off the shelf: Parables of Kierkegaard
brief reflections on books I haven’t read in a while
Relief of a falling warrior, 2nd c. CE, found in the harbor of Piraeus, Greece, at the Art Institute of Chicago. Photo by the author.
As an undergrad, I declared a minor in philosophy partly because I was deeply interested in understanding how people constructed their worldviews but mostly because I wanted priority registration to courses with a particular instructor (#professorcrush). Whatever my motivation at the time, the impact was significant. Through my introductory course and 19yearold’sconfidence, I understood philosophy to be a primarily cerebral exercise that revealed meaning by applying paradigms and perceptions of absolute truths, but then I met Soren Kierkegaard (well, “met” - he’s been dead for 165 years) through a course on Existentialism, who reoriented the entire endeavor for me, or, rather, helped me reorient myself relative to the endeavor.
Parables of Kierkegaard, a thin volume that collates the parables that appear throughout his writing. The volume’s editor argues that the unique format and structure of the parable served five distinct roles for Kierkegaard (as polemical weapons, to glean the insights that story-telling provides, as indirect communication, to actualize holistic selfhood, and to stick in individual memory and oral tradition) but, for me, these roles swirl into a single purpose of making philosophizing, largely the ken of the ivory tower, accessible (if not easy), practicable (if not practical), and meaningful (if not predictable). While the format enables the philosopher to integrate ideas and critiques into tangible forms, it also leaves the construction of meaning from the story in the hands of the hearer.
One parable that stuck with me, excerpted from Either/Or, always sounded like a rhetorical parody of Paul’s famous reflection on love in Christian scripture, “When I was a child, I used to talk as a child, think as a child, reason as a child…” (I Cor 13:11), but instead of culminating in the staying power of faith, hope, and love, Kierkegaard models satire and enabled me - encouraged me - to laugh at (or at least try to) instead of dwell on, internalize, or suffer the inanities of daily life.
As it befell Parmeniscus in the legend, who in the cave of Trophonius lost the power to laugh...so it has befallen me. When I was young, I forgot how to laugh in the cave of Trophonius; when I was older, I opened my eyes and beheld reality, at which I began to laugh, and since then I have not stopped laughing. I saw that the meaning of life was to secure a livelihood, and that its goal was to attain a high position; that love’s rich dream was marriage with an heiress; that friendship’s blessing was help in financial difficulties; that wisdom was what the majority assumed it to be; that enthusiasm consisted in making a speech; that it was courage to risk the loss of ten dollars; that kindness consisted in saying ‘You are welcome,’ at the dinner table; that piety consisted in going to communion once a year. This I saw, and I laughed.
