W.'s Kierkegaard

Above all, we must be unafraid to remake Kierkegaard in our image, W. says. Hasn’t he dreamt of a Kierkegaard who stayed happily married to Regine?, W. says. A Kierkegaard who understood that the religious sphere is no higher than the ethical one, and that the love for God is really a love for the other person? Hasn’t W. dreamt of a Kierkegaard who never believed that Jesus was really the Messiah, or that the messianic could ever be understood in terms of the coming of a particular person?

For his Kierkegaard, W. says, Jesus never proclaimed himself the Messiah and the Son of God. For his Kierkegaard, Jesus is above all the man of the parable, the man who speaks in ordinary words to ordinary people. He is a man of everyday speech, who opens himself in dialogue to all comers, to anyone who wants to speak and to listen. Just as he, W., has to speak with great simplicity to me!, he says. Just as W. has to try and explain things so they can be understood by a simple person like me!

His Kierkegaard is turned to the world, W. says, towards politics. He is a Kierkegaard of the barricades, whose despair has caught fire, whose inwardness has become outwardness, whose religious faith has become ethical faith, has become political faith.