An important figure in Kierkegaard's time was a man named Andreas Friedrich Bach who was a student at the University of Copenhagen at the same time as Kierkegaard. He was influenced by the German theologian David Friedrich Strauss, who had been a student of Hegel in Berlin. Strauss was well known for his monumental study entitled The Life of Jesus critically examined from 1835 to 1836. This work was controversial in the German speaking world since it examined the gospel text in great detail and tried to argue that the stories related about Jesus were by and large myths. Indeed the work cost Strauss his position at the University of Tubingen. Later in 1839 after it was thought the controversy had died down, Strauss was appointed to a position at the University of Zurich in Switzerland. But when this was made public, it evoked such large protest that the university couldn't go through with the appointment. Bach was interested in bringing Strauss' approach to Denmark. At the time of Kierkegaard's dissertation in 1841, Bach was working on a book entitled 'The Concept of Myth or the Form of Religious Spirit' which would be published in the next year. As a student, Bach lived here in Bork's college one of the old colleges of the University of Copenhagen. Bach knew Kierkegaard personally and was keenly interested in the concept of irony. During the public defense of a dissertation it was possible for people from the audience to ask questions about the work and Bach was one of these questioners. The following year, Bach wrote a review of the concept of irony which appeared in the periodical 'The Fatherland' We're joined here today with Professor Brian Soderquist, one of the leading international experts for the young Kierkegaard. So what was Bach's interest in Kierkegaard's work? Well, Bach was especially interested in Kierkegaard's methodology in The Concept of Irony. Especially that aspect where Kierkegaard tries to locate the historical Socrates. The Socrates who isn't just the creation of Plato, Xenophon or Aristophanes. But the man, the historical person, behind those different witnesses. Today we recognize the concept of irony as an important work for our understanding of the modern world. But at the time it was met with a degree of skepticism. Indeed all five members of Kierkegaard's dissertation committee, they complained that the work suffered from some pretty serious flaws. In fact, the tone of their official statements about it makes it sound as if they were only rather reluctant even to pass the work as a master's thesis. In fact, they would have rather of liked to have seen some revisions. But when Bach reviewed the work, he seemed to see some more in it. He seemed to be quite positive. What do you think that Bach saw in the work that other people were blind to. >> Well Bach wrote a fantastic review of the concept of irony and really went in to some of the details. And one of the things that Bach liked more than anything was precisely that methodology because it looked a lot like what Bach was working on at the time, namely the attempt to isolate the historical Jesus, from the different gospel accounts of Jesus. And he conceived that Kierkegaard was doing something similar with Socrates to try to get at the historical person behind the mythological person, so to speak. >> And what was Kierkegaard's response to this review? >> Well, strangely, even though Bach's review was positive and really complimented Kierkegaard back and forth. And was, in fact, a very accurate review, Bach added a single line at the very end of the review where he said something to the effect that he, like others reading the dissertation, had a hard time following a few of the lines. And of course that's a very reasonable thing to say for anyone who's read Kierkegaard's Dissertation because there are a lot of places that are a little bit hard to understand. Of course Kierkegaard reacted with disdain to that last line. He ignored that positive review and seized upon the last words. Where Back accused of saying something that was a little bit hard to understand. Kierkegaard sarcastically and ironically responded publically by saying, 'should it really be my fault that a reader doesn't understand what I've written'? Shouldn't it really be his problem?' And that's something we find in almost all of Kierkegaard's reactions to any reviews of any of his works, a real disdain, because something that Kierkegaard didn't like was a reviewer precisely because when somebody acts as a reviewer, there's an implicit power structure here. The reviewer stands there as somebody who thinks they're in a position to judge that work. And that's what Kierkegaard quite didn't like. He didn't like boys judging his work. In what text is it that Kierkegaard responds to Bach's work specifically? >> Yeah Kierkegaard responded first of all to Bach's review of the concept of irony. And later on in his career Bach wrote another review of another work and in that work, Kierkegaard was equally dismissive. This time, accusing Bach of not understanding the nuance of his irony, giving a very clear account of the dialectical, that is the philosophical content. But, failing to not how ironic that whole work was. So in Kierkegaard's article in response to Bach's review called Public Confession. So in your opinion, he doesn't really enter into any academic exchange with Bach's actual comments about the Concept of Irony. >> No he doesn't. He really ignores Bach's substantive critique and this is really very consistent with what we find in the other Kierkegaardian responses to reviews. He ignores almost entirely any kind of substantive philosophical or theological debate and gets right at some kind of ironic or sarcastic Response, and I think in that sense we see some of the tensions between Kierkegaard and his contemporaries, and we really see that Kierkegaard wasn't interested in an academic debate about his thought. Kierkegaard then addresses the other side of the idea of Socrates as a turning point, namely, his legacy. Socrates gave rise to a number of different and often competing schools of philosophy and antiquity. Kierkegaard raises the question of how so many very different views could all claim to have their origin in the thought of Socrates. One might be tempted to think that his legacy is due to the fact that he had many different kinds of doctrines that were attracted to different philosophical directions. However, Kierkegaard claims that the fact of Socrates' Heterogeneous legacy provides further evidence for his claim that Socrates represents pure negativity. If Socrates had a positive doctrine with a handful of constructive thesis, then these would have been attractive to some people but unattractive to others. But the positive nature of his views would invariably have had a limiting effect on potential followers. But, Kierkegaard argues, precisely because he had no positive doctrine, there was no limiting effect. And people were free to see in his thought anything that they wished. Socrates could thus be readily co-opted into whatever views the given philosophical school wished to promote. Thus while Socrates gave rise to a number of philosophical schools with different positive doctrines, he himself represents what Kierkegaard following Hegel calls infinite negativity. Kierkegaard concludes the chapter by reemphasizing his thesis. Socrates used irony as a negative tool both against established Greek society, which meant it's ethics, customs, traditions, etcetera, and against the Sophists with their relativism. According to Kierkegaard, the enduring feature of Socrates is as a negative figure. If there was something positive in his philosophizing then he would have been much less interesting and important. After reading the text and watching this lesson some of you might think that Kierkegaard's understanding of Socrates is mildly interesting or that his satire of Martensen is a little bit funny, but you might be asking yourself how any of this is relevant for you in your lives today. Who cares if Kierkegaard agreed with Hegel that the Athenians were justified in prosecuting Socrates? Who cares that Kierkegaard mocked a lecturer at the University of Copenhagen in the late 1830s? Aren't these just issues for professional philosophers or historians of ideas? I would like to suggest that there's something very important about this set of issues that, in fact, is highly relevant for our world today. We've been talking about knowledge and doubt and traditional values, and what many of these issues boil down to is a fundamental question, about the nature and status of knowledge and its role in human life. This is one of the oldest questions in all of human history. Indeed, one can see it in one of the most ancient stories that has come down to us, the story of the fall in Genesis in the Old Testament. What does that story say? We're told that the first human beings, Adam and Eve, lived in a wonderful garden which provided them with everything they required to satisfy their needs. They're at home in the universe. They're at harmony with nature and with the world around them. But there's one thing they don't have, knowledge. They live in a kind of ignorant bliss. God tells them they can enjoy everything that they like in the garden but they may not eat from the tree of knowledge. As we know, according to the story, Adam and Eve seduced by the snake defy this prohibition. Eat from the tree and thus gain knowledge. Suddenly, everything changes. They see the world with different eyes. And for the first time, they realize they're naked. For the first time, they feel shame. They're no longer in harmony with the world. Instead of being at home in the garden, they are alienated from it. God punishes them for breaking this command, sends them out into the garden, into the wild world, as it is written, east of Eden. What the story tells us is that knowledge is a dangerous thing. God knew this all along, and for this reason he told Adam and Eve not to eat from the tree. God knew that knowledge ends in shame, fear, and alienation. Once human beings have taken this step, they can never go back. The moral of the story is that human beings are not meant to have knowledge. They're happiest without it. This famous story is played out again in any account of individuals who, by means of doubt, call into question the truths and values of their own culture. At first, when we're children, we lived in immediate harmony with the family, culture and society that surrounded us. But then as we grow up, we reach a point where we naturally start to question certain things that we were taught when we were young. When we come to realize that our parents and our leaders are in fact fallible. This knowledge seems to alienate us from the world around us. Figures like Socrates, Faust and Johannes Climacus doubted the fundamental things about their culturein the name of the search for knowledge. But this search alienated them from the world. Knowledge is a dangerous thing and the defenders of traditional values and institutions fear it. But there is another perspective on this issue that comes from the enlightenment. According to this view human beings as Aristotle says, by nature desire to know. Knowledge is what separates us from the animals. It's what makes human beings what they are. Our very humanity lies in our ability to think naturally and examine our beliefs critically. As Socrates says, 'the unexamined life is not worth living'. Due to the acquisition of knowledge, human beings have the ability to reshape their natural environment, in order to make it more conducive to human life. Throughout all of history, human beings have struggled to improve things by means of their ability to acquire new knowledge. There have been great social advances when people realized that certain institutions were oppressive. For example, slavery was abolished. Basic human rights were enshrined in the constitutions and laws of different countries. There has also been great advances in many different fields of the sciences and these advances have concretely improved the lives of people. For example, the elimination of diseases such as small pox and polio, the advances in dentistry and anesthesiology and one could go on and on with examples? The advocate of this view claims it would be completely ubsurd to try to deny these advances and that the entire weight of human history supports the famous adage that knowledge is power. According to this, anyone who wishes to try to suppress knowledge is blinded by a backward superstition. Who would want to repeal the idea of human rights? Who would want to go back to a day when there was no defense against disease or infection. Today, I suppose that most of us would probably side with the person representing this enlightenment view. But for this class, for example we have thousands of online students from around the world. All of you have decided to take this course because you wanted to learn something about Søren Kierkegaard. You wanted new knowledge that you didn't have before. You value knowledge, and you believe that it's somehow important to have. Moreover, the very idea of these kinds of open online courses says that knowledge should be free an open to everyone and should not be the private domain of specific individuals, for example in government or elite universities. Everyone should have the opportunity to learn and to acquire new knowledge. Well this seems on the face of it to be very straightforward. Our modern world renders this picture very problematic. It raises difficult questions that need careful consideration Well it's true that knowledge has brought us many things that have improved the lives of people around the globe it's been a double edged sword. It has also brought us terrible things. Knowledge and science has given us for example chemical, biological and nuclear weapons that could potentially destroy all human life on the planet. World War I and World War II were fought with advanced weapons that cost the lives of millions. The Holocaust could never have taken place, if it were not for the development of new technologies based on new knowledge. Today we have major environmental problems, such as global warming and the destruction of the ozone layer, that are caused by the by-products of human technology. While it's true that knowledge and technology have helped us to improve our environment. They are also equally effective in destroying it. Even the question of the open access to knowledge, the fundamental premise behind our online course, it's not unproblematic. What does it mean to share knowledge? I can stand here and share with you some knowledge of the thought of Soren Kierkegaard and yeah, this seems not to be any kind of a problem but you can go onto the Internet and you can find people sharing knowledge about for example how to build a bomb. This kind of knowledge makes us all a little uneasy. Should this be freely accessible to everyone? Should all countries in the world have the knowledge to produce nuclear weapons? Once human beings start out on this road to reason, science and technology, there's no way back. It's a one way street. Once people discover how to make the nuclear weapon, the genie is out of the bottle and can't be put back. As Kierkegaard says of his character, Johannes Climacus, once he begins to doubt, and once he starts this process and becomes, he then becomes alienated from the world around him. Then he can't return to his previous state of innocence. With considerations of this kind we can begin to see the point behind the story of the fall in Genesis. The world east of Eden Is a dangerous and uncomfortable one. Likewise the stories of Socrates, Faust, and Johannes Climacus, they're not just tales from a distant past. On the contrary, they're the story of our perilous world in the 21st century. [SOUND]
