[MUSIC] After the funeral at the church,

the procession made its way here to the Assistens Cemetery for
the burial itself. Here, Kierkegaard was to be interred
in a family grave where his mother, his father and his siblings were buried. The
pastor Tryde performed
a simple burial ceremony, but suddenly Kierkegaard's nephew, a young
man names Hendrik Lund, began to speak. Lund was a medical student, who was doin
g
his residency at the Frederick's Hospital at the time and so he witnessed, first
hand, Kierkegaard's decline in death. To the surprise of absolutely everybody, h
e addressed the crowd in the grave
in a political and agitated tone. The pastor Tryde tried to object that since Lu
nd was not ordained he had
no right to speak during the ceremony. But the sentiment of the crowd of
people present supported Lund and they loudly encouraged him to speak. And so th
ere was little that Tryde
that could do to prevent it. Lund began by speaking about his relation
to Kierkegaard as the son of Kierkegaard's deceased sister Nicoline Christine
Kierkegaard, who had died in 1832. But Lund explained he was more
then just Kierkegaard relative rather he was also his friend. Moreover, he agree
d with
Kierkegaard's views. Lund pointed out that, at the funeral,
everyone seemed to be talking around the point and carefully avoided mentioning
Kierkegaard's actual opinions in writings. So he felt obligated to say something
about Kierkegaard's criticism of the Church in his recent articles
in the fatherland in the moment. Lund's main argument was
that the official burial and funeral of Kierkegaard by the state
church was merely a vindication of the correctness of Kierkegaard criticism. In
his attack on what he derogatorily
called the official church, Kierkegaard complained that being a Christian had
become a simple matter of course. And thus, the actual content of
Christianity, which makes very difficult demands on its followers,
is distorted and even destroyed. In the last years of his life,
Kierkegaard had done anything he could to criticize and distance himself
from those few of the official church. But yet despite all this, the church
still nonetheless seemed to regard him as a loyal member, and
now to give him an official church burial. Lund argues that this would never hap
pen
in any other religion such as Judaism or Islam. If someone had attacked the reli
gious
establishment of these religions in the same way that Kierkegaard
had attacked the Danish Church, then there would have been no question
of giving him the usual funeral rites. But yet, the Danish Church nonetheless
still clearly regards Kierkegaard as a member and accords him the rights
of burial due to its members. For Lund, this is a clear demonstration
of the fact that the Danish Church has no meaningful conception of Christianity,
just as Kierkegaard himself had argued. Towards the end of his outburst, Lund is
sues a violent reproach
of the Danish Church. He asks if the official church does not
represent the true Christian church, what then does it represent? His answer is
a merciless indictment. The Danish Church is a corrupt
institution, it's utterly compromised by its relations to political powers,
financial concerns and so forth. He directly enjoins people to
leave the official church, implying that it's sinful to continue
to be a participating member of it. He ends by protesting against
the entire proceedings, claiming that Kierkegaard has been
violated by in death being the object of a formal ceremony of
the official church. Since he was dead and
could not defend himself, Lund, as his friend felt obliged to do so
on his behalf. But when he was done,

some people applauded, some shouted bravo and

even, down with the clergy. This was a major scandal at the time,
which was recounted again and again by witnesses at the gravesite,
to those who were not present. Some people agreed with the sentiment that
informed Lund's protest while others, especially the clergy,
were outraged by it. There were newspaper articles about
the outburst and Lund, himself, published his speech, in full. Three days later
on November the 22nd,
1855, in the fatherland. Needless to say, the clergy in the church establishment
were extremely angry about this. Bishop Martensen exercised his authority
in the matter by bringing legal proceedings against Lund which resulted in Lund
being given a rather
large fine for his actions. The whole affair simply
added to the controversy, that was already caused by
Kiekegaard's own articles. As a result, in the years following
Kierkegaard's death, his name was, at least here in Denmark, was always
associated with something scandalous and unpleasant. There can be little doubt t
hat
this had a negative effect on the initial reception of his
thought since it discouraged people from exploring his work in
a scholarly fashion since people were afraid of being associated with
the scandal that he had caused. It took some time for
the scandal to wear off and for a new generation to come of age which was
no longer effected by it in the same way. Thus the reception of Kierkegaard's
thought was slow to start, but once it began it continued
to grow as the years passed. I'm joined here today by Professor Daniel Conway fr
om Texas A&M University in the United States. Professor Conway's a prolific scho
lar in the field of 19th century
continental philosophy. Just published major works on figures
such as Kierkegaard's and others. Professor Conway, why are philosophies
dominated by questions such as relativism and subjectivism and nihilism? Those q
uestions run through the schools
of for example existentialism, or post-modernism. In your opinion what contribut
ion
does Kierkegaard have to make to these modern discussions? Do you think he's sti
ll relevant for
a modern life today? >> Actually, I think Kierkegaard is probably more
relevant today than he's ever been before. We're only now beginning to understan
d
just how prescient his diagnosis and criticism of modern life actually were. A n
umber of his insights have been
corroborated by subsequent thinkers, people like Nietzsche, Freud,
Heidegger, Sartre and Levinas. And I believe in this larger context, we can appr
eciate just how
forward-thinking, how prescient he was. >> Thinkers that you
mentioned are all known for their treatments of subjectivism,
relativism and nihilism. These are the issues that
dominate modern philosophy. You can see this in the schools of
existentialism and postmodernism. >> In your mind, what contribution does Kierke
gaard have
to make in these modern discussions? >> Well, first of all,
I think it's important to point out that Kierkegaard didn't invent or introduce
these particular philosophical problems. They are rightly perceived as threats t
o
the possibility of an authentic existence. But his contribution was
to diagnose them and suggest a form or
a manner of treatment for them. Kierkegaard is perhaps
most controversial for believing that these threats
need to be kept alive and vital within us in order to
connect us in an ongoing way to the fragility and

finitude of the human condition. So for Kierkegaard, the goal could

never be to vanquish these threats. That could only be accomplished
under conditions of self deception. The goal is rather to address
these threats in a way that galvanizes our passion for
an authentic existence. >> And so what specific aspect of
Kierkegaard's writings do you find is relevant for his treatment of these
issues of relativism and nihilism? >> Well I think that his interests
in keeping these threats alive and vital within the physic life of
the individual, that this is most evident to us in the literary and
rhetorical complexity of his writings. He seems to be interested in mobilizing
all of his literary talents in order to make sure that these threats
to the possibility of an authentic existence are not allowed to submerge,
or to disappear from the scene. He wants to keep them front and center,
and he understands just how difficult it is for most people to keep these
particular threats in view. >> It's been a great pleasure
to have with me today professor Wang Qi from the Chinese Academy
of Social Sciences in Beijing. Professor Wang Qi is one of the leading
figures in an important translation project where they're translating
Kierkegaard's writings into Chinese. Professor, why are people in China
today interested in Kierkegaard? What do they see in Kierkegaard that they
think is relevant for life in China? >> Well, generally speaking,
there are two groups of people, and one is the writers, the artists, and
the lovers of literature and the arts. I'll give you an example
is one top artist, he tried to combine
the so-called Kierkegaard's diaries with his own writings and
photographic works. Well it turns out his quotation of
Kierkegaard from Seducer's Diary and other fragments of Either/Or Part One
shows that these people, they don't care about
the academic correctness. They just treat Kierkegaard
as a creative writer and they get inspiration from his writings. >> Can you give
us another example of
how Kierkegaard is used in China today? >> Philosophers, professionals, and the
students, and they think Kierkegaard is sort of different from
the western philosophy we know, we know for
long time from German classic philosophy. So Kierkegaard is very crucial for us
to understanding the post-Hegelian
Western philosophy. >> What do you see in Kierkegaard
that is relevant for China today? >> Well it's quite a big question but I
will just give you a short answer I think. At least there are two points that
are relevant to life in China today. One is since China has already
done its economic takeoff, I think it's time for
the Chinese people to sit down and reflect upon their own innermost being. Since
Kierkegaard is so keen at disclosing
people's innermost being, and different living mood, so he will help us definite
ly
in that respect. Sometimes, I'm really
worried about my folks, people, and I don't want them to be trapped or
lost in commercialism. So that's one point. Another point, it refer to Kierkegaa
rd's individualism, and
actually that is the very first reason that he attracts Chinese
people to read him. Because the Chinese culture has
been dominated by collectivism for a long time and they said,
well now it's time for us to think about how to
become an individual. An individual who enjoys freedom and also will take respon
sibilities. So that's my short
answer to your question. Yeah, yes. >> What can we say about
Kierkegaard's legacy or the reception of his thought by later
philosophers, theologians, and writers? When historians of ideas sit down and
try to tell the story of, for example, the history of philosophy, they
don't really have the time to go into any great detail with respect

to any individual thinker. Instead, they're obliged to

paint in large strokes and to see certain continuities that allow
them to treat groups of thinkers together. They thus tell the story of different
schools of thought, rationalism, idealism, empiricism,
materialism, and so forth. In short, it's the story of isms. But this approach i
nvariably leads to
certain distortions with respect to the nuances of the thought
of the individual thinkers. There have been no shortage of attempts to
see Kierkegaard as a member of a certain school of thought or ism. The existenti
alists, for example, were quick to hail Kierkegaard as
an important forefather of their school. They saw in Kierkegaard important
analyses of concepts such as freedom, alienation, authenticity, the struggle for
meaning, despair, and anxiety. These were all points of great inspiration
for others such as Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, Simone de Beauvoir,
Gabriel Marcel, Carl Yaspers, Martin Heidegger, and
others associated with existentialism. Philosophers and literary theorists
associated with the movements of deconstruction and post-modernism have
also seen Kierkegaard as an important precursor to some of their central ideas.
They've been particularly attracted
to Kierkegaard's interest in irony. They've seen Kierkegaard's use of
the pseudonyms as a support of their views about the death of the author. They c
elebrate Kierkegaard's use
of different perspectives and authorial voices as a forerunner of what has been
referred to as
the indefinite deferral of meaning. Figures such as Jacques Derrida,
Gilles Deleuze, Jacques Lacan, Jean Baudrillard and Paul de Man Have been
important figures in this dimension of the reception of Kierkegaard's thought. T
heologians and religious writers
have of course also been keen to make use of Kierkegaard's writings. Kierkegaard
's initial reception
internationally came from Germany, where he was seen as an important
influence on the movement known as dialectical theology, which includes
well known figures, such as Karl Barth, Emil Bruner, Paul Tillich,
and Rudolf Bultmann. Although himself a Lutheran, Kierkegaard
has been a source of inspiration for thinkers of various faiths and
denominations, including reformed Protestantism,
Catholicism, and Judaism. Also literary writers including novelists,
playwrights, and literary critics have found in Kierkegaard
an important source of inspiration. Writers from countries around the world
have attempted to create Kierkegaardian characters which would explore in
a literary way emotions such as anxiety, despair, and so forth that
Kierkegaard discussed in his works. Likewise, attempts have
been made to imitate and further develop Kierkegaard's own
often pioneering literary techniques. Well known authors such as Thomas Mann,
Rilke, Kafka, Ibsen, Strindberg, and Joyce have all made active
use of Kierkegaard and owe a debt to him. When tracing the history of ideas, it
can
perhaps be useful to see the way in which Kierkegaard's writings have been
appropriated by these later thinkers. But we need to be careful about
automatically associating Kierkegaard with later schools of thought and
intellectual trends. Kierkegaard was a profoundly original and
unique figure. And his writings resist
the usual designations. To see him as a member
of a specific school can lead to distortions of his thought. Later thinkers tend
to pick and
choose certain aspects of Kierkegaard's thinking that are relevant
for their own intellectual agenda. Regardless of how important
these aspects are, his approach invariably leads
to a selective interpretation. And so it's probably a good idea to be a
bit cautious about labeling Kierkegaard in any definitive way. To be sure,

to call Kierkegaard an existentialist or a post-modernist and

to associate him with later thinkers also creates a new context of thought that
can
indeed be fruitful and useful to explore. Kierkegaard scholars today examine
these later schools of thought and compare them with Kierkegaard's
own writings in a critical manner. It's probably safe to say that
Kierkegaard's thought can't be reduced to a single aspect or
a single intellectual trend. To fully appreciate his writings requires
that we look at them from different perspectives and
with different interpretations. We might be tempted to say of the
reception of Kierkegaard's thought what he himself said of the reception
of Socrates's philosophy. Since according to
Kierkegaard's interpretation, Socrates was a negative figure in the
sense that the Greek philosopher always claimed ignorance and refrained from
giving any positive view in his own name. This left an open space for
later interpretation to fill in. As a result, there were many different
competing philosophical schools that all claimed their origin in Socrates. So al
so with Kierkegaard. His own Socratic mission
made it such that he too was in many regards a negative thinker. This made it po
ssible for him to be
appropriated by many different schools of thought, some of which were even
in conflict with one another. This negative or open ended dimension of
Kierkegaard's thought perhaps explains why he continues to appeal to so many dif
ferent kinds of readers with so
many different kinds of interests. We recall from the second
lecture that as a young student, Kierkegaard came here to
Gilleleje in the summer of 1835, to try to figure out what he
wanted to do with his life. It was here that he expressed
his deep desire to find a truth that had a profound meaning for
him personally. As he put it, a truth for
which he was willing to live and die. It seems certain that both Kierkegaard's
experience here in Gilleleje and his masters thesis on Socrates and irony had a
profound influence
on his later development. Only about a month after Kierkegaard's
death a theologian named Hans Friedrich Helweg published an article
entitled, Hegelianism in Denmark. This title is however somewhat
misleading since Helweg only briefly mentions at the beginning
some of the main works and figures in the movement
of Danish Hegelianism. In fact,
the large part of the article is dedicated to a book review of Kierkegaard's the
sis,
The Concept of Irony. The connection here is not in and
of itself surprising, since as we've seen in this course,
Kierkegaard was largely inspired by Hegel, and his interpretation of the Greek
world and the figure of Socrates. So it makes sense that Helweg would treat
the concept of irony as an important part of the Danish Hegel reception. Althoug
h modern scholarship tends
to ignore the concept of irony and downplay its significance,
Helweg saw the importance of this work for Kierkegaard generally. In one passage
, Helweg writes, quote, the members of the Faculty of Philosophy
who were supposed to judge the work hardly suspected that in this effort
of a young author they had no so much a qualification for
a master's degree but a program for life. That here, it was not a matter of givi
ng
a solution to an academic problem, but of a task of life. Here, Helweg emphasize
s the difference
between the world of academics and one's own actual existence. This reflects exa
ctly what
Kierkegaard said in Gilleleje about how he was not interested in any objective
academic knowledge, but rather something that was true for him personally, and

something that was relevant for his life. To back up the assertion, Helweg cites
a sentence at the end of The Concept of Irony, where Kierkegaard claims,
if our generation has any task at all, it must be to translate the achievement o
f
scientific scholarship into personal life, to appropriate it personally. What do
es Kierkegaard mean by this? On the face of it, he seems to be making a
kind of protest against academic learning just for its own sake. The point of go
ing to the university and learning new things is not just to
understand the way the world works. Instead, this knowledge
should be transformed or translated into something personal. Each person must, a
s Kierkegaard says, appropriate that knowledge in the context
of their own situation in life. So the idea of appropriation
is absolutely central to Kierkegaard's understanding of the
proper acquisition and use of knowledge. But now here at the end of the course,
we can see that there's much more in this single sentence than what Kierkegaard
could have realized at the time. As we've seen, Kierkegaard had an early
academic interest, namely Socrates and his conflict with the Greek world. He mad
e this academic interest
the subject of his masters thesis. But after this was done, he took
the further step that he claims here is so important. He appropriates that knowl
edge in
accordance with his own modern situation. He was attracted to many aspects
of Socrates's thought and decided to use him as a model. But the world of ancien
t
Greece in which Socrates lived was of course very different from
Kierkegaard's golden age Denmark. So Kierkegaard needed to appropriate the
main elements from the thought of Socrates and transfer them into his own time.
So the key terms of the thought of
Socrates such as irony, ignorance, negation, aporia, maieutics and
the gadfly and so on, all came to take on a new meaning in the context of
Kierkegaard's own life and time. Helweg was entirely right. Socrates was for Kie
rkegaard not just
an object of scholarly investigation, but also a model to follow for
his personal life. But there's another aspect
of Helweg's observation. Kierkegaard was familiar with
the scholarly field of theology, which he learned about at
the University of Copenhagen. Again, as we've seen, in the Gilleleje
entry in his journal, Kierkegaard is only interested to a certain degree
in theology, as an academic discipline. Instead he believes that
Christianity is not a doctrine, or an objective truth that can be
taught in books or in the classroom. Instead, Christianity is a belief that
must be appropriated by each individual personally in inwardness and passion. Ch
ristianity is all about
the subjectivity of each individual. There are no easy answers that each
person is obliged to appropriate the Christian message in
one's own life and context. So no one can tell another
person how this should be done. So Kierkegaard believes that Socrates
can help us in the modern world. With his irony and negativity, he can
help us to undermine mistaken views and modern illusions that
people still suffer from. With his idea of maieutics or midwifery,
he can help us to understand that each and every one of us individually
has the truth within ourselves. Each and every human being has an infinite
value that should be respected. These are important messages for
us living in the 21st century, regardless of whether we think of
ourselves as religious or not. We struggle to understand our role in the
fast-moving anonymous society around us. What is my importance? What is the mean
ing and value of my life? Do I really count for anything as
a person, or am I simply a number or a statistic? Kierkegaard is not just a figu
re locked
into his own time who with every passing day becomes less and less relevant only

to end up an object of interest for a handful of specialists

in the history of ideas. On the contrary, I believe that every day,
as society continues to develop, and new technological innovations change
our way of living, interacting, and thinking about ourselves, Kierkegaard
becomes more and more relevant. He might have died in 1855, but
he's still very much with us today. Especially, for those like you, who
have the ability to read his works, and appreciate his ideas. [MUSIC]