Thanksgiving Day Post:
The following is an excerpt from my paper “Love and a Significant World: Seeing the invisible with love in the works of Saint Augustine and Søren Kierkegaard.”
Language and pre-linguistic meanings
Like Augustine, Kierkegaard seems to believe in pre-linguistic meanings, but, much more than Augustine, he emphasizes their extra-linguistic manifestations in the practice of everyday life.
In an 1842 upbuilding discourse, Kierkegaard repeats, in his usual hypnotic fashion, a passage from James. “Every good and every perfect gift is from above and comes down from the Father of lights, in Whom there is no change or shadow of variation.” [1]
For Kierkegaard, it is impossible to understand the true meaning of this sentence merely in its propositional form (S is P). In fact, he says that doubt (functioning rather like the serpent in the Garden of Eden) first imposes a propositional structure upon the sentence, and, in the process, drains it of all practical meaning.
Doubt is sly and guileful … it is unassuming and crafty … it does not deny that these words are beautiful, that they are comforting; if it did that, the heart would rebel against it; it merely says that the words are difficult, almost enigmatic. It wants to help the troubled mind to understand the apostolic saying that every good and every perfect gift is from God. ‘What does this mean? What else but that everything that comes from God is a good and a perfect gift, and that everything that is a good and perfect gift is from God.’ This explanation certainly is simple and natural, and yet doubt has craftily concealed itself in it. Consequently, it goes on: ‘Therefore, if a person is to be able to find peace in these words in his lifetime, he must be able to decide either what it is that comes from God or what may legitimately and truly be called a good and a perfect gift. But how is this possible? [2]
Notice that doubt has already, “craftily concealed itself,” in the very first question: “what does this mean?” The deception is not in the suggestion that the apostle’s words have meaning, but that their meaning can be captured in a form manipulatable by abstract thought. With doubt’s premise, logic leads straight to the conclusion that no human being can really know what the words mean, because no one can know when and where they apply. Of course, from heaven, it may be perfectly easy to see that certain things in the world are gifts, but here on earth, it is only possible to see things as things. Given our blindness, it would be pointless to ask about the appropriate response to seeing the gift. We are left with an unsettling paradox that, although doubt has produced an objective meaning for the sentence, “every good and every perfect gift …” it does so by sacrificing even the possibility of practical consequence. If the highest apprehension of the truth is objective, then doubt’s work is done, because the objective meaning has been given and the limitations of our knowledge have been well-defined. If objectivity cannot, even in principle, find a meaning in this verse with practical consequences, then nothing lower than objectivity can either.
The language of the response
Kierkegaard suggests another approach, which involves rethinking the meaning, not in the language of propositions but in the language of a lived response. [3]
This means not beginning with the quest for objectivity, which seeks to grasp the meaning in full, prior to determining its validity, and prior to acting according to that determination. Instead of grasping the meaning, we are able simply to interpret the meaning. This requires a prior commitment on two levels. First, we must recognize that the words in Ja 1:17, “are by one of the Lord’s apostles, and if we ourselves have not deeply perceived their meaning, we nevertheless dare to trust that they are not casual and idle words, a flowery expression of a flimsy thought, but that they are faithful and unfailing, tried and tested, as was the life of the apostle who wrote them.” [4]
To understand their meaning, we must first of all believe that they have a meaning. This is not surprising. It seems true even for the simplest propositions, such as “this is a dog.” What makes the words of Ja 1:17 different, however, is that they are apostle’s words, which means that they are themselves gifts from above, and that they are spoken to real (not to abstract) human beings. Thus, the presupposition is not simply that they mean something but that they mean something existentially relevant. This brings us to a second and deeper level of commitment, in recognizing that understanding their meaning may not be safe. We must “dare to trust;” we must “risk the venture.” [5]
We must alter our very own subjectivities. To be more specific, we must be thankful.
When you had doubts about what came from God or about what was a good and perfect gift, did you risk the venture? And when the light spark of joy beckoned you, did you thank God for it? And when you were so strong that you felt you needed no help, did you thank God? And when your allotted portion was little [liden], did you thank God? And when your allotted portion was sufferings [Lidelser], did you thank God? And when you yourself had to deny your wish, did you thank God? And when people wronged you and insulted you, did you thank God? We are not saying that their wrong thereby ceased to be wrong — what would be the use of such pernicious and foolish talk! It is up to you to decide whether it was wrong; but have you taken the wrong and insult to God and by your thanksgiving received it from his hand as a good and a perfect gift? Did you do that? Well, then you have worthily interpreted the apostolic words to the honor of God and your own salvation. [6]
This involves conceiving the entire cosmos as a gift from the one being most worthy of praise and devotion. By this, I do not mean only conceiving the totality of the cosmos as a gift, but also each of its constituent parts in all their imperfections. We give thanks to the Creator even given the reality of evil, and not only when that evil is in a distant time and place but also (and especially) when it presents itself directly to us. It is important to recognize that no imperative to relate to the world this way can be derived from the world as it is. If we think the world purely immanently, on the presumption that it can relate to nothing other than the immanent, this kind of unqualified thanksgiving will seem irrational. At times, it will seem like an act of self-hatred or of cold-hearted misanthropy. It is for a person easy to be thankful for things he deems to be good, but who could be thankful for things he sees as harmful? Only by giving thanks to God can one see the cosmos as a gift, and thereby to find oneself within an ontologically different world, a world which exists only in the light of God. This is why Kierkegaard says that, by thanksgiving, “you have worthily interpreted …” rather than saying that you have fulfilled a duty to something already understood. The meaning is never already understood, because the interpretation involves a continuous act. Because the language in which the verse can be understood is nothing less than a life, to stop giving thanks is not like forgetting a meaning. It is to stop understanding altogether. [7]
[1] See Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses Kierkegaard’s Writings 5. Trans Howard V Hong and Edna H Hong. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990, 31-48.
[2] EUD, 41. See also Works of Love. Kierkegaard’s Writings 16. Trans Howard V Hong and Edna H Hong. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995, 384.
[3] It may seem strange to refer to a lived response as a ‘language.’ My purpose in doing so is only to indicate that it Kierkegaard treats such a response (in this case thanksgiving) as the only proper vehicle for interpreting a certain meaning. This does not, of course, mean that it must have various other sorts of similarities to verbal communication. It may have some similarities, but it is worth remembering that it is capable of interpreting meaning precisely because a full response of the human soul is very different from ordinary verbal speech. When Climacus thinks through the operation of speech, he finds it frustrating more or less for the same reason I have indicated above.
Of what use is it to find out that there is an eternal philosophy that eternal philosophy that everyone should embrace if everyone did not learn how to go about doing it or if no one at all learned it … The words had not helped him make any advance. On the contrary, after careful consideration, they seemed to end precisely at the point of beginning before he had even heard them; for that is precisely what he wanted to investigate, how the single individual must relate to that thesis, and, consequently, how the single individual must embrace philosophy. (Judge for Yourself! Kierkegaard’s Writings 2. Trans Howard V Hong and Edna H Hong. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990, 148, emphasis mine)
Later on, he says that the word cancels the immediacy of reality by giving it expression. (JC, 167-8). I do not believe that Kierkegaard thinks thanksgiving constitutes an unmediated form of expression any more than does speech. It is only that it can mediately express meanings that speech cannot.
[4] EUD, 32 emphasis mine.
[5] Ibid, 43.
[6] Ibid, 43. The thanksgiving offered generally and at all times is intimately related to the Eucharistic thanksgiving Luke 22:19. “Taking bread, he gave thanks” (Mt 26:26; Mk 14:22; Lk 22:19). For a development of this thought, see Jean Luc Marion’s God Without Being, 149-152.
[7] See EUD, 173.
