Category: Thought

Why Live Existentially? Simone de Beauvoir’s The Ethics of Ambiguity

I appreciate that most people are not much interested in philosophy. I myself am not particularly interested in questions about metaphysics or the meaning and origin of knowledge, even though plenty of thinkers believe that without understanding these things we cannot even begin to approach those questions which I do find interesting. Those questions are simple – what is a good life, what must we do, where does our meaning come from, and is it to be found at all? Existentialism appeals because it deals with questions relating to our existence, rather than that which may lie beyond it or beneath it. Its focus is on the concrete, the practical, the real and the possible. For that reason it has appealed to many artists and people who are engaged in the business of being alive.

Simone de Beauvoir’s The Ethics of Ambiguity is an essay, or rather series of essays, that aims to introduce existentialism to the common reader. I cannot compare it with Sartre’s Existentialism and Humanism, which was also written in the period immediately after the end of the Second World War and has a similar goal, because I have not read that work yet. However, I have heard many suggestions that de Beauvoir’s piece is a better introduction than her partner’s is to the existentialist project among primary sources. I certainly came away from the book with some understanding of existentialism, at least as de Beauvoir sees it, and this is what I will try to share in the following piece.

The book’s structure is relatively simple. The first essay is a kind of introduction, the second essay explains why people who do not follow existentialism’s tenets are likely to cause trouble in the world, and the final essay explores all the cool things about life under existentialism. Obviously, de Beauvoir’s views are distinct from those of her fellow existentialists like Sartre or Heidegger, so here when I write “existentialism” I mean de Beauvoir’s particular take on it.

Introduction – The World According to Existentialism

Beyond us, there is nothing. There’s neither a higher power nor any other source for our values that cannot be challenged. Existentialism’s world is a world continually in flux, with nothing to hold on to. To say that things are solid, completely solid, whether tradition or morals or whatever, is to lie to oneself and hide from the nature of things. Instead, “it is in the knowledge of the genuine conditions of our life that we must draw our strength to live and our reason for acting”. In other words, we need to work things out for ourselves without relying on the old certainties of life. For each one of us “it is a matter of knowing whether [we] want to live and under what conditions”. Once we have worked out the answers for ourselves, we must live them. But this is much easier said than done.

Dostoevsky is often considered an early existentialist. In The Brothers Karamazov, Ivan forcefully and terribly argues that if there is no God, then “everything is permitted”. De Beauvoir equally forcefully disagrees. On the contrary, “far from God’s absence authorizing all license, the contrary is the case, because man is abandoned on the earth, because his acts are definitive, absolute engagements.” There is no redemption except that which we give ourselves, and no redeeming grace. Freedom in de Beauvoir’s world is dizzying, and it requires us to assume responsibility for our actions. Her enemies in The Ethics of Ambiguity are those people who, consciously or unconsciously, hide from that responsibility.

We are free to do what we want without being bound by past values, but as stated above that does not mean we are given license to do anything. “To be free is not to have the power to do anything you like; it is to be able to surpass the given toward an open future”. By freedom de Beauvoir means the opportunity to create our own paths in life and follow them, acting to grow and develop ourselves. Defined in this way, freedom means we should not impede others as they pursue their own paths, because although our projects are personal, our freedom is increased when more people are free around us. A despot can do what he or she wants, but they are less free when their people are not free. This is because we are connected with other people, whether we want it or not: “no project can be defined except by its interference with other projects”. The more projects are successfully being pursued, the more our collective freedom is increased.

This means that we must be individualistic, according to de Beauvoir, but not solipsistic. And the fact that we need others to be free in order to fully realise our own freedom is where the ethical component of The Ethics of Ambiguity comes from. For although there are no absolute and unchallengeable values, anyone who cares for freedom must necessarily desire its increase. (Hey, isn’t freedom an absolute value for de Beauvoir?)

Women and colonised peoples were the main targets of de Beauvoir’s rallying cry. In many cases unaware of their freedom, the women of the mid-20th century lived sad, deprived lives. Likewise, many colonised peoples did not realise they could and should be free. Under existentialism, we have a duty to help them free themselves from oppression, because in their freedom “new possibilities might be opened to the liberated slave and through him to all men”.

What’s so bad about not being an existentialist?

This mumbling about freedom is probably slightly less vague in the original than in my retelling of it, but nevertheless readers may say that they don’t want freedom for the women, or perhaps more reasonably, that they value tradition, order, organisation. De Beauvoir has no love for conservatives, and the second essay of The Ethics of Ambiguity explores why we have an obligation – a responsibility – to be free. Looking at various groups – the “sub-man”, the “serious man”, “nihilist,” “adventurer”, and others, she explains how their lack of freedom is harmful not just to them, but to everyone.

The Sub-Man

The “sub-man” is someone who merely exists. He acts without a plan or unifying idea. “By the incoherence of his plans, by his haphazard whims, or by his indifference, he reduces to nothingness the meaning of his surpassing” – in other words, he destroys his freedom by hiding from it. As a result, he enters a vicious circle: “the less he exists, the less is there reason for him to exist, since these reasons are created only by existing”. Such a man suffers through life, or at best, is indifferent to it. But because he does not grasp his freedom, he is vulnerable to being grasped by others. A sub-man is dangerous because others can control him and use him for evil ends – de Beauvoir might have had in mind the widely-publicised trials of Nazis in the postwar period, and the ambiguous condition of the German people themselves, who had in many cases so blindly followed orders.

The Serious Man

The “serious man” is by contrast someone who does have an idea. He sets himself up with an ideal and allows nothing to challenge it. He betrays his own freedom by ignoring it as soon as he has used it once – in the act of choosing his ideological goal. The serious man “puts nothing into question” and thereby sees the whole world through the prism of utility. Is something useful for his goals, or not? And this means that he comes to devalue everything around him, especially people. De Beauvoir gives as an example the colonial administrators who valued Empire more than they did the lives of the inhabitants of their colonies, with the result that the building of a railroad became infinitely more important to them than any native lives lost in the process. At the same time though, these men are dependent upon their idol. As soon as they lose it, their life is filled with anxiety and despair. One thinks here of certain businessmen or generals whose retirement deprives their lives of their meaning. Because they do not value freedom, but only the governing idea they choose for themselves, their life collapses when that same idea is removed or fails.

The Nihilist

“Nihilism is disappointed seriousness which has turned back upon itself”. A nihilist wishes to believe in the same idols that serious people do, but they can’t, making them revolt against them. Revolt is an important part of The Ethics of Ambiguity, but not as the nihilist does it. Unable to find the seriousness within themselves, they destroy the sources of seriousness – the idols – of others. They end up destroying anything that anyone values, in order to confirm their own view of the world as meaningless. This is a mistake, in de Beauvoir’s view. “The nihilist is right in thinking that the world possesses no justification and that he himself is nothing. But he forgets that it is up to him to justify the world and to make himself exist validly”. The nihilist basically forgets to be free; he forgets that beyond the idols there lies something worth valuing – freedom itself.

The Adventurer

Adventurers are fun characters. At first they seem to be perfect existentialists – they focus on action, not on idols or rumination. They also are driven by a swashbuckling enjoyment of life – one thinks of Don Juan. All this is good, but there are a number of issues within the adventurer’s hedonism which de Beauvoir highlights. The first is solipsism – the adventurer does not value freedom for itself, so they do not care about others at all – “the adventurer shares the nihilist’s contempt for men”. Also, adventurers often have secret goals, making them serious, even though they hide it – for example, the pursuit of glory, money, power. The main problem is this lack of respect for freedom, however, because it means that “favourable circumstances are enough to transform the adventurer into a dictator.” And in 1948 nobody was a fan of those.

What’s so good about being an existentialist?

Those were the bad guys, but what I liked about The Ethics of Ambiguity is de Beauvoir’s depiction of the good guys and how existentialism makes life exciting. Of all the ways of being, existentialism is the one, in de Beauvoir’s view, that is most firmly rooted in lived experience. It has its virtues, ones that are unambiguous: “What is called vitality, sensitivity, and intelligence are not ready-made qualities, but a way of casting oneself into the world and of disclosing being”. These are valuable because “the reward for these spontaneous qualities issues from the fact that they make significances and goals appear in the world. They discover reasons for existing”.

To be free is to live in a world of ambiguity, but it is also to live in a world of potential. De Beauvoir quotes Heidegger: man is “infinitely more than what he would be if he were reduced to being what he is”. In other words, we should never be treated as what we are because we are always capable of growth. The great power of freedom is that it provides a secular redemption to make up for the religious one we lose – we can always change our path, and no moment is too late to change ourselves.

At the same time, we get on with the business of being alive. Our projects build ourselves up – the future, “prolonging my existence of today, will fulfil my present projects and will surpass them toward new ends”. There is no reason to fear death, because it is precisely through death and failure and our limitations that meaning is possible: “a man who would aspire to act upon the totality of the universe would see the meaning of all action vanish”. If we look too far in the future, as de Beauvoir suggests the Marxists do with their utopian dreaming, then all of our action is devalued: “from that formless night we can draw no justification of our acts, it condemns them with the same indifference; wiping out today’s errors and defeats, it will also wipe out its triumphs”.

The future matters to us only insofar as it exists to us – we must live in the moment, and in the potential of the future. To live entirely in the present is to devalue others, while to live too far in the future is to devalue everything. De Beauvoir has a lovely phrase against those who think too far ahead: “an action which wants to serve man ought to be careful not to forget him on the way”. She wishes our ethics to be concrete, to be focused on specific moments. She does not condemn violence when fighting oppression, but instead asks us each time to consider whether it is what is needed or not. This may seem frustratingly vague, but the point is to make us constantly question ourselves. De Beauvoir’s freedom means we must erect no idols, but instead ask ourselves, again and again, whether what we are doing is right, and how it is contributing towards our goals. We must never say “it is useful”, but rather “it is useful for me, for this goal, now”.  

All this may sound rather challenging. We must choose our projects, we must work constantly upon our growth and the attainment of our goals. Nevertheless, de Beauvoir makes it clear that life needs joy too, for freedom without joy is nothing: “the movement toward freedom assumes its real, flesh and blood figure in the world by thickening into pleasure, into happiness”. All the gains in the world, and all the development, “have no meaning if we are not moved by the laugh of a child at play. If we do not love life on our own account and through others, it is futile to seek to justify it in any way”. As important as it is to worry about freedom and good faith, I’m glad that de Beauvoir remembers that we must have our joy. And indeed, I struggle to see how life would be worth living if we lost our sensitivity to that.

Conclusion

The pursuit of a meaning that “is never fixed, that… must be constantly won”, sounds a reasonable approach to living. It appeals a lot to a 23-year-old who has finally finished university and is now alone in the big world, trying to work out what it is he must do with himself. I cannot critique the philosophy behind de Beauvoir’s suggestions – the first essay has a lot of beings and existences and other such terminology that I struggled to appreciate or fully wrap my head around. Can I critique it as a way of life? Perhaps. If we value happiness more than freedom, we may be dismayed at the unhappiness de Beauvoir’s demands of revolt could potentially cause. To bring consciousness of their oppression to the working classes, to the colonised, to women, is to invite them to become aware of suffering that may sometimes be hidden from them. That they would be happy later is perhaps a not all that important. For that reason, de Beauvoir will convince no conservatives to abandon their values and traditions, and her chaotic ambiguous freedom will never appeal to those who prefer order. It is not clear whether it would necessarily create a better world either.

And yet, for an individual, this philosophy cannot help but be attractive. The consequences for one who is indecisive are great. Existentialism, in de Beauvoir’s mode, is a call to action, to responsibility. That’s cool. I like that. I recently read Sarah Bakewell’s brilliant At the Existentialist Café and one thing I found awesome about it was just how awesome de Beauvoir and Sartre really were. They lived existentialism. Where Kierkegaard’s Christian existentialism, however admirable, had him torturing himself with self-doubt, de Beauvoir and Sartre were having fun, having sex, and being free. To have there be congruence between one’s words, thoughts, and actions – there can be no greater thing. And de Beauvoir’s essays are a valuable call to action to that end.

For more from the Paris of the mid-20th-century, read my piece on Boris Vian’s Mood Indigo, also known as Froth on the Daydream.

Ray Monk’s Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius

What is attractive about Ludwig Wittgenstein is that he was a real genius. I did not gallop through Ray Monk’s Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius because I wanted to know about Wittgenstein’s philosophy – I did it because I wanted to know about the man. Wittgenstein’s thoughts on language are worth knowing about, sure, but certainly not near the top of the pile of philosophies I want to have a grasp of. Though Monk’s biography gave me some sense of Wittgenstein’s thoughts, the focus here was more on his life. This approach works because, for me at least, the parts of Wittgenstein’s thought that are most interesting are precisely those that came from his life – such as the way the mystical sections of the Tractatus came from Wittgenstein’s experience in the First World War.

Rather than summarise a summary of Wittgenstein’s thoughts, I thought I’d note here the parts of his life that struck me as particularly entertaining, saddening, or interesting. Being such a unique personality, Wittgenstein provides plenty of all three.

The Briefest of Biographical Summaries

Wittgenstein was born in Vienna to one of the richest of all Austrian families and had an extremely privileged upbringing. But the Vienna he was born into, at the tail end of the Austro-Hungarian Empire’s life, was not a happy place producing happy people. I counted at least five suicides in the first chapter of Monk’s book alone – three of them Wittgenstein’s brothers. Our hero moves to England for his studies, meets a number of philosophers including Bertrand Russell who all eventually come to consider him a genius. He spends time in Norway and as a soldier, works as a teacher and gardener, goes back to Cambridge to teach, helps out in the Second World War behind the scenes, and finally dies. Given that the lives of most philosophers are little more interesting than that of Immanuel Kant, who never left his province, Wittgenstein’s life of action is rather exciting.

Genius and its Duty

One thing making Wittgenstein interesting is that he was not a scientist and did not see philosophy as scientific. Instead, he approached philosophy creatively. At one point he shocked the boring old gits of the Vienna Circle of philosophers by recommending they read Heidegger and Kierkegaard. He also lectured primarily using the power of inspiration, standing in the lecture hall or else pacing until a thought came to him, and then announcing it to enraptured onlookers. Most importantly, Wittgenstein’s whole character was artistic. Monk quotes Russell here:

“His disposition is that of an artist, intuitive and moody. He says every morning he begins his work with hope, and every evening he ends in despair.”

At another point Russell had Wittgenstein pace up and down his room for three hours in silence before Russell finally asked: “Are you thinking about logic or your sins?” “Both,” Wittgenstein replies, and continues his pacing. 

The language of sins is surprising to people who like me think of Wittgenstein as a boring logician. In reality, Wittgenstein was of a decidedly religious sensibility. His major influences appear to be Tolstoy and Dostoevsky – Hadji Murat and The Brothers Karamazov are just two of several books by the authors that Wittgenstein adored and passed out among his friends. Acquaintances compared him to Levin from Anna Karenina and Prince Myshkin from The Idiot. Though he was raised a Catholic, Wittgenstein did not believe in the Church’s dogmas, even as he believed in a kind of God and definitely believed in his own sinfulness.

Sin, for Wittgenstein (as it was for Tolstoy), was determined by his own conscience: “The God who in my bosom dwells”. What Wittgenstein feared most of all was judgement – “God may say to me: “I am judging you out of your own mouth. Your own actions have made you shudder with disgust when you have seen other people do them.”” He was never happy with himself. He expected nothing less than perfection from himself, that beautiful but impossible congruence between one’s thoughts and one’s actions. At one point he made a confession to all of his friends in an attempt to rid himself of his pride. Instead, he just annoyed them. Few were interested in listening to all of his minor failings.

But Wittgenstein believed that he had a duty to be perfect – the duty of genius that Monk uses as his biography’s title. By perfect I do not mean in conduct so much as in the sense of squeezing out of himself as much philosophy as possible, by any means possible. At one point Wittgenstein was struggling from overwork, but rather than take a break as his friends suggested, he decided to try hypnotherapy to help him concentrate even more successfully. At another point he decides to abandon the world to live in a hut in Norway and write philosophy.

Russell, ever sensible, warns him against it:

“I said it would be dark, & he said he hated daylight. I said it would be lonely, & he said he prostituted his mind talking to intelligent people. I said he was mad & he said God preserve him from sanity. (God certainly will.)”

Wittgenstein does not listen. He does not listen to anybody at all. In many ways he reminded me of Tolstoy, who like him was sceptical of doctors and medicine, and had an all-consuming desire to be perfect: “How can I be a logician before I’m a human being! Far the most important thing is to settle accounts with myself!”

And Wittgenstein is miserable as a result: “My day passes between logic, whistling, going for walks, and being depressed.”

As he gets older Wittgenstein mellows in some ways, thanks in part to his loves, male and female. The sheer obstinacy of his youth is less visible, and there is less of the humorous, if sad, determination to ignore everyone else’s opinions or suggestions. 

A photo of Ludwig Wittgenstein
Rather than reading this piece one should really just stare at this face for five minutes or so. I cannot be alone in thinking that Wittgenstein’s gaze pierces into the soul.

The Dark Side of Genius

Wittgenstein’s perfectionist demands upon himself were ones that affected everyone around him, and rarely positively. He shows a remarkable lack of concern for others’ feelings and emotions, especially those of his partners. Even though when asked how to improve the world he declared that all we could do was improve ourselves, his attempts at self-improvement rarely seem to improve either him or the world. He loses friends at every turn – including Russell himself. His vaguely Tolstoyan ideal of a good life – working with one’s hands while developing spiritually – is not one he himself follows, stuck in Cambridge, but is one he forces on others, including Francis Skinner, one of his partners.

When Wittgenstein actually encounters “the common man”, said man rarely proves the best of us. Wittgenstein dislikes his soldierly comrades in the Austro-Hungarian army, and during his years of teaching in the mountains of rural Austria he ends up being a dreadful teacher for anyone lacking ability. Wittgenstein preferred to use fists to ensure mathematics got into his pupils’ heads, rather than patient and repeated explanations. At one point he even knocks a poor child unconscious, for which he is taken to court.

As for the intelligent people in his life, they are rarely treated by Wittgenstein to any greater kindness or concern. Of one friend he said: “he shows you how far a man can go who has absolutely no intelligence whatsoever.” When another writes to him, wishing him well in his work and social endeavours, Wittgenstein responds especially pleasantly: “It is obvious to me that you are becoming thoughtless and stupid. How could you imagine I would ever have “lots of friends”?” And indeed, after reading such a letter, how could we doubt his social abilities?

Wittgenstein’s determination to destroy himself in the name of perfection ruined any chance at happiness, even though he thought that perfection would be what would finally provide him with it. In this Wittgenstein is no different from many other depressed people, your blogger included, who set themselves impossible tasks and achieve nothing but their own misery thereby. I found one moment particularly amusing in connection with this. Wittgenstein finally sees a doctor for some exhaustion and pain he was suffering from and gets given some vitamins. Once he takes them, he immediately recovers and returns to work. Rather than lying in his moral failings, perhaps his inability to work could have just lain in his poor health. However, in his determination to see everything through the lens of his own sinfulness, Wittgenstein obviously never considered the possibility that he might just need to live a little more healthily, eat well and sleep.

Conclusion

Wittgenstein wrote that “the way to solve the problem you see in life is to live in a way that will make what is problematic disappear”. It’s a good idea, but Wittgenstein clearly chose the wrong way to live. Clearly? Wittgenstein achieved a great deal, his work revolutionised philosophy, and on his deathbed he was able to request that his friends be told he’d “had a wonderful life”. Alas, his life rather epitomises that dreadful, unbridgeable divide between happiness and achievement. The best happiness demands limited goals, while the greatest goals demand the sacrifice of (at least) part of our happiness. We may read Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius and say that Wittgenstein really just needed some good meds and some CBT for his OCD and other problems, but somehow that doesn’t sound quite right to me.

Would he have been able to work so well if he did not have this way of life, this drive? Wittgenstein was a genius – he had a self-appointed duty to destroy himself in the quest for a better way of philosophising. What is important is that Wittgenstein could squeeze more philosophy out of himself. Can we, depressed perfectionists, really hope to achieve that much more by destroying ourselves, or should we just cut our losses and be sensible, care about ourselves and the world, and eventually find that thing that others talk so lovingly about – happiness?

I don’t know.

Søren Kierkegaard – The Lily of the Field and the Bird of the Air

Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, like so many other thinkers of their time, saw their century as one engulfed by a crisis of faith. But whereas Nietzsche aimed to destroy the last remnants of a rotting Christianity to build a world where values might be reimagined, Kierkegaard attempted to create a new, fresh, and serious Christianity to take the place of the old and moribund one. In The Lily of the Field and The Bird of the Air we have three discourses analysing the famous biblical Sermon on the Mount. They fit into Kierkegaard’s larger goal of answering “what it is to be a human being”, especially from a “godly standpoint”, by teaching us a little about silence, obedience, and joy. Where Kierkegaard’s pseudonymous work always aims at making us think, here the goal is almost the opposite – here he wants us to act and change our lives.

I still have not decided yet whether I liked this short book. Kierkegaard places huge demands upon his listeners to act and be true Christians, demands which are unlikely to appeal to anyone who is not devout already. For those wavering, Kierkegaard has very little time. His faith is an all-or-nothing affair. But that does not mean that this work is without interest to the rest of us.

First Discourse: Silence

In the Sermon on the Mount we are called to consider, among other things, the lilies in the field and the birds of the air. From this pair Kierkegaard draws the lessons of The Lily of the Field and The Bird of the Air. The first discourse looks at the pair as a source of silence and explains why silence is important.

First, however, we are introduced to the character of the poet. The poet represents an inauthentic relationship with nature masquerading as an authentic one. Society, Kierkegaard thinks, is full of people who listen to the Bible and would like to follow its teachings. However, they do not even try to do so because they believe such a life would be impossible. The poet dramatizes the wish to live religiously, thus obscuring the fact that it is actually possible. We must stop listening to poets and start listening to the silence of the animals.

Humans are gifted with speech, but we must learn to keep silence. The reason is that “becoming silent, silent before God, is the beginning of the fear of God”. And fearing God is a good thing – it draws us nearer to Him and His kingdom. The first step to reaching God is to be silent – not to do anything other than cease talking. Our speech is dangerous, it distorts our situation. The lily suffers, but does not speak, whereas a human suffers and talks and makes their suffering all the greater. “In this silence, the many thoughts of wishing and desiring fall silent in the fear of God”. In our silence we perceive God, we remind ourselves of Him and make ourselves small before Him. Poets may talk of silence, but they seek it in order to talk about it. Their search is dishonest, the opposite of what is needful.

Ceasing to think, to speak, is to become like the birds and lilies. They live entirely in the moment, untroubled – and through silence we too can live orientated towards the moment at hand. There is a lot here that reminds me of Kierkegaard’s Repetition, which I looked at earlier. The creatures, unlike us humans, are capable of repetition – they have faith that things will repeat, without needing to worry and distract themselves from the now before them.

Second Discourse: Obedience

Silence leads to the fear of God which leads to His Kingdom – that is the idea of the first discourse. The second takes us further by confronting us with a choice – an either/or. Either God or whatever we want, but not a God who is a half-measure. For Kierkegaard, if we think we can combine God with other interests, other choices, that means that we have a false conception of Him. In fact, if we don’t give God our everything, he continues, that means we hate Him. Wait a minute, you might say, that’s ridiculous. But Kierkegaard says that what God demands is “obedience, unconditional obedience”.

The lily and the bird are teachers of obedience. They do not complain about the circumstances of their birth; instead, they accept everything as God’s will. They then blossom or flourish as best they can, given whatever situation they find themselves in. We humans complain, we despair at our brief time alive – and all this disobedience gets in the way of us becoming who God wants us to be. It also makes us vulnerable to temptation. “Where there is ambivalence, there temptation is” and “where ambivalence is… deep down there is also disobedience”.

Accepting everything our authority tells us on faith, allowing no doubts or disobedience, and trusting that later we will learn the reasons behind these injunctions – how little such suggestions must appeal to a modern reader! If you are a Christian already, Kierkegaard is describing a harsh but honest way of living in a way that pleases God; but if you are not one, then this is just sinister and authoritarian rubbish, the kind of thing we’d expect from our dictators. And if you are on the fence now, in the twenty-first century, Kierkegaard is just going to push you right off into scepticism. But perhaps that’s what he’d want.   

Third Discourse: Joy

After all the business with the silence and the unconditional obedience, how happy we readers are to learn about joy! For after all, in spite of the suffering of the animals, they are actually joyous. In fact, they are “unconditionally joyful, are joy itself”. The best kind of joy for Kierkegaard is a state of being rather than a temporary state. He defines it as when one is “truly to be present to oneself” – that is, when one is silent about the future and past, and instead focused entirely upon one’s own existence within the present. He even says that “Joy is the present time”. The birds and lilies are joyous because they exist in the present.

But it is more complicated than that. After all, how could the creatures both “bear so infinitely deep a sorrow” while remaining happy? Because – and here Kierkegaard says something that sounds impressive, if nothing else – they cast all their care and sorrow upon God. With the help of faith, they offload all of their cares onto God, which empties them of their worries, and leaves only joy remaining. And even if there is only a little joy there, the absence of sorrow means that this joy will seem huge. Anyone can be happy, so long as they have no sorrow – that is the message. And from the creatures we can learn how to hurl or sorrows onto God – we can learn “dexterity”.

Conclusions

We have no excuses for not being proper, Christian Christians, in Kierkegaard’s view. Even in the midst of society one can still be a proper Christian, because birds group together, yet they still show unconditional obedience, are joyous, and are silent – and people are basically birds. If we too show unconditional obedience, unconditional joy, and silence our spirits, then we can abide in God – we can temporarily take part in the eternity which is God’s time. What a rousing conclusion, ay, readers?

As for me, I am not convinced. Or rather, I think that Kierkegaard’s description of a truly Christian way of living in The Lily of the Field and The Bird of the Air is both fascinating and repulsive at the same time. He smashes any suggestion that anything other than a life lived entirely for God can be a godly life, and for most of us wavering moderns this is a commitment far greater than what we are capable of.

At the same time, we can take away things from this piece. The value of silence is universal, and so too is the value of orientating ourselves towards the present. But as for the middle section, the authoritarianism and recommendation of political and social quietism are more curiosities, than things I hope we may actually want to learn from.

If you want more authoritarianism, you can read my comments on some essays by Thomas Carlyle. If you want more Kierkegaard, here’s my piece on Repetition.