Volume 15, Tome VI: Kierkegaard's Concepts

Salvation to Writing

Steven M. Emmanuel, William McDonald, Jon Stewart

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781351874908
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Modern Philosophy

Kierkegaard's Concepts is a comprehensive, multi-volume survey of the key concepts and categories that inform Kierkegaard's writings. Each article is a substantial, original piece of scholarship, which discusses the etymology and lexical meaning of the relevant Danish term, traces the development of the concept over the course of the authorship, and explains how it functions in the wider context of Kierkegaard's thought. Concepts have been selected on the basis of their importance for Kierkegaard's contributions to philosophy, theology, the social sciences, literature and aesthetics, thereby making this volume an ideal reference work for students and scholars in a wide range of disciplines.

Trial/Test/Tribulation

Geoffrey Dargan

Trial/Test/Tribulation (Anfægtelse—noun; Anfægtning—noun; anfægte—verb)

A cognate of the German Anfechtung, Anfægtelse is etymologically related to the word “fight” (fægte). Defined as a feeling of doubt or concern, it can also refer to an expression of suspicion regarding the validity or trustworthiness of something.¹ Kierkegaard employs the term as a depiction of spiritual trial,² which is to be distinguished from the test as an ordeal (Prøvelse). In the English edition, Kierkegaard’s Writings, the Hongs explain that Anfægtelse, “in contrast to ‘temptation’ and in relation to ‘test,’ is the struggle and the anguish involved in venturing out beyond one’s assumed capacities or generally approved expectations.”³ Moreover, they suggest, the word can be understood “both as ‘temptation’ [Fristelse] and in the higher and stricter sense of ‘spiritual trial’ in which the ethical itself becomes a temptation.”⁴

For Kierkegaard, temptation is fought by “avoiding” that which tempts, whereas “one must go through” a spiritual trial.⁵ Though the conditions in which both take place are “deceptively similar,” temptation is “in accord with inclination,” while “spiritual trial [is] contrary to inclination. Therefore the opposite tactic must be employed.”⁶ In other words, one must flee that which excites human craving, and confront that which one does not crave. Additionally, whereas temptation is generally motivated from without, spiritual trial comes from within. It belongs “to the inwardness of religiousness…to the individual’s absolute relation to the absolute τέλος.”⁷ The individual’s position also differs: in temptation “it is the lower that tempts; in spiritual trial it is the higher.”⁸ Spiritual trial “lies a whole quality higher than temptation” and “can be fought only with the rashness of faith, which charges head-on.”⁹ Consequently, there is a difference of intensity: “one year of exposure to temptation is nothing compared with one hour in spiritual trial.”¹⁰

On the other hand, there exists some consonance, at least in the ethical sphere, between temptation and spiritual trial. In Either/Or, Part Two, Judge William expresses confidence that a person with “the courage to transform the outer trial into an inner trial has already virtually surmounted it, since by faith a transubstantiation takes place even in the moment of suffering.”¹¹ This is not to say that the trial becomes easier; rather, internalization makes the trial more difficult. However, “precisely therein [lie] the educative and idealizing aspects.”¹² William correlates this trial to a universal concept (marriage); thus, though for Kierkegaard the “transubstantiation” will come to refer to spiritual trials in a broad sense, it seems clear the trial being described here is that wherein a person struggles against a temptation to avoid ethical responsibility.

Most people initially avoid any spiritual trial. Vigilius Haufniensis opines, “The most effective means of escaping spiritual trial…is to become spiritless, and the sooner the better.”¹³ If one ignores a spiritual trial, eventually it will fade, simply because one’s situation changes over time. This allows one to argue that the trial was nothing more than a “piquant poetical fiction.”¹⁴ Of course, new trials will present themselves, but they may be subsequently ignored as well. The continual suppression of spiritual trials on the part of the person leads to spiritlessness in which he or she no longer recognizes any self-responsibility. If one matures, however, one will become concerned with how one’s “better nature extricates itself from the tortures of spiritual trials.”¹⁵ That is, one will attempt to live ethically in the midst of suffering. Accordingly, says William, “I shall not fix my gaze upon the cup [of suffering] but upon the one who hands it to me.”¹⁶ To focus on the other person rather than on my own sufferings is, he thinks, “the way a person must ethically regard the struggle.”¹⁷

William knows better than to believe that an ethical life will be “easy or without spiritual trials.”¹⁸ Everyone faces these trials, and the way to become truly ethical is to “incorporate the entire universal in [oneself].”¹⁹ This involves a struggle wherein one must give up oneself to the universal. Giving up oneself, in effect, lessens the difficulty of the trial, because the universal comes to the rescue of the one undergoing the trial. To refuse the universal is to commit an immoral act and remain in the trial.²⁰ Insofar as the person “feels an impulse to assert himself as the single individual,”²¹ he faces a spiritual trial that can only be overcome when he “repentantly surrender[s] as the single individual in the universal.”²² Returning to the universal is akin to repenting from one’s sins before God. The only way to overcome this trial is to disclose oneself to the universal and admit that one has erred in opposing it. As Johannes de silentio describes the ethical task, the individual must “strip himself of the qualification of interiority [and] express this in something external. Every time the individual shrinks from it…he is immersed in spiritual trial.”²³

The same must hold true, ethically, for Abraham: “he must declare that his situation is a spiritual trial…for he has no higher expression of the universal that ranks above the universal he violates.”²⁴ However, there is a dilemma. De silentio wonders, “the person who gives up the universal in order to grasp something even higher that is not the universal—what does he do? Is it possible that this can be anything other than a spiritual trial?”²⁵ In other words, if Abraham submits to the universal, he does not genuinely face his spiritual trial because he senses profoundly that his situation is different. If he chooses to ignore this possibility, he will never know whether or not there was, in fact, anything to overcome. But, if he does not return to the universal, then he will forever be caught in another (ethical) trial. Thus, either way he faces a spiritual trial.²⁶ Abraham, we are told, is “almost shocked at the thought that for him such wishes constitute a spiritual trial,”²⁷ yet this is precisely the double bind in which he finds himself.

In a draft version of Fear and Trembling, Johannes d...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Contributors
• List of Abbreviations
• Salvation/Eternal Happiness
• Scriptures
• Seduction
• Self
• Self-Deception
• Sickness
• Silence
• Sin
• Skepticism/Doubt
• Society
• Speculation/Science/Scholarship
• Spirit
• Spiritlessness
• Stages
• State
• Story-Telling
• Striving
• Suffering
• Suicide
• Sympathy/Empathy
• Teacher
• Teleological Suspension of the Ethical
• Temptation
• Theater/Drama
• Thoughtlessness
• Time/Temporality/Eternity
• Tragic/Tragedy
• Transfiguration
• Transition
• Trial/Test/Tribulation
• Truth
• Understanding/Comprehension
• Vaudeville/Farce
• Vortex
• Voting
• Will
• Witness
• Women
• Wonder
• Worldliness/Secularism
• Writing