Kierkegaard on Immortality
S. Kierkegaard/J. Climacus, Concluding Unscientific Postscript (Swenson and Lowrie tr., Princeton UP, 1941, pp. 154-155, emphasis added):
All honor to him who can handle learnedly the learned question of immortality! But the question of immortality is essentially not a learned question, rather it is a question of inwardness, which the subject by becoming subjective must put to himself. Objectively the question cannot be answered, because objectively it cannot be put, since immortality precisely is the potentiation and highest development of the developed subjectivity. [. . . ] Systematically, immortality cannot be proved at all. The fault does not lie in the proofs, but in the fact that people will not understand that viewed systematically the whole question is nonsense, so that instead of seeking outward proofs, one had better seek to become a little subjective. Immortality is the most passionate interest of subjectivity; precisely in the interest lies the proof. [. . . ]
Quite simply therefore the existing subject asks, not about immortality in general, for such a phantom has no existence, but about his immortality, about what it means to become immortal, whether he is able to contribute anything to the accomplishment of this end, or whether he becomes immortal as a matter of course . . .
I agree that the question of immortality is primarily an existential question, a question for the existing individual, and not primarily a learned or scholarly or 'scientific' or objective question. And surely there is no immortality in general any more than there is a chamber pot in general. Mortality and immortality are in every case my mortality or immortality and it is clear that I have an intense personal interest in the outcome. I am not related to the question of my own immortality in the way I am related to a purely objective question that doesn't affect me personally, the question, say, whether the universe had a beginning 15 billion years or only 5 billion years ago, or had no beginning at all, etc. Such questions, as interesting at they are from a purely theoretical point of view, are existentially indifferent.
What's more, occupation with such questions may serve to distract us from the existential questions that really matter. From the severely existential point of view of a Kierkegaard, scientific inquiry in its purely theoretical forms will appear as but a higher form of idle curiosity. I am also inclined to agree with Kierkegaard that one is not immortal as a matter of course, but that immortality is at least in part a task, a matter of the free cultivation of inwardness, the ethical constitution of the self, and that this task is one that one may embrace or shirk.
So far, then, I agree with S. K. Unfortunately, S. K. exaggerates these insights to the point of making them untenable. For surely it is preposterous to maintain, as S. K .does maintain above, that the immortality question has nothing objective about it.
Let us suppose that how I live, what I do, whether and to what extent I cultivate my inwardness, and whether or not I lose myself in the pseudo-reality and inauthenticity of social existence does affect whether I will survive my bodily death. Suppose, in other words, that my immortality does depend on the highest development and potentiation of my subjectivity, that world is a vale of soul-making, and that soul-making is a task, one that I may fail to accomplish. Well, if this is the case, then this is objectively the case. And if it is the case that immortality is a possibility for beings like us, then this is objectively the case. It then cannot be the case because of some subjective stance or attitude that I might or might not assume. If it is not the case, I cannot make it be the case by any potentiation of inwardness. I cannot will myself into immortality unless it is objectively the case that immortality is a possibility for beings like us. Furthermore, if we do not become immortal as a matter of course, then this too is objectively the case if it is the case.
And because the question of immortality has an objective side, it is important or at least appropriate to examine the reasons for and against.
Kierkegaard/Climacus comes across as a confused irrationalist in the above passages and surrounding text. If a question is primarily existential, it does not follow that it cannot be "objectively put," for of course it can. If a question is primarily subjective, it does not follow that it is purely subjective. And please note that if immortality cannot strictly be proven, it does not follow that there is nothing objective about the issue. This is would be anorherconfusion. Has any one succeeded in strictly proving that the soul is immortal or strictly proving the opposite to the satisfaction of all competent practitioners? No. Is the question an objective question? Yes.
It is simply false to say that "viewed systematically the whole question is nonsense." What is true is that, if the question is viewed solely in a systematic and objective way it is nonsense. For it is clear that the question affects the existing individual in his innermost being. What is troubling about S. K. is that he cannot convey many of his insights without dressing them up in irrationalist garb that makes them strictly false.
Does my interest in my personal immortality constitute the proof of my personal immortality? Of course not. So why does SK maintain something so plainly preposterous? For literary effect? To serve as a corrective to Hegelian or other 'systematic' excess? But surely the proper response to an extreme position is not an equal but opposite extreme position, but a moderate and reasonable one.
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