FREE ESSAY ON KIERKEGAARD AND WITTGENSTEIN

KIERKEGAARD AND WITTGENSTEIN

The connections between Ludwig Wittgenstein and Soren Kierkegaard as philosophers are not
at all immediately obvious. On the surface, Wittgenstein deals with matters concerning
the incorrect use of philosophical language and Kierkegaard focuses almost exclusively on
answering the question 'how to become a Christian'. But this account belies deeper
structural similarities between these men's important works. Thus, this paper suggests
that their methods, rather than exclusively content, contain a strong parallel on which a
natural and hopefully fruitful examination of their work can be based.
I claim that on at least four counts, Kierkegaard and Wittgenstein present clearly
analogous form: indirect communication; examination of the 'limit of thought' as applied
to their respective spheres of inquiry; and the relationship to nonsense or the absurd. I
claim that a careful study of these categories with respect to the philosophers' major
works will reveal sufficient similarity to have warranted our inquiry: hence a clear
understanding of one philosophy should help to explain the other's. I will assume a
reader has only cursory familiarity with Kierkegaard's ideas for the purposes this
paper.
To begin, a brief outline of Kierkegaard's background and philosophy is germane. He was a
Danish philosopher, literary figure, and ardent Christian living in the 19th century. As
was mentioned above, his self-proclaimed intent was to examine what it means to be a
Christian and how precisely to become one. Hence all of Kierkegaard's works (Either/Or; A
Sickness Unto Death; Concluding Unscientific Postscript; Fear and Trembling being among
the most notable) have a decidedly religious flavor to them. For his adamant insistence
on subjectivity rather than objectivity (in reaction to Hegel) when dealing with
questions of personal importance, he has been labeled the father of modern
existentialism. Kierkegaard's works are not straightforward proclamations of his
philosophy: he wrote under pseudonyms and assumed the persona of these fictional
characters in his writing. Thus, one must be careful when attributing a particular
position to Kierkegaard - often the view is advanced by a pseudonym, so various
inferential processes must be applied in order to substantiate a claim that Kierkegaard
really meant any statement. 
Foremost among the structural similarities between Kierkegaard and Wittgenstein works is
the use of indirect communication: as paradoxical as it may sound, both authors
deliberately obfuscate their philosophy for the purposes of clarifying it. Clarification
of the preceding assertion is obviously required. Each author felt that, due to inherent
properties of their subject matter, outright delineation of their conclusions would
somehow be a self-contradiction. Clearly their respective subject matter, the logical
structure of language and the task of becoming a Christian, is inherently disparate. But
let us examine more closely particular instances of indirect communication from both of
the philosophers with the intention of finding similarity.
"By indirection, find direction out." - Polonius, (Hamlet: II, i, 72)
Soren Kierkegaard
The use of pseudonyms: The purpose of pseudonyms was to present a viewpoint which the
reader was initially to sympathize with. As the work developed, further assertions by
this persona were to be found objectionable by the reader. The initially sympathized
viewpoint would now be seen to be flawed and therefore have been rejected. Thus the
reader was to have reached through self-reflection a conclusion that would not have been
internalized if it had been simply communicated directly. Kierkegaard was writing for
self-proclaimed Christians whom he believed were not truly faithful. Any clear suggested
improvement in behavior would have been regarded by the reader as not applying to him or
herself. Pseudonyms qua indirect communication helped readers to achieve personal
understanding, rather than merely intellectual apprehension of an idea without
application.
Stories: Many portions of Kierkegaard's work contain fictional narratives to help
illustrate or illuminate some of his points. As is explained in his book, The Point of
View for My Work as an Author, Kierkegaard takes advantage of the engaging quality of
fiction to prevent the reader from disinterestedly analyzing his points, and to focus on
how the reader feels personally about his ideas contained within the story. As indirect
communication, story uses concrete instantiations of ideas rather than presenting an
objectified, analytic theory to pick through and not relate to oneself. 
Heavy irony: An element of all forms of Kierkegaard's writing include stating assertions
that he does not completely agree with, in order to get the reader thinking. An extension
of other forms of indirect communication, heavy irony in his work helps to indicate which
statements Kierkegaard emphasizes, positively or negatively. Oftentimes, many pages can
be taken up in what seems to be an extensive description of something unimportant, idle
philosophizing, or heaps of glorious praise. The content of these digressions may not
necessarily be ironic, though it sometimes is. More often, the form or motivation for the
digression contains the irony. For example, he writes an extremely verbose essay from the
perspective of a person debating whether or not to walk to the park, implying by it that
this kind of extensive fascination with a topic should permeate our religious lives every
moment, not just on Sundays for an hour. Again, as indirect communication, Kierkegaard's
irony serves to elucidate his points without coming out and directly saying them. 
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Logical format of 'Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus': In the Tractatus, Wittgenstein's
points are ordered in a recursive numerical way, without explanation or elucidation.
Concise and patterned, the Tractatus reads like a mathematical proof, except that proofs
contain more justification. "What can be said at all can be said clearly." We must assume
that any attempt at further clarification Wittgenstein believed would have obscured the
veracity of his presentation. Lack of enlightening exposition in this case is
enlightening since we can deduce that nothing more need be said: the Tractatus must be
able to speak for itself, in a sense.
Showing, not saying: 'Some things cannot be said; they show themselves'. As one of
Wittgenstein's major contentions, he tends to abide by it, systematically refusing to
explain where an example will do instead. Thus many general assertions are left
unjustified, leaving to the reader to see the logical form of an argument from specific
instantiations (how a painting pictures the world cannot be explained, etc.). This is
nearly as indirect as communication can be - leaving a reader to infer the author's point
from facts about the world.
Saying things which admittedly cannot be said: Over and over in different ways,
Wittgenstein states that what cannot be spoken of must be passed over in silence. Yet the
Tractatus was written despite the full knowledge of its author that the premise of the
book is that such a book cannot be written; if what the Tractatus says is true, the
Tractatus is nonsense since it says the very kinds of things it claims cannot be said
intelligibly. How much more of a perplexing contradiction can a work contain? Any attempt
at direct communication of the truths in the work must inevitably fail; the author must
'spout nonsense', so to speak, in order to show the reader that what he says (and
therefore, what many others say) is in fact nonsense. The reader is left to see how what
he says is nonsense, rather than having no book to read. Indirect, indeed.
The authors share the common assumption that the nature of their conclusions demands that
they convey those conclusions by indirect methods. For Kierkegaard, any casual listing of
his ideas about subjectivity and the self would be taken objectively - the very opposite
of his intentions for writing them. Therefore, through alter egos, stories and irony he
attempts to draw the reader into a nonintellectual grasp of the material as it relates to
the individual. For Wittgenstein, nearly any attempt at discussing the logical form of
'what cannot be said' results in a contradiction. By abiding by his stringent conclusions
where possible, and committing the same mistakes he criticizes others for when necessary,
he manages to say both too much and not enough. Both authors creatively use indirect
methods to advance their ideas when those ideas have to be shown, rather than said.
In another vein, both Kierkegaard and Wittgenstein spent much of their writing concerning
the limit of thought, as applied to their respective fields. What exactly is the limit of
thought? For Kierkegaard, it involved the point at which no further rational analysis of
religious concepts can take place, and the individual must accept that logic ceases to
apply to non-rational ideas in religion. The significant moment in this realization comes
with the 'leap of faith' toward God, which can have no justification. Most of
Wittgenstein's Tractatus is taken up with the notion that there exist limits of thought
and language beyond which discussion is literally nonsensical. In it, he carefully
describes what he considers to be the logical structure of the world and how that
structure necessarily imposes limits on any language used to picture it. A careful
examination of particular aspects of their ideas concerning the limits of thought will no
doubt further our understanding of both.
For the purposes of helping to clarify what it means to be a Christian, Kierkegaard
invents a useful characterization of the stages or developments in a person's life. These
stages, or spheres as he often refers to them, characterize how an individual
appropriates truths about his or her world. The first and most basic is the aesthetic
sphere, in which individuals acknowledge only sensory truths and live life according to
hedonistic pleasure/pain principles. This progresses into the ethical sphere, which is
achieved by recognizing the importance of making decisions, universalization, and the
community. The ethical sphere is logical and involves the justification to others of
decision-making. This is in distinct contrast to the final sphere, the religious. The
religious sphere for Kierkegaard transcends logic and is intimately subjective (read:
personal, not arbitrary), involving a one-on-one relationship with God. Since language is
public and shared, it lies in the realm of the universal ethical sphere, and hence has no
relevance in the religious sphere. Hence those who are religious cannot communicate their
knowledge of religious matters. No explanation of or justification for the religious
sphere can exist, since it would take place in language, which is not available as an
option. 
Further application of the limit of thought for Kierkegaard includes the notion of
subjective truth. Subjective truth deals with how one apprehends ideas, rather than the
ideas themselves, which is in the realm of objective truth. According to him, objective
truth is by its nature public, verifiable, and hence uninteresting and unimportant. We
can all agree what color a given chair is, or any other objective fact of science. Even
if there were a contention among people as to a fact, facts about the world are not what
matter to individuals - it is how one personally apprehends them that matter. As an
example, Kierkegaard praises Socrates for vehemently questioning the existence of God
over a Christian who believes he or she has all the right answers and need no longer be
concerned. It is how one is connected to a topic that is important, rather than the topic
itself. This creates a limit to rational thought, in that rational objective
consideration only amounts to so much. To wit, since what is most important in one's life
is subjective and not available for public scrutiny, ethics for Kierkegaard are entirely
internal; others are not capable of being judged, as we cannot know their subjective
apprehension of ethics.
Contrast and compare that with Wittgenstein, who believes that ethics cannot be discussed
for different reasons. For him, the meaning of the world is not in the world, and
therefore ethics are entirely transcendental and hence are incapable of being discussed
intelligibly. The idea of the 'limit of thought' permeates the Tractatus. The clearest
exposition I can find offered in it comes from 4.12:
Propositions can represent the whole of reality, but they cannot represent what they have
in common with reality in order to be able to represent it - logical form.
In order to be able to represent logical form, we should have to be able to station
ourselves with propositions somewhere outside logic, that is to say outside the world.
This seems to be the most basic contention about concepts unable to be properly expressed
in language, that the content of a nonlinguistic fact must somehow pertain to logical
form. The logical form is the structure of the simple components in a complex object. So
the logical form of a photograph is what it has in common with what it pictures. The
logical form of a sentence is what it has in common with the fact it states. To return to
the concept of ethics for a moment, we can see that any statement that purports to
contain ethical content cannot, since it would necessarily show the logical form of the
state of affairs beyond logic and therefore the world, which is impossible. Therefore
since whatever can be thought can be said, the limit of thought for Wittgenstein is the
boundary between statements and the logical form of those statements.
The relationship between Kierkegaard and Wittgenstein intensifies then, as we examine
more how the structure of their work displays another strong parallel. The religious
sphere and its associated properties of subjectivity and non-rationality set the limit of
thought for Kierkegaard. The inherent structure of logic and language creates natural
boundaries for Wittgenstein. Which leads us to the final point of comparison between the
two: absurdity and nonsense. These concepts stem from their parallel construction of the
limits of thought, but are obviously unique. 
Kierkegaard's 'absurdity' is motivated by the desire by many to explain the religious
sphere through the ethical sphere. The central focus in this discussion is on faith and
the religious sphere's placing more importance on the individual over the universal,
which according to the ethical sphere is absurd. The subject of his work Fear and
Trembling, the Bible's Abraham was asked by God to sacrifice his only son without
explanation. An exemplar of faith, Abraham remained dutiful and prepared to do what his
God asked of him without qualm. This conflicts with ethical ideas we all generally share
about right and wrong: it seems unethical to kill any child, let alone one's own child
for no reason. But Kierkegaard maintains that the religious transcends the ethical, and
therefore that faith will always remain unjustified and hence absurd.
Wittgenstein's notions of nonsense ultimately stem from the misuse of language and
violating the limit of thought. By nonsense, he means statements that are neither true
nor false or questions that have no answers. In this way, many of the so-called deepest
philosophical problems resolve by dissolving, or showing that they are really nonsense in
disguise. It is in this spirit that he says that if one understands him, one will
recognize what he says as nonsense: that he is abusing language in order to show how
there can be such a thing as language abuse.
It should become clear at this point that Kierkegaard and Wittgenstein share enough
methodology to warrant significant comparison. Is this result trivial, though? Had
Wittgenstein merely read Kierkegaard and adapted or incorporated his mode of thought?
There is documented evidence that Wittgenstein had at least read some of Kierkegaard's
work, but nothing to indicate he appreciated anything more than its religious content.
Regardless of possible influence, these philosophers' works exhibit so many parallels
that an understanding of one should greatly help in understanding another. Further, the
emphasis by both on the limits and delineations of their respective fields serves to
remind us to pay attention to them in our own work. And finally, they offer a new way of
thinking about problems when faced with the inability to communicate directly that we can
undoubtedly learn from.
Bibliography
1. Wittgenstein and Kierkegaard by Charles L. Creegan
2. Authorship and Authenticity: Kierkegaard and Wittgenstein by D.Z. Phillips
3. The Point Outside the World: Kierkegaard and Wittgenstein on Nonsense, Paradox, and
Religion by M. Jamie Ferreira