Professor
Emeritus, Philosophy
Brock University,
Ontario, Canada
November 2005
into the religious life
Martin Andic was
before he met Søren Kierkegaard.
But from the beginning and ever since
Søren certainly spoke to him
with both indirect and direct communication.
And from the beginning and ever since
Martin certainly responded to Søren
in his own unique way
as the single individual that he is.
Martin found in Søren a mentor,
a guide, an inspiration and a witness
with whom he could constantly hold fast
to life’s objective uncertainties
in the appropriation process
of the most passionate inwardness.
The truth of this most passionate faith
could call us out of the reactive negativities
of taking offence at the absurdities of existence
in our doubt, dread and despair
into the proactive affirmations of,
in ever new ways moment by moment,
absolutely loving absolute love itself
and thereby being enabled
to relatively love the relative
in upbuilding rather than
self-destructive ways together.
Martin came to know Søren as a scientist
of the aesthetic basement of our inner house
as a sage of the ethical first floor
as a subjective thinker of the religious second floor
in the second immediacy of its infinite resignation
and as a saint of religiousness B
with whom he could freely live
on all three floors of his interior castle at once.
We might reflect upon the “and”
between Martin Andic and Søren Kierkegaard
by considering the four articles that Martin wrote
for the International Kierkegaard Commentary
brought forth by Robert Perkins.
These articles on Socrates and Irony
on the courage beyond cowardliness
on reading the Bible as looking into a mirror
and on the concept of reduplication
in the Works of Love show us how
Kierkegaard’s overall logic of opposites
of the either/or, the neither/nor and the both/and
provided Martin with the articulated viewpoint
that was the crystal form of his personality.
Kierkegaard’s philosophy which grew out of
his logic of the leap into the mixing opposites
provided Martin with a perspective of appreciation
for the beautiful, the good, the true and the holy
wherever they encountered him.
For the both/and of both absolute value
and of all relative values is the “and”
that Martin and Søren share
and it is the “And” of Andic
that perhaps makes it the both/and.
SOCRATES AND THE IRONY OF SCEPTICISM
Martin Andic with his vast understanding
of the history of philosophy
and of human culture both Western and Eastern
shows us why, in his article
on Kierkegaard’s first book on Irony and Skepticism,
he chose Kierkegaard’s theoretical paradigm
of the double movement leap
as the truest and the wisest.
That is the case because Kierkegaard
was the first theorist to clearly explicate
both the paradigm shift and the paradigm leap
into the double complexity and the double contingency.
The Pre-Socratic philosophers in seeking
to know the truth about the becoming of all things
worked out cosmological theories of
the one, the two, the few and the unlimited
as being the source and the end
of generation and corruption.
In his mid-life crisis Socrates saw
that they were dealing with
such a complex excess of forces
that all he could honestly do
was to become a skeptic and teach:
“I know that I know nothing
but ironically I am, therefore,
the wisest man in Athens.”
In his paradigm shift from being
a scientist of many complex theories
to becoming an ironical skeptical sage
he moved from pride to humility,
from pretension to honesty,
from ponderosity to humor,
and from projections to health.
He made the quantitative leap
from being an aesthetic physicist
to being an ironically ethical skeptic
by seeing that the logic of logos
could only collect the many
into assumed but never verified
colliding theoretical constructs.
However, what was terribly important for Martin
was that he saw that already in the book on Irony
Kierkegaard was well aware of the paradigm leap
from the first complexity of modernity
into the second complexity of postmodernity.
Socrates got beyond the logic of
the de facto and the de jure
to the logic of the subjective thinker
who followed the de exemplare witness
to the infinite resignation of the neither/nor.
By accepting neither Heraclites nor Parmenides
as having the absolutely true theory
it was possible to appreciate both
in relative situations.
Modern science and philosophy,
as Hume showed, used the paradigm
of the first complexity and contingency
by having to constantly verify new hypotheses.
But already in Irony the qualitative leap
into the second complexity and contingency was clear.
For if Socrates lived and died as a philosopher
then Jesus lived and died as the God-man.
In his journal Kierkegaard put it this way:
“The greatest good, after all, which can be done
for a being…is to make it free.
In order to do just that omnipotence is required.
This seems strange, since it is precisely omnipotence
that supposedly would make (a being) dependent.
But if one will reflect on omnipotence, he will see
that it also must contain the unique qualification
of being able to withdraw itself again
in a manifestation of omnipotence in such a way
that precisely for this reason that which
has been originated through omnipotence
can be independent. That is why one human being
cannot make another person wholly free…
only omnipotence can withdraw itself
at the same time that it gives itself away,
and this relationship is the very independence
of the receiver.” JP 2. 1251
God’s stepping down from Himself in the Incarnation
reveals how God can step back
and let His creatures be free
so that He can no longer know what they will do.
Not only are things unknowable to humans
but also the divine mind is not omniscient.
That is the double complexity.
As soon as they are created as free
they have within them a lack of necessity
that makes them contingent
both for humans and for God.
That is the double contingent.
When this objective uncertainty
is appropriated by the subjective thinker
he and she in the logic of mixed opposites
can affirm all of existence
just as Martin does in his article on Irony
when he shows how both Plato
and Aristophanes can appreciate
different aspects of Socrates’ skeptical irony.
ARISTOTELIAN, SOCRATIC AND KIERKEGAARDIAN COURAGE
Why Martin chose to be a Kierkegaardian follower
in Volume 5 of The International Kierkegaard Commentary.
There Martin wrote on the theme of cowardliness
taken up in Kierkegaard’s 17th Edifying Discourse.
We each live in fear and trembling
before the threats of daily existence.
We can each become paranoid
in our anxiety before life’s complexities
and thus live very unhappy lives.
But Aristotle worked out a great ethical system
which strongly influenced our Western tradition
in cultivating virtues as means to happiness
and thus moving beyond vice and its self-destruction.
Aristotle showed us how to cultivate the habit
of living in the golden mean of courage
between the extremes of cowardliness and foolhardiness.
With spiritual exercises we can become courageous
before life’s complexities and contingencies.
We can calculate and find the golden mean
in any sort of dangerous situation.
However, the Greek skeptics thought that Socrates
gave a better example of courage
than you could find in the calculations
of Platonists, Aristotelians, Stoics or Epicureans.
Socrates with his skeptical irony became
very courageous especially during his own dying.
He was not in fear and trembling
even before the definite threat of the hemlock
because ironically death is so complex
that he knew he could not know it
so why should he fear the unknown.
He was not in anxiety
before the complexities he could not know
because he had a good conscience
and he trusted that his Divine sign
would warn him what not to do.
His honest humility gave him a healthy humor
that let him be nobly courageous.
Socrates comforted his friends
as they came weeping to say “Good bye.”
In his infinite resignation before unknowable complexities
he had the serenity that appealed to Stoics
and the joy that appealed to Epicureans.
He was a nobly realized man
through his self-realization ethics.
Socrates ascended upwardly
to the second floor of the house
in his playful, humble self-realization.
But the God-man descends downwardly
to others in their suffering
on the first floor and in the basement.
As the Good Samaritan He serves
widows, orphans and aliens by
welcoming them to his own with hospitality.
As the suffering servant instead of the philosopher king
he has no fear of suffering
because with his suffering he loves others
even those who make Him suffer.
He gives a courageous answer
to the problem of suffering
by showing the value of suffering
as an offering of love for others.
Martin with Kierkegaard’s philosophy of courage
shows how Simone Weil is loving
with a similar suffering for others.
He shows how Thomas Aquinas developed
a similar theory of theological virtues
that are given to us through the grace
of the suffering of the God-man
so that our moral virtues are transformed
into a new kind of other-orientated
courage, wisdom, strength and justice.
THE BIBLICAL MIRROR OF ST. JAMES’ EPISTLE
By looking into Martin’s article on the mirror
in volume 21 of the IKC on self-examination,
we can come to know Martin in the special
biblical way, which James uniquely emphasizes.
Martin’s article is a masterpiece of
the simplicity of the complexity of the double contingency
which each of his articles reveals.
Each is a work of love which shows us
his finger print crystal form
as it brings us face to face with him
in the special hall of mirrors
into which Kierkegaard first took him.
When Martin and Kierkegaard read the word of God
they see the God-man giving
what he has to the poor
turning the other cheek
being happy when God tries him
and rejoicing always especially in dying.
When they look into the mirror they see
this example calling them to imitation.
Martin in being alone before God
like Luther sees that two things
are being revealed to him in the mirror:
the God-man’s Incarnation and his own sin.
He sees himself in the mirror
of the face of Jesus and he sees
how far he falls short of mirroring
that face of Jesus in the mirror of his face.
But all of his works can mirror
the works of the God-man.
All of his writing can be a suffering
yet rejoicing service for others
which mirrors the face and works of Jesus.
Thus Martin’s vast library
is a mirror of Martin
just as each paper he writes is a mirror.
Others who now take and read his books
and who will read and write on his papers
will mirror the God-man’s works of love
just as Kierkegaard imitated them in his works
in striving always with earnestness
to better and better mirror the face of Jesus.
LOVE’S REDOUBLING AND THE ETERNAL LIKE FOR LIKE
Martin’s article is the first to appear
in the IKC volume on Works of Love.
This is so because it gives the simplest
and clearest account of Kierkegaard’s philosophy.
With the three interrelated concepts of
repetition, redoubling and reduplication
Martin explains how each volume of
Kierkegaard’s entire authorship is
a grace inspired work of love written
in a very special way for Martin Andic
and for each of Kierkegaard’s readers.
In the double movement leap of repetition
the God-man in the event of his birth
in each new event of his life
and in the event of his death
lived out the double law of love,
to love the Lord his God with
his whole heart, mind and soul
and his neighbor as himself.
In Platonic recollection the fallen soul,
by loving wisely here is able
to move back up there and recover
the eternal Form of the Beautiful-Good
and thus to absolutely love the Absolute.
In Hegelian Mediation the human spirit
is able to move through human history
in a process of progress
by negating lower ways of knowing
and attaining ever higher ways
until at the end of history
we in our common personhood
then in a fully explicit way
will absolutely love the Absolute.
Platonic recollection and Hegelian mediation
thus perform the first movement of the God-man
who started out absolutely loving the Absolute.
But Plato and Hegel left the relative behind
that the God-man comes down in
his birth, life and death to re-fetch.
This repetition is a movement forward
that lets each moment be new
as the God-man renews with his love
the worth of each single individual.
But Kierkegaard worked out the ethics of redoubling
as well as the metaphysics of repetition.
He was called into his sacred task
in everything that he did and
in every word that he wrote
to imitate the double movement leaping
of the double law of love
which the God-man revealed
in the service and the suffering
of his birth, his life and his death.
Kierkegaard looked into the mirror
of the living word of God
and saw the God-man loving
others in God and God in others.
He saw that he too must not let
his affection, friendship and Eros
be only a self-loving preferential love
that absolutized the relative.
Kierkegaard in his life and works
constantly practiced redoubling
the God-man’s double movement leap
of love’s repetition that makes all things new.
Søren not only redoubled
the God-man’s double movement leap
of repetition, he also reduplicated it.
His performing of the works of love
was a mirroring of those works
so that others could behold them
and redouble them in themselves.
This is what happened with Martin.
He beheld Søren imitating the works
of that humble suffering servant
in all that he did and wrote as in
a reduplicative mirror for others.
Martin looked into the mirror
and he clearly saw the law
of the eternal like for like.
“What you do unto people
you do unto God, and therefore
what you do unto people
God does unto you.”
What can eternal life be
but a continual loving
in just the way we love here?
Thus Martin is a mirror for us
just as Søren was for him
and as the God-man was for Søren.
And so, Ladies and Gentlemen,
we can be confident that Martin
together with Socrates and Jesus
accepted his dying and death
with a great courage and offered them
as his departing gift for us.
On the Good Friday that coincided
with the day of Annunciation and Incarnation,
that is, on the conception day and death day of Jesus,
Martin was called home by the Lord.
We believe that he is there now praying for us.
He was a gentle and soft spoken man
of good humor and loving disposition
in whom all animals and the earth
had a concerned and caring friend.
As we remember him we pray
and we know that he prays
especially for his family
and especially for his children.
Adieu Martin and Thank You!
[1] Dr. Martin F. Andic,
Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the University of Massachusetts, Boston,
died a year into his retirement of pancreatic cancer on Good Friday (March 25)
2005 at a hospital in St. Catharines, Ont. where he had recently moved to marry
his new wife, Victoria.
Martin
was a much loved, soft spoken, kind-hearted philosopher/teacher with a very
broad range of interests. His interest and writing ranged from the early Greeks
to the post-moderns, to animal welfare issues, but his main loves, however,
were Kierkegaard and Simone Weil. He has written extensively on Kierkegaard,
articles such as "Is Love of Neighbour the Love of an Individual?"
(in Kierkegaard: The Self in Society
ed. by G. Pattison and S. Shakespeare), "Love's Redoubling and the Eternal
Like for Like" (in Works of Love
International Kierkegaard Community, 16 ed. by Robert L. Perkins), and
"Simone Weil and Kierkegaard" (in Modern
Theology vol. 2, no. 1), to name but three, He is also the editor of Simone Weil and the Intellect of Grace.
The
University of Massachusetts at Boston has established the Martin Andic Memorial
Fund. This fund provides each year the Martin Andic Prize to a graduating
senior in Philosophy. According to Professor Nelson Lande, the Philosophy
Department would like to make this fund permanent. This requires raising about
$5000 more in donations by June 30,
2008 to make this fund a permanently endowed fund. If you are interested in
contributing to this memorial to Martin Andic, please contact Steven M. Ward,
Director of Annual Giving, Institutional Advancement, University of
Massachusetts at Boston, 100 Morrissey Blvd., Boston, MA 02125-3939.
Submitted by Johanna Tito,
President of the Brock Philosophy Society