SKC Project Seminar: Alipio Santiago Dacosta

(University of Santiago de Compostela, Spain)

Would It Be Sound to Consider Kierkegaard as a Kind of Mystic?

Kierkegaard is usually considered an anti-mystical author: the mystic dreams of an immediate (aesthetic) relationship with God and despises the historical context that God gave him to develop an ethical-religious existence. We can find these ideas in Kierkegaard's diaries and in the letters of the assessor Wilhelm. Despite this, Kierkegaard took important elements from the mystics, such as the expression "at afdøe" from Tauler (detachment from the world) or the concept of κένωσις as Eckhart understood it, such as the cleaning of assumed false images (ent-bildet) of Christ.

As Kate Kirpatrick points out, in some of the Kierkegaard's discourses we can find something akin to the ideas of “immediacy and knowledge of God", but in a way that is not compatible with traditional mysticism insofar as for Kierkegaard the relationship of the individual with God (a relation of love) never cancels the absolute difference that distinguishes them. Of course, this approach presupposes a hermeneutics that accepts the religiosity of the kierkegaardian production, understanding indirect communication and irony as resources for edification. The indirection of the production opens the possibility of a Christian interpretation that is not a religious indoctrination, because it expressly always keeps open the possibility for offense.