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figure so enormously distasteful to me, who up till now has always
inherited and will continue to inherit all good things: the don, the
professor.... And even if the don were to come across this it
would not stop him, it would not have the effect of making his
conscience prick him, no, this too would be taught...." The
irony is that Kierkegaard was an accomplice of the dons he hated
for their use of him as a shield against real life. For his life and
thinking as they stand before us are too equivocal to point definitely
in any one direction. Seeking for the absolute, he achieved
a
dialectical hovering, an ambiguous progress. In volume after
volume of diaries and notes-as though it were possible to over–
come a situation by merely being aware of it-he tried to express
himself completely, and yet the best he can hope for is to remain
a secret to his commentators. His concept of individuality is
equivocal to the core: he begins by rejecting natural and social
life in the name of the individual's autonomy; he ends by leading
the individual into total isolation to a point where, in his own
words, it becomes "easy (for the individual) to obey." His reli–
gious radicalism was always accompanied by complete political
quietism. The content of his demand for individual freedom is
revealed to be absolute obedience.
That Kierkegaard's "existence" is nothing more than an
idea
of existence is evident from the development of his doctrine. The
modem "existential" philosophers inspired by him appear under
close analysis to practice the same abominations with regard to
existence which they denounce in the rationalists. Like the ration–
alists, they accept and sanction the dualism expressed in such
oppositions as Reason-Faith, Theory-Practice, Knowledge-Instinct,
Real-Ideal, Essence-Existence. They accuse the rationalists of
sacrificing the second terms of these oppositions to the first; but
they themselves sacrifice the first terms to the second, thereby
giving up the possibility of an adequate solution. The rationalist
position, they tell us, implies that change is unreal and negates
the historicity and irremediable nature of existence, since it sub–
ordinates these properties of being to eternity and logic; but the
existentialists demand "repetition," and while admitting that this
cannot come about without the supernatural, their very demand
likewise implies the unreality of change and the negation of
