7 - Kierkegaard and the Indefinability and Inexplicability of Death

Summary

Chapter 7 explores the concept of nihilism in the work of Søren Kierkegaard. While the Danish thinker examines the issue in several different texts, this chapter is confined to his treatments in The Concept of Irony, the “Diapsalmata” from Either/Or, and “At a Graveside” from his collection Three Discourses on Imagined Occasions. In the first work he criticizes the different forms of Romantic irony that can be seen as expressions of nihilism. Kierkegaard’s critical point is that the Romantics offer nothing positive after they have eliminated all truths and values with their negative critique. In the “Diapsalmata” he provides a portrait of the modern nihilist in the aphorisms of the anonymous aesthete. Kierkegaard’s discourse “At a Graveside” focuses on the issue of death and what kind of a disposition one should have towards it. He introduces the concept of the earnestness of death, which means thinking about one’s own demise. He claims that death is both indefinable and inexplicable, and thus it is important not to pretend that we know anything about it. One should thus remain in “the equilibrium of indecisiveness,” although this is difficult.