Concerned with Oneself and God Alone: On Kierkegaard’s Concept of Remorse as the Basis for his Literary Theory

Abstract

An old theological tradition sees emotions as playing an important creative role in the rebirth of the individual after his fall into sin. For this reason, love, hope, humility, remorse, fear of God, etc. have long been considered religious virtues. Purely formally, this concerns the κάθαρσις (cleansing) which the sinful individual experiences through such emotions. This fact in its formality was recognized by Kierkegaard, and thus he employed the concept of cleansing, τν παθεμάτον κάθαρσις (the cleansing of the passions), of Aristotle’s theory of tragedy in analyzing the theological problem of rebirth. This demonstrates itself in the formulation of his own literary theory with religious aims. In this paper I will demonstrate that “remorse” (a) stands as “religious salvation” in the center of this theory and (b) represents the counterpart to “despair”. This means: Kierkegaard’s reader should be “saved” from his — conscious or unconscious — despair by having his remorse “awakened”. The formal scheme for this “salvation” through remorse, this “cleansing of fear and pity”, yields a precise determination of Kierkegaard’s concept of the “dialectical” as a unity of “sympathy” and “antipathy”. This concept yields the formal fundamental conditions for Kierkegaard’s famous theory of the “dialectic of communication”, or “existential communication”, which forms the core of his essayistic activity. It is my intention in this hermeneutic contribution to outline the corresponding creative role of emotions (of pathos as the unity of antipathy and sympathy).

The religious speaker will teach the listeners to bear sorrow. - Keiregaard

… Let all things be done for edification. - I. Cor. 14:26