagued by that very dilemma which Kierkegaard had reserved for ethico-religious border conflicts alone: There is “no righteousness without that unconditional, incalculable, universally unjustifiable opening vis-à-vis the entirely other” (p. 361; italics H.S.). The moral imperative, and a fortiori its fulfillment always begins beyond and necessarily remains in irreconcilable tension with any rationally universalisable duty.

2.1 B’s study is, in many respects, of considerable merit. First it tackles a theologically promising and hitherto insufficiently researched topic. Second, it documents an impressive familiarity with the sources and the secondary literature as well as with the results of the pertinent interdisciplinary research. Third, the author not only shows an extraordinary feel for the stylistic nuances and idiosyncrasies of his sources, but he also succeeds in integrating his observations into the overarching argumentative structure of his book (cf. e.g. pp. 43-50, 108ff.). Fourth, he does not restrict the textual basis of his Kierkegaard interpretation to Kierkegaard’s treatment of the Gen. 22 episode in Fear and Trembling, but also takes further relevant sources (e.g. the later journals) as well as other thematically pertinent aspects into consideration: for instance, Kierkegaard’s relation to Judaism on the one hand, and on the other, Jewish readings of Kierkegaard (cf. pp. 271-308). Finally, over and above a number of apt individual observations (e.g. pp. 153, 159, 165f. 175, 241, 248, 265, 284, 288, 363f.), B's central thesis is thesis both stimulating and theologically far-reaching.

2.2 It is, however, upon this very thesis that the critical reader must rack his brains, for, to the best of my recognition, it is based on a doubly foreshortened picture of Kierkegaard. The assertion that his communicative forms ‘generate’ fundamental decisions in his theology (cf. p. 10) means with reference to the title- and core question of the book two things: first, that the answer to this question has intentionally been left open, indeed, that its openness is to be seen as a result and element of an indirect communicative strategy. It also implies that this strategy proves meaningful if and only if we are entitled to attribute the opinion to Kierkegaard that that openness is in itself a constituent element of a theological ‘message,’ according to which each individual must generate anew, perhaps even "reinvent" Christian faith for himself (cf. pp. 353 & 365). However, this interpretation, which according to B, is fully consistent with Kierkegaard’s own intentions, ascribes to Kierkegaard`s writings that very moment of ‘doctrine’, which the author had earlier claimed Kierkegaard had intentionally and successfully avoided. A further complication lies in the fact that the implications of that message do not really seem to do justice to Kierkegaard’s understanding of Christianity. For in my opinion Kierkegaard unswervingly holds fast to the transcendental (or more exactly: eschatological) significance of the expression “Christian faith.” If this were not so I would see myself unable to account for his insistence (in the Book on Adler) that Christianity, owing to the paradoxical connotation of its object of faith, has 'no history', so that each individual always and inevitably starts 'from the beginning, at that paradox'.

2.3 A final point. Although I shall not presume to pass judgement on the hermeneutic reliability of B’s reading of Derrida – if upon the foundation of deconstructionist principles of interpretation such a judgment can or ought to be attempted at all - I can hardly conceal my astonishment about the uninhibitedness with which B joins forces with those authors who, notwithstanding their appeals to Derrida’s logic of unending supplement, repeatedly claim to be able to deliver precise information about that with which Kierkegaard and Derrida are ‘truly concerned’ (cf. e.g. pp. 6, 8, 35, 39, 41, 45, 48, 50, 81, 110, 114, 125, 163). Thanks to its unintended comical effect, this pragmatic inconsistency comes close to that wonderful anticlimax (although, in this regard, B is innocent), with which valiant deconstructionists are wont to amaze their readers by publishing a thesis about the death of the author under their own name – i.e.: that of the person of the author. Doubtlessly, this has little to do with Kierkegaard, save for the fact that Kierkegaard would have certainly been greatly amused by this the lack of reduplication in the attitude of those unfortunate authors.