KIERKEGAARD: Enemy Of The Church!
After repeated, vehement attacks on Denmark's state religion the most popular guy in Copenhagen was most definitely NOT Soren Kierkegaard… but he was having the time of his life!
written by Fred Van Lente drawn by Ryan Dunlavey colored by Adam Guzowski
Script for Action Philosophers: Kierkegaard
ACTION PHILOSOPHER #18: SOREN KIERKEGAARD!
Script by Fred Van Lente
BOW BEFORE THE © 2006 COPYRIGHT OF RYAN DUNLAVEY & FRED VAN LENTE! BOW, DAMN YOU!
PAGE ONE
1: BIG PANEL: KIERKEGAARD STRIDES THROUGH THE STREETS OF COPENHAGEN with his cane, coxcomb hair and top hat. All around him people mock and jeer him – a couple people seem to throw things at him from windows! IMPORTANT: One of Kierkegaard’s trouser cuffs is pulled slightly HIGHER than the other.
The strangest thing about this whole scene, however, is that Kierkegaard himself seems DELIGHTED with the treatment he’s getting! He couldn’t be happier that the people of Copenhagen despise him.
CAPTION: In 1855, after repeated, vehement attacks on Denmark’s STATE RELIGION, the most popular guy in Copenhagen was most definitely NOT Action Philosopher #18:
TITLE: SOREN KIERKEGAARD!
CAPTION: But HE was having the time of his LIFE!
CREDITS: Written (out of FEAR) by FRED VAN LENTE • Drawn (though TREMBLING) by RYAN DUNLAVEY!
2: KIERKEGAARD SMUGLY SHAKES HIS FIST AT THE MARMORKIRKEN (Marble Church) that we’ll use as our symbol for the People’s Church of Denmark. Here’s a closer up view of the building here.
KIERKEGAARD: Ah, HA! My arch-nemesis, the DANISH PEOPLE’S CHURCH!
KIERKEGAARD: I’ve got you RIGHT where I WANT you!
KIERKEGAARD: And I SWEAR to you … I shall have the LAST LAUGH!
TWO
1: INSIDE CATHEDRAL: AT A FUNERAL: HANS LASSEN MARTENSEN, A DANISH BISHOP, ADDRESSES THE MOURNERS. (Quote: Thompson 219) Check out Henrik Rehr’s sketch for reference for the vestments of the Danes.
CAPTION: The Church had aroused Kierkegaard’s ire at the funeral of its BISHOP PRIMATE, Jakob Peter Mynster.
MARTENSEN: From THIS man, whose precious memory fills our hearts…
MARTENSTEN: …our thoughts are led back to that long line of SANDHEDSVIDNE*…
CAPTION (small): * = “WITNESS TO THE TRUTH” (Danish)
2: ANGLE ON KIERKEGAARD, SITTING IN PEW: He’s so pissed/surprised by what he hears that steam shoots out of his ears and his top hat shoots straight off his head!
MARTENSEN (OFF): …which like a HOLY CHAIN stretches through time from the Apostles up to OUR OWN DAY…
KIERKEGAARD (THOUGHT): Sandhedsvidne? SANDHEDSVIDNE!!
KIERKEGAARD (THOUGHT): What a RIP-OFF!
3: A CHRISTIAN MARTYR BEING HORRIBLY TORTURED SUDDENLY PERKS UP as a LIGHT BULB goes on over his head!
CAPTION: Though largely UNKNOWN outside his native land (he wrote in DANISH, which didn’t help), Kierkegaard was a respected literary figure WITHIN Copenhagen.
MARTYR (THOUGHT): OHHHHH… NOW I get it!
CAPTION: He had COINED the term “sandhedsvidne” in Christian Discourses (1848) to describe MARTYRS who came into a full UNDERSTANDING of Life through SUFFERING!
4: KIERKEGAARD ADMIRES THE THREE STAGES OF CONSCIOUS DEVELOPMENT ON WAX MUSEUM-LIKE PEDESTALS. They are: Don Juan (twirling his mustache), Socrates (q.v. AP #1 – the smelly crank version) and the Wandering Jew (scroll down), which we will depict as a Yuppie wearing a pith helmet, holding an unfurled road map and on his cell phone to AAA.
CAPTION: In earlier works, Kierkegaard had described the RELIGIOUS stage of life as the CULMINATION of the THREE STAGES OF DEVELOPMENT of human SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS!
CAPTION: He personified these stages in the characters of DON JUAN, Socrates, and the WANDERING JEW!
WANDERING JEW: Hello? TRIPLE-A?
THREE
1: DON JUAN SLIPS INTO A WILLING LADY’S BED, having gotten into her room, presumably, from that open balcony door in the background.
CAPTION: DON JUAN represents the AESTHETIC STAGE, in which a person is ruled by his IMPULSES and EMOTIONS.
CAPTION: He places no LIMITATIONS on his existence save TASTE; he cares not for the QUALITY of his experiences … only for their VARIETY and NUMBER!
2: SOCRATES SITS ON STEPS OF FORUM, CHATTING WITH HIS STUDENTS—PLATO AMONG THEM!
CAPTION: The RATIONAL man, however, perceives there is a HIGHER faculty than the senses, and he is DRAWN to it.
CAPTION: He enters the ETHICAL STAGE, exemplified by SOCRATES. He reflects on and applies UNIVERSAL MORALITY to his life!
3: STUNNED DON JUAN STANDS BEFORE PREACHER WITH HIS PREGNANT GIRLFRIEND WHILE HER DAD HOLDS A CROSSBOW TO HIS HEAD! (The medieval equivalent of a SHOTGUN WEDDING!) Needless to say, Don Juan looks mortified.
CAPTION: One OBVIOUS example would be the BACHELOR who volunteers to constrict his SEXUAL IMPULSES by the ETHICAL CONTRACT of MARRIAGE!
DON JUAN: >Gulp!< Here’s where my SUFFERING begins!
CAPTION: You GOT IT, Donny! The Ethical Man discovers, paradoxically, that morality brings PAIN, so he has to make a “LEAP OF FAITH” (another K.-COINED term)…
4: Socrates leaps over a chasm marked “rationality” toward where a cheerful Christ is hanging out on a cross.
CAPTION: …into the IRRATIONALITY of religious belief, symbolized the paradox of CHRIST: the ETERNAL (God) enscribed by the MORTAL (Jesus)!
CHRIST: Hey, if you didn’t struggle with DOUBT, it wouldn’t be FAITH, now would it?
CHRIST: You can’t have FAITH in things you know for a FACT exist!
SOCRATES: I’M sold!
FOUR
1: Socrates in his car drives around and around in an endless highway cloverleaf AROUND a rockin’ nightclub called “BEING”. A large panel, I suspect.
CAPTION: The problem with the ETHICAL man is that he is obsessed with the ABSTRACT. “Philosophical problems” amount to little more than hypothetical DETOURS around life’s necessary CHOICES.
SOCRATES: Duh… Which way to I go? Which way do I go?
CAPTION: RATIONALLY, there may be reasons FOR or AGAINST any given decision. But humans, in order to live IN the world, MUST set rationality aside and CHOOSE.
Panel 2: Three icons demonstrate the difference between Individual, Universal, and Relation to Absolute – the “Man” icon from a Men’s Room door; secondly, a bunch of men icons clumped together like a crowd; and then, finally, the same crowd but with one central figure GRAYED out, separated! Words underneath each read, respectively: “INDIVIDUAL”; “UNIVERSAL”; “INDIVIDUAL IN RELATION TO ABSOLUTE” (Quote: F&T 80)
CAPTION: “The paradox of faith is THIS,” Kierkegaard writes in Fear and Trembling (1843):
CAPTION: “That the individual is HIGHER than the universal, that the individual determines his relation to the UNIVERSAL by his relation to the ABSOLUTE.”
Panel 3: The Knight of Infinite Resignation accepts a garter from a beautiful princess in a tower. They love each other deeply.
CAPTION: The individual determines his relation to the absolute by what Kierkegaard calls “INFINITE RESIGNATION”.
CAPTION: As in the case of a knight who so loves a fair PRINCESS…
Panel 4: The knight, beaming with pride, watches his love get married to another guy. (Second picture.) She doesn’t seem to share his good feeling, though – she looks back at him, sobbing. (F&T 55)
CAPTION: …that he GIVES HER UP to another!
CAPTION: By this, “he keeps this love young, and along with him it increases in years and in beauty.”
FIVE
Panel 1: The knight’s gaze transforms the maiden from her REAL into an IDEAL self – dotted, perhaps, like our depictions of Plato’s chairs.
CAPTION: “He has no need of those erotic tinglings in the nerves at the sight of his beloved etc., nor does he need to be constantly taking leave of her in a FINITE sense…”
CAPTION: “…because he recollects her in an ETERNAL sense!”
Panel 2: The physical Knight of Faith hatches like an egg, begetting his spirit version! (Thompson 212)
CAPTION: “To become a Christian according to the New Testament is to become ‘SPIRIT.”
CAPTION: “To become spirit according to the New Testament is to DIE OFF FROM the world.”
CAPTION: “For dying is fairly BRIEF suffering, whereas dying off lasts THE WHOLE OF ONE’S LIFE!”
Panel 3: In a panel that should be arranged to be a mirror of Panel 1, Kierkegaard beams with pride as Regine Olsen gets married to someone else.
CAPTION: Kierkegaard set about “dying off from the world” not long after receiving his doctorate in THEOLOGY in 1841.
CAPTION: That same year he inexplicably broke off his engagement to REGINE OLSEN, the love of his life!
Panel 4: Kierkegaard peers out from a fortress made of BOOKS (maybe just his eyes peek through) at normal people passing by on the street.
CAPTION: He REVELED in his role as a self-proclaimed OUTSIDER, an “EXCEPTION”…
CAPTION: …reading, writing, and thinking largely in SOLITUDE in his Copenhagen apartment, all the while supporting himself on a sizeable INHERITANCE.
Panel 5: Kierkegaard behind a table marked with a sign (NOW HIRING: IDEAS), auditioning/interviewing ideas. Lined up are: Jesus, Santa Claus, the Democratic donkey, the Republican elephant, etc.
CAPTION: After flirting for a time with Hegelian IDEALISM, Kierkegaard found at last in CHRISTIANITY that for which he had been striving for all his life:
KIERKEGAARD: “The thing is to find a TRUTH which is TRUE FOR ME, to find the idea for which I can live and DIE.”
SIX
Panel 1: Li’l Sartre knocks on Kierkegaard’s door. The Dane is confused.
CAPTION: Kierkegaard’s works were REDISCOVERED by Academia in the 1950’s, when EXISTENTIALISM was all the rage. Because he’s GLOOMY and talks about CHOICES a lot, many regard Kierkegaard as “The Father of Existentialism”…
SARTRE: Are YOU my DADDY?
CAPTION: …but that seems tough to reconcile with his fundamentally RELIGIOUS thinking:
Panel 2: God as judge, sentencing a baby in a prison uniform to be escorted out by guards. The sign pointing outside reads “LIFE”! (Thompson 214)
CAPTION: “A man is born in sin, enters this world by means of a CRIME; his existence is a crime—and procreation is the FALL. The PUNISHMENT – and, as always, the punishment fits the SIN—“
CAPTION: “--the punishment is to EXIST.”
Panel 3: Jesus turns on a hose, preventing a boy devil and girl devil from getting’ it on in bed.
CAPTION: But: “THIS is what Christianity is for—which straightaway BARS the way to PROCREATION. This means:”
JESUS: “STOP! I have put up LONG ENOUGH with this world-historical process.”
JESUS: “Certainly I will have PITY, but I do not want ANY MORE of the consequences of that FALSE STEP.”
Panel 4: Last man and last woman die of old age in the middle of a huge grave yard.
CAPTION: “And that is why Christianity upholds CELIBACY. By THIS the Christian gives characteristic expression to the WORLD…which is an OBLIGATION to STOP it!”
LAST MAN: We’re the LAST MAN and the LAST WOMAN on Earth, and never once did we make WHOOPIE!
LAST WOMAN: When we DIE, humanity ends…and God WINS! >Urk!<
Panel 5: Jesus pushes his sleeve up, standing over the prostate globe, whom he has just given a bloody nose to.
CAPTION: “As a consequence of Christianity, to LOVE GOD means to HATE THE WORLD!”
CHRIST: Had ENOUGH?
SEVEN
Panel 1: STAT PAGE TWO, PANEL 2: Kierkegaard blows his stack in a church pew.
CAPTION: Kierkegaard spent much of his literary career extolling such extreme SACRIFICE as mandatory for a truly CHRISTIAN LIFE. So when at Bishop Mynster’s funeral he HEARD--
MARTENSTEN (OFF): … that long line of SANDHEDSVIDNE...
Panel 2: A furious Kierkegaard stalks out of the Marble Church.
CAPTION: --he BLEW HIS STACK!
KIERKEGAARD (THOUGHT): “Witness to the truth” my FOOT!
KIERKEGAARD (THOUGHT): Mynster wouldn’t recognize truth if it slithered out of his gold-plated CASSOCK and bit him on the NOSE!
Panel 3: Danish priests whoop it up in a hot tub with bikini-wearing ho’s and rap stars. They all have diamond-studded earrings and bling like solid gold crosses. They drink Champagne and smoke blunts.
CAPTION: Most NATIONAL churches are POLITICAL entities as much as they are RELIGIOUS ones—in DENMARK, in fact, the church had a CABINET SEAT!
BISHOP: I do so LOVE the WORLD! Haw!
CAPTION: The Bishop was the personal pastor to the country’s RICH and POWERFUL—not to mention being one of both HIMSELF!
Panel 4: A toddler in a Pope costume blesses his Mommy’s ankles with one of those Catholic holy water dispensing rattle thingees. (Quote: Thompson 220)
CAPTION: For Kierkegaard, “precisely in the sense that a child plays SOLDIER it is PLAYING at Christianity to take away the DANGER (Christianly, ‘WITNESS’ and ‘danger’ CORRESPOND), and in its place to introduce POWER … worldly goods, advantages, luxurious enjoyment of the most exquisite REFINEMENTS.”
LI’L POPE: BLESS YOU, MOMMY!
MOMMY (UP): Aw, isn’t that CUTE?
Panel 5: Back in his study, Kierkegaard, chuckling evilly, picks up his pen and prepares to write.
CAPTION: He was especially GALLED that a word of his own coinage had been applied to a man whom he felt represented the EXACT OPPOSITE of everything good and special in the Christian faith!
KIERKEGAARD: Alright, Danish People’s Church…
KIERKEGAARD: …THIS TIME, it’s PERSONAL!
EIGHT
Panel 1: Kierkegaard proudly supervises copies of his self-published magazine, The Instant, roll off the printing press.
CAPTION: Between May and September 1855 he bankrolled ten issues of Øieblikket (“THE INSTANT”), his self-published ASSAULT on the Danish Church!
Panel 2: The Knight of Infinite Resignation gets trampled by an army of CHRISTIAN CLONES marching out of a “CHRISTIAN CLONING MACHINE” labeled as such. (Quote: Thompson 224)
CAPTION: Central to his objections was that Christianity was a “PRIVATE” religion that became BANKRUPTED once incorporated into the ESTABLISHMENT.
KNIGHT: HAAAALP! >Glub!<
CAPTION: If people could be BORN Christians, it rendered the individual choice of “infinite resignation” not just meaningless, but IMPOSSIBLE!
Panel 3: Two Danish priests holding copies of The Instant look at each other dubiously in front of a packed church.
CAPTION: Though The Instant caused a stir AT FIRST, most Danes grew to see Kierkegaard’s polemics as repetitive, petty BITCHING.
PRIEST #1: Should we EXCOMMUNICATE the nut?
PRIEST #2: Why BOTHER? It’s not like anyone is LISTENING.
Panel 4: Kierkegaard chuckles merrily at a Copenhagen street café with nervous-looking Regine. (Thompson 227)
CAPTION: Though he exhausted his savings producing The Instant, Regine Olsen reported she had never seen Kierkegaard so HAPPY:
KIERKEGAARD: “I feel myself really in my element only when I am surrounded by human MEDIOCRITY and PALTRINESS!”
Panel 5: KIERKEGAARD, LYING IN HOSPITAL BED, TURNS AWAY A PRIEST WHO TRIES TO GIVE HIM COMMUNION (i.e., is holding a Host) Quote: Thompson 234
CAPTION: He fell deathly ILL at the beginning of October 1855, and had to be HOSPITALIZED. As his condition WORSENED, he refused COMMUNION unless a LAYMAN, not a PRIEST, performed it.
KIERKEGAARD: “The clergy are STATE FUNCTIONARIES, and functionaries have NOTHING to do with Christianity!”
CAPTION: He died at 9 at night on November 11.
NINE
1: ASSISTENS CEMETERY – MOURNERS GATHER AROUND SOREN’S COFFIN SUSPENDED OVER THE OPEN GRAVE. An ARCHDEACON (Eggert C. Tryde) of the Denmark People’s Church (reads from Scripture at head of the cemetery. (Quotes for this whole sequence: Thompson 237-8) From the looks of the cemetery’s official web site (which has a photo of Kierkegaard’s actual grave— it’s the last photo on the page), Assistens looks like a pretty huge, sprawling, wide-open place. Here’s a brochure in English with lots of pretty photos.
CAPTION: At the funeral, Kierkegaard’s only living sibling, PETER, himself a PRIEST, insisted that the D.P.C.’s ARCHDEACON TRYDE deliver the committal:
TRYDE: May God have MERCY on this BEWILDERED, PERPLEXED SOUL…
2: SOREN’S NEPHEW HENRIK LUND STEPS ANGRILY FORWARD; Kierkegaard biographer Josiah Thompson describes him as a “large young man.”
CAPTION: Kierkegaard’s nephew HENRIK grew angrier and angrier throughout the service, until FINALLY:
HENRIK: I must PROTEST the way the Church has treated my uncle today!
HENRIK: He declared OFTEN in his writings that he was NOT a Christian!
VOICE (OFF): That’s a LIE!
3: CU – HENRIK. Loads o’ dialogue.
HENRIK: You KNOW what I mean -- the “AUTOMATIC” kind of Christian he DESPISED!
HENRIK: Yet the church has SEIZED his body – FORCED him to be committed to ETERNITY as such a Christian!
HENRIK: Would a RABBI force a converted Jew to be buried a Jew? Would a TURK (Muslim)?
HENRIK: No, only CHRISTIANS do this! What REVELATIONS says is TRUE—
4: MOURNERS HAVE TO HOLD BACK HENRIK & TRYDE FROM GOING AT EACH OTHER.
HENRIK: —the STATE CHURCH is a WHORE screwed by all the TYRANTS of the EARTH!
HENRIK: You are RAPING my uncle’s MEMORY!
TRYDE: Stop this THIEF! He is DESECRATING holy places!
5: LIKE THE “LION KING”, A GHOSTLY, CLOUD-LIKE KIERKEGAARD LOOKS DOWN ON FIST FIGHT THAT BREAKS OUT OVER HIS GRAVE AND SMILES, GIVING IT THE THUMBS-UP.
CAPTION: And so Soren Kierkegaard had the most APPROPRIATE FUNERAL in human history!
KIERKEGAARD: I TOLD you I’d have the LAST LAUGH!
KIERKEGAARD: >Heh, heh!<
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