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Herzen and Kierkegaard

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

R. M. Davison
R. M. Davison*
Affiliation:
Department of Russian, the University of Liverpool, England
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Type
Discussion
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 25 , Issue 2 , June 1966 , pp. 191 - 209
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 1966

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References

1 There appears to be no evidence that either Herzen or Kierkegaard knew of the other's existence. The similarity between them has been hinted at by Lampert, E. (Studies in Rebellion, London, 1957, pp. 196 ff.Google Scholar; see also note 125 below) and by Berlin, Isaiah (in the Introduction to Alexander Herzen, From the Other Shore and The Russian People and Socialism, London, 1956, p. xxii)Google Scholar, but neither mentions Kierkegaard by name. Martin Malia does mention him by name (Alexander Herzen and the Birth of Russian Socialism 1812-55, Cambridge, Mass., 1961, pp. 381-82, and p. 471, n. 30) and refers to G., Shpet, Filosofskoe mirovozzrenie Gertsena (Moscow, 1920)Google Scholar. What seems to be the first translation of Kierkegaard into Russian appeared in Russkii Vestnik, May 1886, pp. 104-27, under the heading “Aforizmy Estetika: Iz sochineniia ‘Odno iz dvukh’ S. Kirkegora, perev. s datskogo, s predisloviem iz Brandesa, P. G.” This is a translation, with a few omissions, of the section “Diapsalmata” from Either I Or. Kierkegaard is mentioned, as was pointed out to me by Dr. Lampert, in Blok's diaries ( Aleksandr, Blok, Sobranie sochinenii, Moscow and Leningrad, 1963, VII, 166 Google Scholar), but the first time he really comes into prominence in connection with Russia is in Chestov, Léon, Kierkegaard et la Philosophie Existentielle (Paris, 1936)Google Scholar.

2 The Journals of Søren Kierkegaard, a selection edited and translated by Alexander Dru (London, 1938), p. 523, No. 1354 (hereafter cited as Journals).

3 Gertsen, A. I., Sobranie sochinenii v 30 tomakh (Moscow, 1954), VIII, 18 ff.Google Scholar (hereafter cited as Sobranie).

4 Journals, p. 234, No. 743; pp. 282-90, Nos. 867-69; p. 381, No. 1074.

5 Sobranie, VIII, 48; see also VIII, 30-31, and IX, 173.

6 Journals, p. 150, No. 556.

7 Johannes, Hohlenberg, Søren Kierkegaard (London, 1954), pp. 48, 80-81.Google Scholar

8 Carr, E. H., The Romantic Exiles (London, 1949), pp. 117, 134, 231, 290.Google Scholar

9 Journals, p. 562.

10 Annenkov, P. V., Literaturnye vospominaniia (Moscow, 1960), p. 219.Google Scholar

11 Kierkegaard, , Attack upon “Christendom” 1854-55 (London, 1944), p. 37 Google Scholar. Herzen argues that instead of using dubious hypotheses to answer certain questions it would be better simply to say: “I don't know” (Sobranie, III, 104, note).

12 Journals, p. 73, No. 276; also found in Either/Or (London, 1944), I, 17, 33.

13 Zenkovsky, V. V., A History of Russian Philosophy (London, 1953), I, 296.Google Scholar

14 Masaryk, T. G., The Spirit of Russia (London, 1955), I, 391.Google Scholar

15 See Sobranie, VII, 296.

16 Carr, p. 292.

17 Sobranie, XIV, 323. For Kierkegaard on this subject, see his Samlede Vaerker, ed. A. B. Drachmann, J. L. Heiberg, and H. O. Lange (Copenhagen), V (1923), 35-38. This “Foreword by Nicolaus Notabene” does not appear to have been translated into English.

18 Sobranie, VIII, 187.

19 Hohlenberg, p. 145.

20 Journals, p. 561.

21 W., Lowrie, Kierkegaard (London, 1938), p. 503.Google Scholar

22 Lampert, p. 220. This strong aesthetic element approaches Herzen and Kierkegaard to yet another figure, Constantine Leontiev. See Zander, Lev A., “Aux sources de l'Existentialisme,” in Vues sur Kierkegaard, comp. Henein, Georges and Wahba, Magdi (Cairo, 1955) PP. 40–41.Google Scholar

23 See note 11 above.

24 Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript (London, 1945), hereafter cited as Postscript, p. 107.

25 Journals, p. 206, No. 662. A reference to the public caricatures which emphasized that his legs were very thin and not of equal length.

26 Ibid., p. 357, No. 1026. There is an extended attack on the press in Kierkegaard, , The Present Age (London, 1949)Google Scholar.

27 Attack, p. 47.

28 Ibid., p. 67.

29 Ibid., p. 277.

30 Sobranie, VII, 316, from the Russian translation, approved by Herzen, of “Le Peuple Russe et le Socialisme.“

31 Ibid., p. 281, from the French original of “Le Peuple Russe et le Socialisme.“

32 Attack, p. 127.

33 Journals, p. 191, No. 626; p. 517, Nos. 1333-34.

34 Hohlenberg, p. 72.

35 Lampert, p. 233.

36 lbid., p. 232.

37 Richard, Hare, Pioneers of Russian Social Thought (London, 1951), pp. 220.Google Scholar

38 Journals, p. 556, note.

39 Ibid., p. 44, No. 121.

40 Berlin, in Herzen, From the Other Shore, p. xxi.

41 Attack, p. 217.

42 “Ibid., p. 48.

43 Journals, p. 356, No. 1023.

44 Sobranie, III, 54.

45 Ibid., XVIII, 282.

46 Kierkegaard said quite plainly: “I am certainly an aristocrat” (Journals, p. 175, No. 611).

47 Ibid., p. 55, No. 180. His master's dissertation was “The Concept of Irony with Constant Reference to Socrates.“

48 Attack, pp. 188-89.

49 Journals, p. 169, No. 599.

50 Postscript, pp. 317-18.

51 Journals, p. 471, No. 1267. It is scarcely surprising that Kierkegaard, with his taste for the ironical, should have been interested in the case of Adler; here was a priest who, so long as he tamely did his confirmations, funerals, and other chores, was accepted in the Church and was promptly thrown out of it when he claimed that his writings had divine inspiration. See Lowrie, pp. 383 ff., and Kierkegaard, , On Authority and Revelation: The Book on Adler (Princeton, 1955).Google Scholar

52 Sobranie, XVIII, 281.

53 Ibid., p. 279.

54 Journals, p. 108, No. 413.

55 Ibid., p. 89, No. 354.

56 Quoted in Lampert, p. 219.

57 Sobranie, VI, 103.

58 Kierkegaard, , Stages on Life's Way (London, 1945).Google Scholar

59 Journals, p. 175, No. 610.

60 Ibid., p. 156, Nos. 582-83.

61 Postscript, p. 171.

62 Sobranie, VI, 108.

63 Ibid., III, 76.

64 Ibid., p. 70.

65 Ibid., p. 119.

66 Ibid., IX, 21.

67 Postscript, p. 111.

68 Journals, p. 519, No. 1339.

69 Ibid., p. 507, No. 1323. This, along with other rich specimens of abuse apparently not included in the English edition of the Journals, is quoted in Popper, K. R., The Open Society and Its Enemies (London, 1962), II, 275Google Scholar. Popper's note 19, p. 365, is rather mis-leading for the English reader; he refers to a German edition of the Journals (Buch des Richters, Sören Kierkegaard, Seine Tagebücher 1833-55 im Auszug aus dem Dänischen von Hermann Gottsched [Jena and Leipzig, 1905], pp. 129-30) which gives 1853 as the date of the extract quoted above. The English edition gives 1854, following Søren Kierke-gaard's Papirer (Søren Kierkegaard's Papers), ed. P. A. Heiberg, V. Kuhr, and E. Torsting (Copenhagen, 1909- ), where entry No. 1323 of the English edition appears in Vol. II, Part I, p. 138, A. 180 under 1854 but noted U.D. (i.e., undated in ms).

70 Hohlenberg, p. 281.

71 Berlin's introduction to From the Other Shore, p. xxii. This was, of course, written about Herzen but describes Kierkegaard's position exactly.

72 Journals, p. 193, No. 633.

73 Ibid., p. 7, No. 16. See also ibid., p. 13, No. 20.

74 Ibid., p. 7, No. 16.

75 Ibid., p. 181, No. 617.

76 Ibid., p. 185, No. 619.

77 Ibid., p. 182, No. 617.

78 Ibid.,.pp. 184-85, No. 618.

79 Ibid., p. 181, No. 617.

80 Ibid., p. 222, No. 712.

81 Postscript, p. 97.

82 Sobranie, III, 82. For Kierkegaard's identification of Hegel and science see Hohlenberg, p. 281, and Journals, p. 156, No. 582 (quoted above, note 60), where he refers to “scientific thinking.“

83 Sobranie, III, 80.

84 Ibid., pp. 95-96.

85 Postscript, p. 105.

86 Zenkovsky, I, 294.

87 Sobranie, VI, 33.

88 Ibid., p. 108.

89 Ibid., Ill, 51.

90 Ibid., p. 45.

91 Ibid., p. 119. Kierkegaard likewise admitted the skill of Hegel as a great manipulator of logical categories; see Journals, p. 134, No. 497.

92 Sobranie, III, 119.

93 Ibid., pp. 119-20. For Hegel and Herzen see Chizhevskii, D. I., Gegel' v Rossii (Paris, 1939). PP. 190–209.Google Scholar

94 Sobranie, VI, 14.

95 Ibid., Ill, 77.

96 Ibid., VI, 139-40. Herzen is here attacking precisely that “teleological suspension of the ethical” which Kierkegaard so well understood. The doctrine is expounded in Kierkegaard, , Fear & Trembling: A Dialectical Lyric (Princeton, 1945)Google Scholar. See also note 110 below.

97 Journals, p. 227, No. 723.

98 Quoted in Lowrie, p. 525.

99 Sobranie, VI, 37.

100 Journals, p. 179, No. 614.

101 Ibid., p. 193, No. 632.

102 Ibid., p. 228, No. 723.

103 Kierkegaard, , The Concept of Dread (London, 1946), p. 61.Google Scholar

104 This anecdote is, in fact, given in The Concept of Dread, but the rather better version quoted here is from Attack, p. 30.

105 Sobranie, VI, 115 ff.

106 Journals, p. 187, No. 621.

107 Ibid., p. 39, No. 98.

108 Blackham, H. J., Six Existentialist Thinkers (London, 1961), p. 17.Google Scholar

109 Journals, p. 58, No. 200.

110 Sobranie, VI, 119. In a discussion of similarities between Herzen and Kierkegaard it is appropriate to relegate to a footnote a most important point of difference. Herzen came to the view that the individual must, in practice, be the measure of all things. Kierkegaard appears to be traveling in the same direction, but only up to a point; he was, after all, a Christian with a transcendental conception of God. For him, in the last resort, God was the measure. The outstanding example of this is his view of Abraham and Isaac, in which Abraham is prepared to suspend the ethical (i.e., to murder his son) in order to accord with the Almighty's teleological dispositions. See Kierkegaard, Fear & Trembling, passim, particularly p. 82. A clear explanation is given in Lowrie, pp. 264, 330 ff. This difference is very significant, and, in the light of it, it would be impossible to assert that there is complete identity of views between the two men. It is not, of course, the purpose of the present work to make such an assertion. It might, however, be argued that this doctrine goes not only against Herzen's line of thought; it also goes against a great deal that Kierkegaard himself said. For all his anti- Hegelian fulminations, Kierkegaard never quite freed himself from the German's passion for systematization. He would permit in certain categories of existence (e.g., the religious) actions which he would not have countenanced in other categories (e.g., the aesthetic). The contradictions arise through the categories of existence being separated from each other in an excessively systematic fashion. Finally, it should be remembered that existentialism shares with the Hegelian omnibus an ability to proceed in two directions at once. Both Hegel and Marx were Hegelians of sorts, and the term existentialist has been applied to such disparate figures as Gabriel Marcel and Jean-Paul Sartre.

111 Attack, p. 39.

112 Postscript, p. 178. Italics of the original.

113 Journals, p. 376, No. 1059.

114 Ibid., p. 49, No. 145.

115 Either J Or, II, 142-43.

116 Journals, p. 167, No. 595.

117 Sobranie, VII, 300.

118 Berlin's introduction to From the Other Shore, p. xxi.

119 Annenkov, p. 219.

120 Quoted in Isaiah Berlin, “A Marvellous Decade” (IV), Encounter (May 1956), p. 24.

121 Sobranie, VI, 122.

122 See The Present Age, passim.

123 Postscript, p. 292.

124 Sobranie, VI, 131.

125 Lampert, pp. 211-12. The words given here, but not in the original, in italics are almost verbatim from Either/Or, II, 141.

126 Berlin's introduction to From the Other Shore, p. xvi.

127 Journals, p. 90, No. 358.

128 Quoted in Theodor, Haecker, Søren Kierkegaard (London, 1937), p. 57. Google ScholarSchrempf was the main German translator of Kierkegaard.

129 Haecker, p. 57. Having said this, Haecker immediately belabors Schrempf for his statement and protests against it a great deal more than too much.

130 See above, note 43.

131 Sobranie, VI, 139.

132 Journals, pp. 22-23, No. 32.

133 Sobranie, XVIII, 282.

134 Ibid., p. 296.