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PARTISAN RJEVIEW
map of the divided consciousness. Then God died in Nietzsche. Now
we live with the divided consciousness in a universe where God is dead.
That is what I have tried to describe in my writings.
F: But if all that is true-if this is really the Age of Anxiety,
is
you say-then I have a very serious objection to make against you
and the Kierkegaardians.
H: What?
F: You make a great deal of Kierkegaard's statement, "With
everyone engaged everywhere in making things easier, someone was
needed to make them difficult again." The statement is eloquent, but
how exactly does it apply to our situation nowadays? He was talking
there against the Hegelians and the Hegelian system. They had ex–
planations of everything, he says; and in that sense they made every–
thing seen: easy, they were the cosmic optimists. Personally, I am
not at all displeased that he should have made difficulties for that
philosophic system. My own philosophic bent has always been one of
healthy contempt for philosophy. (Excuse me for saying that, but I
have been feeling for some minutes past that I must make this clear
as soon as possible. I felt very many misgivings at allowing myself
to be dragged into this discussion, for I have never cared very much
to haggle with philosophers.) Well now, the Hegelian system is
hardly a thing we have to combat very seriously today. Yet Kierke–
gaard's followers still take their master's statement quite literally.
They claim for themselves the task of making things difficult. They
wish to increase human tensions. I should say, on the contrary, that
precisely what is needed nowadays is someone to make things easy.
Someone must lighten the load under which mankind labors. That
is the task I chose for myself.
H: But are we not really talking here about different things?
F: That is always possible.
H: Kierkegaard wished, and his followers wish, to make things
difficult, in the sense that they wish to snatch man out of banality
and restore him to the difficulties of self-consciousness and inward–
ness. The everyday life of man is one of falsehood. His existence in
the world is external and banal. He lives without real consciousness
of himself, his life, or his death- above all, of this last. From that
fallen state we would rescue him. We would like to see him restore
himself to authenticity from the false life of banality-
F: Ah, that word "authenticity" at last. I was waiting to
hear it. I would like to have it explained to me, for your use of it
somewhat puzzles me.
