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Understanding Soren Kierkegaard and Friedrich Nietzsche: A Critical Analysis of Two Great Thinkers on Christianity
University of Dallas Daniel Matamoros 5/09/2013
ABSTRACT: In the following term paper, I aim to complete a critical comparative analysis of Kierkegaards ideas (as found in Fear and Trembling) and Nietzsches thoughts (using his work Beyond Good and Evil) on religion. By comparing and contrasting their different ideas on religion, I aim to provide a deeper understanding of faith as viewed through the eyes of these two great thinkers.
He who loves God without faith reflects upon himself; he who loves God in faith reflects upon God. This is the peak on which Abraham stands. The last stage to pass from his view is the stage of infinite resignation. He actually goes further and comes to faith. ~Johannes De Silentio, Fear and Trembling (37)

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Preliminary Discussion
In light of the religious struggle which the modern man experienced at the dusk of the eighteenth century, I posit that one ought to honestly consider the writings of Kierkegaard and Nietzsche to better understand the different perspectives towards religion, and more specifically, Christianity, developing at the time. When dealing with the writings of Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, however, one ought to keep in mind the structure under which each work is written, since each style happens to be filled with deeper purposes. In Kierkegaards case in Fear and Trembling, for example, the use of the pseudonymous author- Johannes De Silentio- is telling, from the start, of the esoteric way with which he is approaching the religious theme of his work. To clarify this point, I argue that Kierkegaard, through the eyes of Johannes De Silentio, forces the reader to truly struggle with the deeper implications which the religious life of faith imposes on the individual if one wishes to truly make the religious movement required by the life of faith. In Nietzsches case, on the other hand, a similar esoteric quality can be found in his use of aphorisms throughout Beyond Good and Evil, by which he forces the reader to actively process and thoroughly struggle, mentally, with the provocative statements he provides throughout his work. For Nietzsche, as opposed to Kierkegaard, the religious life is one of self-delusion, where, in short, systems of morals are only a sign-language of the emotions (Beyond Good and Evil, Aphorism 1871). Keeping in mind the context through which each author is writing, one can now see that the very same esoteric quality (which might be deemed as masking of the true identity of each of these writers works towards Christianity) really serves, to the analytic and understanding
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From this point forwards, each reference to Beyond Good and Evil will be numbered in terms of Aphorism number, as opposed to each reference number provided from Fear and Trembling where each number is in terms of page number.

Page |3 individual, as the method by which each meaning unit is given a depth that goes beyond that which is initially presented. Considering the profound religious quality of each of these works (Fear and Trembling and Beyond Good and Evil), in light of the esoteric method with which each author seeks to portray his understanding of Christianity, I argue that in order to get a better understanding of religiosity in respect to the mind of the modern philosopher, one cannot ignore some of the deeper and varying implications found throughout the ideas in Kierkegaards Fear and Trembling and Nietzsches Beyond Good and Evil.

Soren Kierkegaards Fear and Trembling

Written under the guise of Johannes De Silentio, Fear and Trembling opens up with a reference to an event in which a messenger is asked to carry an important message which the messenger himself fails to understand (1). This opening factor is crucially important because it sets the underlying context that drives the structure of the book itself; mainly, the relationship between Kierkegaard, the messenger, and the message that is being portrayed. In this way, the book opens up at with the message in the Preface, that the current author of the book- namely Johannes De Silentio- is seeking for a particular form of understanding, based on a particular account that he himself seems to misunderstand. In this topic, and in the words of Johannes, he considers himself neither a scholar (3), nor a philosopher (4), but a poetice et eleganter (5) who wishes to acquire some form of understanding between the life of faith and the life of infinite resignation. In order to reach a critical understanding between these two drastically different forms of life, Johannes de Silentio suggests a radical look into the individuals self, hoping to find the explanation he is looking for somewhere hidden in the heart of the individual. He does this because he seems to be troubled greatly by whatever implications are found in what it means to

Page |4 follow a life of faith- a type of life which he cannot, however hard he tries, seem to understand based solely on the observations he perceives as someone who is looking at the experience from a point of view removed from the direct experience of the man making the religious movement. As he puts it in the preface:
Even if someone were able to transpose the whole content of faith into conceptual form, it does not follow that he has comprehended faith; comprehended how he entered into it or how it entered into him (4-5)

For Johannes de Silentio, to many degrees, the individual stands alone in the form of life he wishes to pursue. This definition is something he acquires from his reading and understanding of Hegels historical system of philosophy (5), but which seems to serve no purpose whatever to elucidate why it is that the religious man acts the way he does. In Johannes view, even in the act of merely writing this book and professing his misunderstanding on the subject, he is opening himself up to the attacks of those beside himself that neither understand nor have any hope to ever see the topic in the same way he does. To some degree this is because, following the historical basis of Hegels system of the Geists development, the individual who is making the religious movement (i.e. Abraham) cannot be understood, since he seems to act in a way that is contradictory to the system: there is a fundamental problem between the religious form of life, which requires absolute obedience to God, despite the situation, and the ethical life, which has only to do with ones relationship with others. In the case of Abraham, for example, the problem arises when he is asked by God himself to give up as a sacrifice his own son Isaac, meaning that, in order to have absolute obedience to God, Abraham is forced to suspend his ethical duties towards the safeguarding of his only son (7).

Page |5 This very same movement of absolute obedience to God is what Johannes seems to struggle with deeply, since it forces the individual, to go beyond himself- his hopes, dreams and aspirations about the future- and instead accept and get beyond the very same resignation that would be proper of such relinquishment, with a humble and even joyous spirit- with a hope that the humanly impossible is, in fact, to be had in this world according to Gods grace. In order to better understand the struggles of the religious man, Johannes- in the section entitled A Panegyric Upon Abraham- fundamentally makes the distinction between three radically different forms of life (the aesthetic, the ethical, and the religious), in terms of what each means concerning human excellence. In this chapter, the four criteria he sees as leading towards human greatness in the different forms of life are: 1. Greatness as dependent on what you love: Where the aesthetic man loves himself, the ethical man loves the other, while the religious man, the greatest of them all, loves God above all things (11). 2. Greatness as dependent on expectancy: Where the aesthetic man expects what is possible, the ethical man expects what is eternal, while the religious man, the greatest of them all, expects what is impossible to be possible and even acquirable temporally (12). 3. Greatness as dependent on what you strive against: Where the aesthetic man strives against himself and his pleasures, the ethical man strives against the world, while the religious man, the greatest of them all, strives with God and his obedience to him above all things (15). 4. Greatness as dependent on the means of the struggle: Where the aesthetic man strives with power, the ethical man strives with wisdom, while the religious man, the greatest of them all, strives with hope and love above all things (16-17).

Page |6 In respect to greatness, Johannes seems to find himself in a position where he can do nothing but sing the praises of Abraham, as someone like Homer who sings the praises of his hero Odysseus, without himself being able to ever reach the same level of greatness that his hero acquired. More specifically:
The poet or orator can do nothing that the hero does; he can only admire, love, and delight in him. Yet he, too, is happy no less than that one is, for the hero is, so to speak, his better nature, with which he is enamored yet happy that the other is not himself, that his love can be admiration. He is recollections genius. He can do nothing but bring to mind what has been done, can do nothing but admire what has been done; he takes nothing of his own but is zealous for what has been entrusted. He follows his hearts desire, but when he has found the object of his search, he roams about to every mans door with his song and speech so that all may admire the hero as he does, may be proud of the hero as he is. This is his occupation, his humble task; this is his faithful service in the house of the hero. (11)

This poetic admiration of Abraham however, is met directly by the forlorn idea that there are three main problemata which Johannes cannot overcome dealing with Abrahams actions throughout the Genesis account. According to Johannes, trying to judge Abrahams actions in faith, without faith, is impossible. Therefore, in the first problema about whether or not there can be a suspension of the ethical concerning religious actions, the ethical individual would argue that in Abrahams case, he is to be considered a murderer of the worst kind, since he was willing, had he not been stopped, to sacrifice his son and all of Gods promises in his absolute commitment of obedience towards God (30). Here, someone following Hegels system of morality cannot justify Abrahams actions as a mere moment of the Geists self-development, since, to any spectator outside of faith, Abrahams actions are defeating of the work he had managed to complete with God thus far. Therefore, in Johanness terms:

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During the time before the result, either Abraham was a murderer every minute or we stand before a paradox that is higher than all mediation. The story of Abraham contains, then, a teleological suspension of the ethical. As the single individual he became higher than the universal. This is the paradox, which cannot be mediated. How he entered into it is just as inexplicable as how he remains in it (50).

In the second problema that Johannes brings up against Abraham, he argues that the ethical man ought not to go beyond himself in terms of having an absolute duty to God, since such implies, as it did in Abrahams case, to go beyond ones morals to do even the greatest evil against the most innocent of creatures. As Johannes argues in this section, having a call to an absolute duty to God would mean putting the individuals sake above the sake of the universal, something which goes directly against the philosophy of Hegel. More specifically:
The paradox of faith, then, is this: that the single individual is higher than the universal, that the single individual determines his relation to the universal by his relation to the absolute, not his relation to the absolute by his relation to the universal. The paradox can be expressed thus: there is an absolute duty to God, for in this relationship of duty the individual relates himself as the single individual absolutely to the absolute. In this connection, to say that it is a duty to love God means something different from the above, for if this duty is absolute, then the ethical is reduced to the relative. From this it does not follow that the ethical should be invalidated; rather, the ethical receives a completely different expression, a paradoxical expression, such as, for example, that love to God may bring the knight of faith to give his love to his neighbor-an expression opposite to that which, ethically speaking, is duty. If this is not the faith, then faith has no place in existence, then faith is a spiritual trial and Abraham is lost, inasmuch as he gave into it. (70).

This relativization of the absolute moral maxim of the ethical in its relationship towards the universal- rather than to the individual- is broken entirely, according to Johannes, by the knight of faiths movement towards having absolute obedience towards God. This is clearly problematic because, if one sees no importance in faith, or if one has no faith at all, then one sees

Page |8 this rejection of the universal, not just as absurd, but as a crime towards humanity, since one would be lacking the crucial context which would better explain the situation. This second problem is further exacerbated by the third major problema, concerning Abrahams silence. According to the story, as Johannes sees it, Abraham did a particular evil by remaining silent about his motives in the day he was to sacrifice Isaac. By not telling his wife, or anyone else for that matter, Abraham committed, according to the ethical point of view, another great evil because, in keeping silent, he could be argued to have deceived his wife in his motives of taking Isaac out in the morning of the sacrifice (112). More specifically:
Since the ethical is the universal, as the universal it is in turn the disclosed. The single individual, qualified as immediate, sensate, and psychical, is the hidden. Thus his ethical task is to work himself out of his hiddenness and to become disclosed in the universal. Every time he desires to remain in the hidden, he trespasses and is immersed in spiritual trial from which he can emerge only by disclosing himself. Once again we stand at the same point. If there is no hiddenness rooted in the fact that the single individual as the single individual is higher than the universal, then Abrahams conduct cannot be defended, for he disregarded the intermediary ethical agents. The Hegelian philosophy assumes no justified hiddenness, no justified incommensurability. It is then consistent for it to demand disclosure, but it is a little be-muddled when it wants to regard Abraham as the father of faith and so speak about faith. (82)

Ultimately, in Johannes understanding, the knight of faith, or he who makes the double movement to surpass the resignation of the tragic hero, (who sacrifices everything for the greater good and eventually has to come to terms with the loss), comes out on the other side with an absolute hope in the humanly impossible: that whatever is lost will be got back in their very lifetime, and in full order. It is probably because of this paradoxical double movement, that Johannes makes the distinction that I can think myself into the hero; yet I cannot think myself into Abraham; when I reach that eminence, I sink down, for what is offered to me is a paradox

Page |9 (33). In this sense, it is not because being a knight of faith is absolutely impossible, but rather because being so takes a movement of faith that cannot be made by everyone. Because of this, he goes on to say that it would be dishonest of philosophy to give something else in its place and to disparage faith (since) philosophy cannot and must not give faith, but it must understand itself and know what it offers and take nothing away, least of all trick men out of something by pretending that it is nothing (33). In this respect, and as a closing remark towards Kierkegaards view of the religious and of Christianity, it is not within philosophys realm to try to argue about faith from outside of faith, since such, as elucidated in Johannes analysis of Abraham, would only lead to a misunderstanding and misinterpretation of what it truly means to have faith and to claim to be obedient to God.

Friedrich Nietzsches Beyond Good and Evil

Similar to how Kierkegaard wrote that faith is a marvel, and yet no human being is excluded from it; for that which unites all human life is passion, and faith is a passion (Fear and Trembling, 67), Nietzsche too saw the passions as being the primordial drive of human nature; but instead of guiding man towards faith, Nietzsche believed that they guide man towards his own will-to-power. According to Nietzsche, more specifically, Christianity, or as he calls it Platonism for the masses (preface2) ought to be abolished altogether, along with all other religious views which place emphasis on the transvaluation of values3. As Nietzsche explains in Beyond Good and Evil, throughout the millennia of Christian oppression over the European mind, a tension of the soul was forged which he now aims to use to shoot beyond the mediocrity of said Christianity and instead, reach for the furthest goal, which is the development of the
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Since this quote is not part of any aphorism, but instead part of the Preface, I will label it as such. Otherwise known as the drastic shift between- what he refers to in other works as- the movement from the noble morality of conquest to that of the slavish/Christian morality of mediocrity. See his Geneology of Morals for more details

P a g e | 10 bermensch, or getting to a state where ones own moral understandings and impositions4 are the only things that matter. In Nietzsches terms, in (each) philosopher there is absolutely nothing impersonal; and above all his morality furnishes a decided and decisive testimony as to who he is (65). Here, Nietzsche proposes that one ought to recognize untruth as a condition of life in order to go beyond good and evil; which roughly means that in order to truly transcend the current values which Nietzsche sees as poisoning and stagnating the modern philosopher, one ought to cast away all other preconceived philosophies, since each, as he aims to prove, is nothing more than the collection of a particular philosophers biases and prejudices, which in turn are the prerational and sub-rational roots of rational thought (7-22). Through his extensive analysis of the various prejudices of each philosopher and theoretician throughout the ages, Nietzsche thus aims to show how it is not metaphysics and the search for absolute truth that is to be the queen of all sciences, but instead a radical psychology and self-understanding the one that is most telling of the perspectival truths in the world (23). It is because of this radical understanding of the perspectival nature of philosophy that Nietzsche claims that, in order to break away from the stagnant and mediocre way in which philosophy has been done thus far, one should instead become what he calls a free spirit, who strives instinctively for a citadel and privacy, where he is free from the crowd, the many, the majority- where he may forget men who are the rule, as their exception (26) in order to find greater discernment on what truly is important in life. The free spirit is thus, someone who goes inside (through) the long and serious study of the average man (who) finds the rule in himself and, at the same time, has so much spirituality and ticklishness as to make him want to

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Ibid . From here on out, these are the aphorism numbers, not page numbers.

P a g e | 11 talk of himself and his like before witnesses (26). It is because of this radical call to selfunderstanding that Nietzsche, along with Kierkegaard saw that it is the business of the very few to be independent (Beyond Good and Evil, 29). In order to be a free spirit, and thus prepare the way for the philosopher of the future, one cannot act like the fake self-pronounced atheists who denounce the Christian theology while still maintaining most of the Christian ideals of love for the weak, and empathy towards the afflicted (44). As far as Nietzsche is concerned, the true moralist is one who does not shy away from suffering, but instead uses it as an opportunity to grow personally in his development of his will-to-power. In this respect, Nietzsche then goes on to talk about religion in general in Chapter 3, where he clarifies that he does not aim to abolish all religion, but merely to unmask the mediocrity of the Christian worms (46), and replace it with the quasi-pre-moral tradition, using God as a sacrifice towards the greater rise of his everlasting bermensch (50). Therefore, according to Nietzsche, it is in the use of religion as a tool towards the enhancement of life (6061) that man is able to truly develop his best qualities, without having to deal with the same internal turmoil, which imposed religious values from the other major traditions used to keep men stagnant at. As Nietzsche puts it:
I should say that Christianity has hitherto been the most portentous of presumptions. Men, not great enough, nor hard enough, to be entitled as artists to make part in fashioning man; men, not sufficiently strong and far-sighted to allow, with sublime self-constraint, the obvious law of the thousandfold failures and perishing to prevail; men, not sufficiently noble to see the radically different grades of rank and intervals of rank that separate man from man- such men, with their equality before God, have hitherto swayed the destiny of Europe; until at least a dwarfed , almost ludicrous species has been produced, a gregarious animal, something obliging, sickly, mediocre, the European of the present day. (62)

P a g e | 12 In Nietzsches perspective, for a type of morality to be good, it has to be life-giving, since only that which embraces human nature and all of its passions and drives can be considered as useful and life-enhancing. Because of this idea, Nietzsche then provides a long discourse concerning the natural history of all morals, in which he looks at the moral codes of different moral theories, and instead uses them as being revelatory towards the character of the moralist who prescribed them (187). In this case, Christian ascetics, in particular, is seen as anti-life because of its extreme suppression- nay, tyranny- of the individual, opposing the overcoming of ones herd mentality, which Nietzsche sees as truly what is life-giving (188-192). As Nietzsche puts it:
The difference among men does not manifest itself only in the difference of their lists of desirable things- in their regarding different good things as worth striving for, and being disagreed as to the greater or less value, the order of rank, of the commonly recognized desirable things- it manifests itself much more in what they regard as actually having and possessing a desirable thing (194)

Since Nietzsche believes that there is no such thing as Nature, but only chaotic change, every moral maxim up until him was nothing more than an imposition of a bias and nothing more. None of these maxims in particular seem to hold any legitimate ground over the soul or spirit of a human being, and accepting them aimlessly is what he blames as having led to the rise of the slave and herd mentalities of which he is so weary of. Since everything we perceive is according to the way we are (192), Nietzsche suggests that in order to acquire a deeper understanding of the self, one must bring ones prejudices into light and see if they stand the test of scrutiny. It is because of this principle that Nietzsche suggests that the real scholar is he who is able to impose his own views and interpretations on the chaos of nature, rather than simply follow the moral maxims of someone else; a crime which Nietzsche sees as revealing of a person who is both lazy and mediocre. For Nietzsche, the philosopher of the future will overcome the

P a g e | 13 past and, with a creative hand, reach to the future to impose his creative will (211). Ultimately, it is only through a radical imposition of values into chaos that the free spirit is able to overcome the vain qualities that have maintained humanity in the depths of moral depravity, and which will eventually allow for the philosopher of the future to look down with contempt (286) at those who have not found fulfillment in their ever-present will-to-power.

Comparing Kierkegaards and Nietzsches views and Closing Remarks

Ultimately, according to Kierkegaard, it is the ethical reality of the individual that carries the most moral weight in an individuals life. To some extent, this is the reason behind why Kierkegaard is considered one of the fathers of the existentialism movement. Through Kierkegaards work, we see the importance of faith, not as something that ought to be rational or philosophical, but as something which should dictate both the attitude and the way in which an individual is to live his life. In Kierkegaards view, there is a great emphasis put on the importance of human actions, particularly on the choices we make as individuals concerning matters of conscience. For him, religious belief is not a matter of accepting reassuring beliefs, but rather it is a challenge to commit oneself to a particular way of life, which demands ones upmost reverence. It is because of this that religious fait h makes absolutely no sense when viewed through the eyes of someone who does not have faith to begin with. Without faith, the acts of faith are seen as baseless and irrational. Faith, then, for Kierkegaard, provides the context and the values which allow for the religious form of life to be lived out to its fullest potential. In contrast to this (and possibly because of the very same misunderstanding the Kierkegaard warns us about), according to Nietzsche, religion is to be used as a tool to shape peoples lives; in fact, according to Nietzsche, this is how Christianity has managed to ruin western thought. By radically rejecting the claims of Christianity, and instead, advocating for a religious faith which is centered around the individual and the individuals upmost arbitration of moral maxis, Nietzsche

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hopes to break the free spirits free from the clutches of mediocrity towards the greatness of the philosopher of the future. In both Nietzsches and Kierkegaards perspectives religious faith is something that ought to be individualistic. Herd mentalities are to be avoided since they either keep the individual from realizing the depth of their consciousness (according to Kierkegaard) or enslave the minds of men into systems of morality that are centered towards praising what Nietzsche considers to be our most base, slavish and vile qualities. However, considering the greatness of the saints, and the great qualities found in some religious leaders, there is definitely an argument to be made for those who, within faith, are able to live out their lives in such a way that is unique and even life-giving.

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References:
Kierkegaard, Sren, Walter Lowrie, Sren Kierkegaard, and Sren Kierkegaard. Fear and Trembling ; The Book on Adler. New York: A.A. Knopf, 1994. Print.

Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm, Helen Zimmern, Paul V. Cohn, and Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche. Human, All-too-human: Parts One and Two. Beyond Good and Evil. Ware: Wordsworth Editions, 2008. Print.