Kierkegaard and the Self: The Fantasy of the Infinite

We have been discussing Kierkegaard’s notion of the self. In the prior post, we saw that Kierkegaard defined the “self” as “spirit.” Theologically, this the “soul” or, I would suggest, the imago dei, the image of God. It is a beautiful gift, and one that must be cultivated and explored. We must treat this gift with care and love because it is so easy to lose ourselves in the world—in the busy activity, in the various roles we fulfill, and in the general fragmentation that is characteristic of the post-industrial world dominated by the desire for economic expansion.

Protestant theology of self with its emphasis on total depravity, tends to imagine that the self is completely beyond hope and in need of divine intervention. When this theology gets translated at a popular level, the result tends to be that people are looking to escape themselves with wistful thinking about the divine, or one might potentially look to a quick and easy religious experience as something that has “transformed” them.

The problem with popular Protestant theology in this regard is that it ultimately serves as an escape from truly facing our self; it also can cheat us out of the beauty and joy of exploring the “inward person” (Cf. Ephesians 3:16, eso anthropon).

To know God deeper, we must know self deeper. We must discover our uniqueness and cultivate our own awareness of our selves. “Self-consciousness is decisive with regard to the self. The more consciousness, the more self; the more consciousness, the more will; the more will, the more self. The person who has no will at all is not a self.” (p. 29, Sickness Unto Death, Hong translation)

As I mentioned in the last post, to emphasize the beauty of the self is not to say that the relation to God is any less important. This is not true, at least in part because God is in and through all things. (Cf. Acts 17:28 and Ephesians 4:6) To truly understand the creation and its interconnectedness simply is to know God. (Cf. Psalm 19, “The heavens declare the glory of God, the skies proclaim the work of his hands.”)

For Kierkegaard the God relation is important: “The self is the conscious synthesis of infinitude and finitude that relates itself to itself, whose task is to become itself, which can only be done through the relationship to God….the self is healthy and free from despair only when, precisely by having despaired, it rests transparently in God.” (p. 30) Kierkegaard in this regard stands true to the Protestant tradition; however, I think he still is able to recognize something very crucial: that the relation to God is warped if it leads us away from the self. Kierkegaard calls this “the fantastic.” The fantastic is a way of thinking about God (“the infinite”) in such a way that disconnects us from the self.

“The fantastic is generally that which leads a person out into the infinite in such a way that it only leads him away from himself and thereby prevents him from coming back to himself.” (p. 31)

Kierkegaard describes this state of being as an “intoxication.” The idea is that when one disconnects from self, no matter how good the intoxication may feel or no matter how “truthful” the doctrine/dogma may be, the result is still despair; the result is loss of self. When the connection with self is lost, the relation to God is perverse. Indeed, such a state of being is quite serious and alarming, because for Kierkegaard, this fantastic state can consume a person and leave them permanently disconnected from the self.

“When feeling or knowing or willing has become fantastic, the entire self can eventually become that….The God-relation is an infinitizing, but in fantasy this infinitizing can so sweep a man off his feet that his state is simply an intoxication….he cannot come back to himself, become himself.” (p. 32)

I think that Kierkegaard’s discussion of losing the self in a God-relation fantasy has good explanatory scope when examining the religious fundamentalist zeal of the contemporary world, especially in regards to the violence that such fervor can produce. The violence of religious fundamentalism varies in degree, from the terrorist suicide bombings to the subtle but no less damaging forms of judgmentalism, elitism, exclusivism, and isolation. Yet in its many violent forms, one can also detect that the violent religious zealot is also doing violence to their self. The self is alienated and disconnected from itself, lost in the fantastic.

As I discuss this, I wonder about the possible connection between violence and loss of self. Specifically, I am wondering if there is a sense in which the loss of self, the disconnection from self, is such a violent violation that it necessarily results in violence perpetrated toward others.

In closing, we return to Kierkegaard…..to be lost in the fantastic does not always manifest itself in ways that are obvious to the masses. It is in the context of discussing the fantastic that Kierkegaard discusses how easy it is to get along in the world without a self.

“But to be fantastic in this way, and thus to be in despair, does not mean that a person cannot go on living fairly well….It may not be detected that in a deeper sense he lacks a self. Such things do not create much of a stir in the world, for a self is the last thing the world cares about and the most dangerous thing of all for a person to show signs of having. The greatest hazard of all, losing the self, can occur very quietly in the world, as if it were nothing at all. No other loss—an arm, a leg, five dollars, a wife, etc.—is sure to be noticed.” (p. 32-33)