A Monstrous Philosophy of Emotions

Through an analysis of Søren Kierkegaard’s Diapsalmata from the first volume of Either/Or, a work which exhibits strikingly contemporary ways of thinking, this paper seeks to uncover the complex and paradoxical ways in which emotions inhabit a person. The urge to explicate the complexity of emotions arose from the author’s dissatisfaction with the rudimentary schematic used in daily life wherein emotions are categorized and hastily rationalized, misconstruing their greater complexity. Emotions are often irrational, contradictory, etc., and must be considered on those terms. Thus, concession of paradox is vital in order to think through contradictory states of emotions. An aphorism from Pascal states that we are nothing but “lies, duplicity, and contradiction.” With this idea in mind, the essay proceeds to argue that the use of pseudonyms to create contradictions within Kierkegaard’s Diapsalmata show the Diapsalmata functioning as a “monstrous” philosophy of emotions. What is meant by “monstrous” differs from the colloquial use of the term and the essay’s particular usage is discussed with reference to Socrates and Typhon in Plato’s Phaedrus. The paper claims that Kierkegaard's thought as a whole is “monstrous” in the dissonance of the religious, comedic, ethical, ironic, and aesthetic stages he constructs in his broader philosophy. The monstrous philosophy of emotions developed from the Diapsalmata is argued to have a “prefatory weight” on the question of Being, i.e. “why are there beings instead of nothing?” The way in which different emotions preface this question is briefly discussed. The conclusion emphasizes the importance of understanding the complexity of emotions philosophically. “Talk about humility gives occasion for pride to the proud and humility to the humble. Similarly, skeptical arguments allow the positive to be positive. Few speak humbly of humility, chastely of chastity, dubiously of skepticism. We are nothing but lies, duplicity, contradiction, and we hide and disguise ourselves from ourselves” (Pascal, 240). Oregon Undergraduate Research Journal Currie Volume 14 Issue 1 Winter 2019 2 Despite the radical tone of Pascal’s claim that we solely consist of “lies, duplicity, and contradiction,” his hyperbolic insistence that we are nothing but is a poetic device indicating his claim should not be taken literally. One might then dismiss this as one of Pascal’s characteristically gloomy formulations and deem it unworthy of being taken seriously. Yet to do this would evade the very real force of his claim: to what degree do I disguise myself from myself? Am I merely a sum of contradictions masquerading as a quasi-coherent self? Is not the self which I present to the world ever-changing, duplicitous, multiplicitous? Is not this self, too, a fiction? One created out of an inability to account for my contradictions? The range of questions which erupt from Pascal’s aphorism must be circumscribed if one wishes to attain anything like an answer to them. One way in which we most overtly contradict ourselves is in and through our emotions. Such contradictions are monstrous insofar as the self which experiences these contradictory emotions is a whole self-made of discordant parts, namely differing emotional states, rather than a whole comprised of harmonious, non-contradictory parts. Pascal addresses the issue of a contradictory self succinctly in his aphorism while Søren Kierkegaard “performs” it in his Diapsalmata and in his works in general. This preliminary reflection inspired by Pascal’s aphorism leads me to consider Kierkegaard’s Diapsalmata as a monstrous philosophy of emotions. Before addressing the relationship between the different moods which appear in the Diapsalmata, I shall provide some context for that work. The authorship of Kierkegaard's Either/Or is obfuscated by pseudonyms. Either/Or is, as discussed in its preface by Victor Eremita, Kierkegaard’s first pseudonym, a collection of essays, letters, and fragments from two authors whom Eremita discovered. He names them A and B, respectively. Author A’s writings are inclined toward the “aesthetic” while Author B is inclined toward the “ethical.” Either/Or is principally a work which attempts to put these two authors and the aesthetic and ethical they represent in dialectical tension. Along with these three pseudonyms, Author A discovers a diary of a man named Johannes, giving us a fourth pseudonym. Eremita embeds this diary within A’s own works, seeing that Johannes’ diary shares a similar aesthetic comportment to A’s own writings and believing Author A and Johannes to be the same person. Yet, of course, all of these authors are just Kierkegaard playing different roles. Through the power of the pseudonym and the obfuscation of authorship, Kierkegaard takes on the roles of a discoverer and editor of unknown works, an aesthetic writer of melancholic poetry and philosophy, a judge who rebuts the aesthetic writer’s stance in favor of the ethical, and so on. While Pascal uses poetic hyperbole to confront man’s contradictions, Kierkegaard textually “performs” these contradictions through the writings of the pseudonyms. These contradictions only begin to show when considering Kierkegaard’s pseudonyms in relation to each other––any particular pseudonym’s writing is self-consistent. The internal conflict of Either/Or gives rise to dialogical relationships between its fictional authors. As mentioned above, Author A and Author B represent a tension between the aesthetic and the ethical. Author B is a judge whose writings are largely clinically written moral condemnations of the amoral, existential, and emotional writings of Author A, who claims to be a poet. he two authors’ writings support worldviews which are in tension with one another. Kierkegaard’s different “stages of experience” (namely the aesthetic, the ethical, and the religious Oregon Undergraduate Research Journal Currie Volume 14 Issue 1 Winter 2019 3 stages) operate with a similarly crucial tension: the aesthetic is always in conflict with the ethical as the ethical is always in conflict with the religious. The distinctions between these stages, however, are not entirely rigid as they inhere in one another to varying degrees. The tension of the three stages gives rise to two liminal stages: The ironic stage arises between the tension of the aesthetic and the ethical, and the comedic stage arises between the ethical and the religious. One does not solely occupy distinct stages at distinct times but rather bleeds between them and often occupies various stages simultaneously. Thus, like Pascal’s conception of the contradictory, selfdeceiving self, Kierkegaard presents a self in contradiction with itself, a self which can occupy and experience stages of experience which are at odds with one another. Kierkegaard seems to have intended the whole of Either/Or to act as an extensive thought experiment. It places the different authors’ writings in tension with one another and refuses to resolve the tension, inviting engaged readers to reconcile the views in tension and seek their own conclusion. Given the structure of the text, Kierkegaard shows himself as a contradictory self by occupying these different stages through the pseudonyms. This calls into question the degree to which Kierkegaard himself embodies each of the authors of the text and, furthermore, which authors originated from his own genuine experience and which, though still originating from him, are the product of ingenious artifice. Around the time he was writing Either/Or and had a falling out with the love of his life, Regine, he declared that the aesthetic was ultimately his “element.” In a letter to his friend Boesen, he said, “This matter [between Regine and I] ... has two sides, an ethical and an aesthetic... The aesthetic is above all my element. As soon as the ethical asserts itself, it easily gains power over me. I become a quite different person, I know no bounds for what my duties may be, et cetera” (Garff, 205). With this in mind, one approaches Either/Or differently, particularly Author A’s aesthetic writings. Of A’s writings, the Diapsalmata are perhaps the most affecting and devastating. The work is a brief collection of disordered aphorisms, which are pithy statements that exist somewhere between the concision of an axiom or maxim and the evocative immediacy of a poem. Kierkegaard could not have created the aphorisms in the Diapsalmata solely through artifice––these aphorisms must have come from lived experience. With this initial impression of the work and the fact that Kierkegaard himself, at least around the time of Either/Or’s genesis, claimed he favored the aesthetic above all else, one can say with some confidence that the Diapsalmata is more or less directly from Kierkegaard himself, masked by the pseudonym attached to it and a product of the pseudonym which gives way to the very expression of his experiences. A pseudonym both obscures and makes clear. From here it would be best to interrogate the relationship between the aphorisms in the work and begin to develop a philosophy of emotions. The moods of the Diapsalmata oscillate from bored to ecstatic; from melancholic to comedic; from nihilistic to life-affirming. The contradictory nature of the work initially confuses the reader. Author A himself occasionally thematizes contradiction in the Diapsalmata. In one instance, A says, “There are, as is known, insects that die in the moment of fertilization. So, it is with all joy: life’s highest, most splendid moment of enjoyment is accompanied by death” (Kierkegaard, 20). Here the highest experiences in life are met with their contrary, if taken literally. This may also be taken metaphorically. One does not usually die after experiencing the enjoyment A alludes to, but Oregon Undergraduate Research Journal Currie Volume 14 Issue 1 Winter 2019 4 perhaps one feels as though one had died in the fallout of this moment of