Christa Kühnhold: Der Begriff des Sprunges und der Weg des Sprachdenkens

Der Begriff des Sprunges und der W eg des Sprachdenkens (lit. ‘The Concept of the Spring And the Method of Linguistic Thought’) by Christa Kühnhold, Berlin - New York 1975Reviewed by Hellmut ToftdahlThe reviewer recommends this doctorate on Kierkegaard to all those interested in Grundtvig, partly on account of its method, partly because it presents the side of Kierkegaard that is in agreement with Grundtvig, namely, the clash with abstract speculation. Christa Kühnhold shows that where dialectics end, Kierkegaard draws on the resources latent in the nuances of the Danish language. Her understanding of Kierkegaard’s vocabulary reminds one of Grundtvig’s experience with language. She has collected material on such concepts as: reality, truth, suffering, Spring, beginning, conversion, and guilt. Her semantic approaches are supplemented by her knowledge of linguistic history and mythology

Viden er magt

Power is wisdomBu Hellmut Toftdah

En tilfældig slægt

‘Just a Family’Birgit Michelsen: ‘The Catechist, the Dean, and the Socialist’. The History of Three Generations. Published by Anis, Århus, 1989.By Hellmut Toftdahl The writer has written about three people in the history of her family, for whom Christianity was a deeply personal matter. Their crises reflect the crisis which the Christian Church underwent in those years. We also meet several other people in the book, sons and daughters of the three. Their scruples and rebellions, ranging from radical free-thinking to an involvement in German Socialism, are woven together into a vivid presentation of the history of ideas of the time.The main character of the book is the restless, fascinating Christian, who ended his life in Leipzig as a Socialist and naturalized German. With his doubt about the ‘truths’ he had inherited from his family of clergymen, and in his search for the ‘right thinking’, he was ahead of his time. In his honesty and need to be true to himself, he had a good deal in common with both Søren Kierkegaard and Grundtvig, whose contemporary he was.In a Grundtvig context the book is interesting because it affords personal evidence of the ecclesiastical and existential forces that Søren Kierkegaard and Grundtvig, with their liberating theology, were up against among the representatives of the established understanding of Christianity of the time

Kan grundtvigsk folkelighed eksporteres?

Can grundtvigian folksiness be exported?Poul Engberg: Grundtvig between east and west. (Grundtvig mellem øst og vest). Mellem Sofia og Ratio. 88 sider - 128 kr. Poul Kristensens forlag 1993.Reviewed by Hellmut Toftdah

Kierkegaard og Grundtvig

Grundtvig and KierkegaardGötz Harbsmeier: Wer ist der Mensch? - Kontroverse um Kierkegaard und Grundtvig. Vol. III. Reviewed by Hellmut Toftdahl.This book, (which the author himself refers to in his preceding paper on Grundtvig and Germany) has been reviewed partly as an introduction to Grundtvig, partly as a contribution to the debate on Grundtvig and Kierkegaard, since the last chapter is devoted to the theme promised by the title of this series. The two preceding volumes in this series were reviewed in Grundtvig-Studier 1971.The book is the outcome of a lifelong preoccupation with Grundtvig’s life and work and all that the idea of Grundtvig and Grundtvigianism stands for. It contains excellent translations into German of central Grundtvig texts, with notes that testify to true German thoroughness and which are plainly inspired by Kaj Thaning’s interpretation of Grundtvig. Grundtvig the anthropologist stands out more clearly than the theologian, which, according to the reviewer, will no doubt be of greatest interest to the Germans. The aim of the book is to present to the Germans an alternative to German nationalism - an alternative that does not repudiate patriotism, the language and the nation, but avoids the tenets of the neo-Nazi ideology. The fact is stressed that Grundtvig’s ideas on nationalism must be seen in relation to his time. Here Harbsmeier answers Johannes Tiedje who, in 1927, cited Grundtvig in support of ideas which could be regarded as precursors of Nazism. This chapter could stimulate Germans to study Grundtvig’s ideas on nationalism in greater detail.As part of the “Auseinandersetzung” with Kierkegaard which the series presents, the reviewer feels, however, that this volume is not able to remedy what started to go wrong in volume II. Harbsmeier confronts K. E. Løgstrup’s picture of Kierkegaard with Thaning’s picture of Grundtvig, which must of course be to Grundtvig’s advantage, but he quite rightly points out that Grundtvig did not know much about the works of Kierkegaard.An impartial assessment of the two thinkers is lacking then. In view of the fact that Kierkegaard rejects the idea of there being a historical basis for determining what is true Christianity, the reviewer finds it surprising that Kierkegaard can be bracketed with orthodox and pietistic Christians, who consider the Bible the absolute norm for the Christian life. He also disagrees with Harbsmeier’s interpretation of Kierkegaard’s conception of »inderlighed« (intensity) and of »samtidighed« (contemporaneity), maintaining that the contemporaneity which Kierkegaard demands of the believer is a confrontation, aiming at self-examination, with the existence expressed through the Christ figure of the Gospels.As Kierkegaard knows that this existence can be variously interpreted, but will always provide a model for imitation, and that it cannot be imitated in the concrete life, the two thinkers are, according to the reviewer, much closer to each other than Grundtvig realized - or than this series shows. There is in Kierkegaard’s works an ambiguity which appears in his ironic style, and which in fact makes Kierkegaard find redemption in the concrete present life, the redemption which he calls »Gjentagelsen« (repetition). The only writer in the series who has appreciated this is Hinrich Buss in volume 1. It is a pity - Grundtvig will command attention without that sort of advertisement

Debatten om Grundtvig og Kierkegaard. En kristisk gennemgang

The Debate about Grundtvig and Kierkegaard.By Hellmut Toftdahl.In 19. century intellectual life Grundtvig and Kierkegaard tower like two huge antipodes: Kierkegaard’s desperation, sharpness, and merciless honesty - Grundtvig’s gigantic visions and deep understanding of the conditions and weaknesses of human life. They have left traces so profound that instead of establishing contact their imitators have widened the distance between them and made it appear as an unbridgeable gulf. Attempts to compare them have been rare: a couple of books and otherwise only short articles in newspapers and periodicals - and this although we are dealing with two works of unequalled scope in the history of Danish literature.The explanation is probably to be found in the fact that there has been no common system of reference, no third point of comparison, because the two of them seem to be complementary, i. e. they mutually complete but exclude each other. In the bulk of the existing literature about Kierkegaard and Grundtvig the approach has in fact been to condemn one of them by using the other. Only Garl Koch tries to attain objectivity by introducing Tolstoi, the Russian author, as a third point of reference, a kind of common denominator for the two others. More interest attaches to the attempt of Frederik Jungersen to make Kierkegaard an appendix to Grundtvig, an appendix emphasizing only what Grundtvig realized well enough: that the individual should not forget itself in the community. Kierkegaard stresses the self-activity of the individual, which, according to Jungersen, in Grundtvig is the basic condition of congregational life. That Jungersen is wrong here will appear from my book Kierkegaard først – og Grundtvig så, where I demonstrate how escapism, the forgetting of self, is a sine qua non in Grundtvig’s theology and view of human life. As a possible third point of reference I have called attention to the Danish author Martin A. Hansen, who overcame a Kierkegaardian crisis through Grundtvig - a crisis experienced as a conflict between humanism and Christianity, where Christianity was victorious.The article by Hinrich Buss in Kontroverse um Kierkegaard und Grundtvig is admirable. He draws a highly varied picture of the two with a criticism which is based upon objectivity and penetration. The contrast between them is clearly outlined: A Grundtvig who, on account of a not very thoroughly considered programme of secularization, has nothing to offer the present but an advice about not forgetting that the humanity of man is conditioned by his creation by God—on the other hand Kierkegaard’s “modern” analysis of existence as a paradox, carried through with inexorable passion and logical consistency. Buss sees the strength as well as the weakness in both of them: Grundtvig leaves us with the problem of being unable to attach what is human to what is Christian, carefully considered theologically; Kierkegaard performs this work, but he ends up by abandoning the human side, compelled by his dispositions. Kierkegaard is the modern thinker who places us in a situation where we can no longer avoid his reasoning. Grundtvig exhorts us not to forget the Creation; he shows us our loss if we can no longer think such thoughts as these.The article by Hinrich Buss is the first to comply with the demand, as formulated by Jørgen K. Bukdahl, to be made on a comparison between Kierkegaard and Grundtvig: they should be evaluated with regard to their place in the epoch, the period of reflection, with the attendant dissolution of given ties and the resulting “modern” presentation of the problem: How is it possible to establish authority in a reflective, civil age where the old authorities, Church, public authority, king, paterfamilias, teacher, have lost their authoritativeness?In my book Kierkegaard først - og Grundtvig så I have endeavoured to keep this period-dependence in focus, just as I have attempted to use the concepts of existentialism and phenomenology as a common system of reference, regarding, as I do, the works of the two authors as an expression of a way of having the world and an expression of the place of the ego in this subjective picture of the world. The treatises discussed and criticized in this article do not move beyond the psychologizing or the theologically systematizing sphere (vide for instance Henning Høirup, Grundtvig Studier 1956), they are accordingly atomistic, and one looks in vain for the integral person: Kierkegaard or Grundtvig, whom we expect to find behind the political, literary, or theological views expressed in their respective works. In this respect the article by Hinrich Buss is undoubtedly superior to the rest

Grundtvig og Søren Kirkegaard

Grundtvig and Søren KierkegaardBy Hellmut ToftdahlHellmut Toftdahl admits at the beginning of his article, the subject of which is Grundtvig seen in the light of Kierkegaard that it could look like a misrepresentation to talk about one Grundtvig, since research has divided his production into various parts on the basis of various criteria. But he maintains that it is justified by his method, which is inspired by phenomenology. This method is to uncover the ego’s meeting with the world by stating the ontological conditions according to which the ego realizes its existence.With reference to Rollo May and Heidegger he says that phenomenology considers existence thus: man has been thrown into the world without life-lines, and with the knowledge that the only sure thing is death. In this meaningless existence man must establish himself as a meaning-creating existence and all his thoughts and production must be considered results of this process. The world does not exist as an objective fact. It is eternally renewed in a double implication between subject and object. The world is always the product of the activity of the individual - and particularly when it concerns an author or a philosopher, his work can be looked upon as an expression of his attitude to existence; his work is his way of “having” the world or experiencing the world.Phenomenology applied to Grundtvig’s works does not isolate the different aspects of his activities and is not interested in what Grundtvig thought in 1810, 1825 or 1832, because it does not concern itself so much with what a person thinks, as with the pre-conscious, unreflected plane of consciousness. Phenomenology tries to view Grundtvig as impartially as possible. It does not consider him an object for psychoanalysis or systematic science, because any systematic method presupposes a preconceived attitude in the scholar which firmly confines the meeting between him and Grundtvig within certain frameworks, and we are then presented with Grundtvig the historian, the theologian or the poet, but the Grundtvig who held these opinions about existence disappears completely behind the opinions themselves. It is Grundtvig the integral man, who formulated his theology, his poetry and his historical philosophy as answers to questions he asked himself, whom phenomenology is trying to reach, by taking up as open an attitude as possible and not isolating certain aspects of his activity. Phenomenology presupposes that behind the many ideas is an ego, which is not identical with these ideas, that the real arena for the battles of the individual is not found on the conscious plane, where the ideas are produced, but on the pre-conscious plane where the individual constitutes himself as an individual, with absurdity as a constant threat to his productiveness.The contrast between life and death is a common feature of Grundtvig’s philosophy. Life is very extensive in its various meanings. Like most of Grundtvig’s concepts, it is loaded with connotations. Not only does it signify biological life in contrast to biological death, but it also describes man as a fulfilled member of the fellowship of men. Life, light, joy and fulfilment are closely connected associations, all in contrast to death. Death, loneliness, darkness, powerlessness, despair and emptiness belong together. Death is apparent in all human cohabitation, being the destructive forces which result in the isolation of man from God and his neighbour. Today psychologists call it depression, modern philosophers alienation.To Grundtvig life is a battlefield where irreconcilable opponents, concretized in the image of God and the Devil, fight for supremacy. This dualism pervades the whole of Grundtvig’s philosophy, affecting his theology as well as his ethics; the concept of truth and falsehood is also included in the fundamental contrasts.Truth and falsehood are not primarily questions of right or wrong, but of to be or not to be. To be or to exist in truth simply means to exist as a whole human being. To exist in falsehood means to exist on untenable assumptions. Such a dualistic picture of the universe presupposes that some contrasts are absolute and irreconcilable - that there are contrasts that can be decided on with a clear yes or no.Within the Church the same principle is expressed in the renunciation and the confession of faith, through which the Christian renounces evil and accepts goodness. The principle of contradiction became, together with the “unique discovery” of the confession of faith and personal experience of sin, proof of the fundamental contrast between truth and falsehood. On the intellectual plane, this “ fundamental law of thought” means that man’s thoughts are tied and his spiritual thoughts would disintegrate if this law were not respected. One can say that Grundtvig sets a limit to free thinking by this very thought; he recognizes that there are thoughts which endanger the survival of the individual, and it is his conviction that the individual is able to keep the negative thoughts away by deliberately suppressing them. This conviction came to form the psychological basis of his Christianity, which combines human existence with a spark of divine truth.A typical Grundtvig quotation from a theological magazine (1825) illustrates this:“ I believe in a God who is living truth personified, for it is true that he will do everything possible in order to lead man to recognition of truth; and by creating the world he has at least undeniably proved that he can do more than we understand” .Grundtvig’s belief in God is thus closely connected with his need for different existential values. God guarantees the contrasts which are necessary in order that man can fulfill himself by choosing goodness. Through his conscience man has contact with God, and it is up to the individual whether or not he believes in the testimony of his conscience when he has to make a choice. Grundtvig thus makes the choice more or less voluntary, but it cannot be difficult for the individual to make a decision, when the opposite of conscience is stamped as lies and falsehood. By making conscience the evidence of truth, he has created a psychological basis for belief which cannot stand up to a dialectical analysis.Grundtvig’s faith has the character of a psychosomatic-conditioned means of escape from the responsibility of decision during what Kierkegaard would call: The Hazard of the Spirit. Grundtvig does not recognize that suspension of conscience which Kierkegaard in “Frygt og Bæven” has shown to be necessary for the thinking human being in exceptional cases. In his conception of conscience Grundtvig is an ethicist in Kierkegaard’s terminology. To Grundtvig man is not independent. On the contrary, selfwilledness will kill conscience together with everything else pertaining to the senses, leaving only a powerless shadow, what the German philosophers have called “practical sense” , said Grundtvig in 1825.Hellmut Toftdahl now looks at man’s role in the Church; the duty of the individual parishioner is reduced to going to church and being accepted in the congregation, in order to hear God’s word or what the minister postulates is really God’s word. The Gospel can have a life-giving effect, if the minister is in possession of the living word, which is the gift of the Holy Ghost. On the other hand, a congregation can also be at the mercy of a minister’s oratorical powers, which emerges clearly from the terms Grundtvig uses to describe the process to which man is subjected, when he accepts the word; terms such as “penetrate” , “merge” , “ kindle” . Submission to another person’s oratorical talents will be reassuring to those who need redemption of their ego. In the enchantment of the great visions, the existential problems are momentarily forgotten, but an independently thinking individual must be sceptical of the living word and react against its peculiar characteristic: the momentary enchantment. To sceptics the living word is a form of demagogy.Here Hellmut Toftdahl turns to Kierkegaard’s criticism of the living word and the mentality which this presupposes. Kierkegaard and Grundtvig knew each other personally. When Kierkegaard’s father was still alive, Grundtvig visited his home fairly frequently, and Kierkegaard’s brother became a faithful follower of Grundtvig. Their comments on each other were far from being unbiassed, and in his diaries Kierkegaard could be frankly impertinent. This of course was due to the fact that they only knew each other superficially, but at the same time it suggests that they were not altogether unaware of each other.Even before he had started writing seriously, Kierkegaard mentions Grundtvig if not with admiration then with a certain appreciation of him as a person. To a fellow student Kierkegaard freely admitted that Grundtvig was “a genius, yes, a genius, for a genius is somebody who discovers something, and that Grundtvig has certainly done.” Kierkegaard could admire the lonely young Grundtvig, fighting with belief and disbelief, but when he put forward his visions as great discoveries, Kierkegaard dismissed him as a “twaddler.” “At one time, says Kierkegaard, one could have this impression of Grundtvig: he looks as if he could become someone who truthfully aims at ONE goal. But since then he has become depraved by the evils of our time, which can be designated by the expression “both-and”, both one thing and another. To have a manse and a few thousand Rigsdaler - and then at the same time be a kind of apostle, that is a contradiction.” Kierkegaard was full of indignation because Grundtvig managed to combine idealistic work and a living.According to Kierkegaard, Grundtvig began already at the end of the 1830’s to move away from that form of sermon which bore witness to strong and healthy preaching. After what may have been his first visit to Vartov Church, Kierkegaard was anything but edified by Grundtvig’s preaching: “All his preaching is nothing but a constantly repeated exodus of the imagination; the legs cannot keep up, it is just a weekly evacuation“. His sermon lacked the personal demand and the courage that dares to attach importance to the ego.Yet Kierkegaard was not an opponent of the congregation as such – only when it became an audience. For him, the individual in the congregation exists actively as a quality, but he can also at any moment become greater than the congregation, namely when the others do not “live up to the Idea”. Kierkegaard did not attack Grundtvig for emphasizing the importance of fellowship within the congregation, but for changing God’s congregation into an audience by relaxing the demands on the individual, who might forget himself while listening to Grundtvig’s poetic and historical visions: “Any historical representation is, by comparison with the religious one, mere entertainment. The listener forgets himself in hearing about Luther and the sunrise and some “unique discovery” made in Copenhagen. But when it comes to religion, it is a negative thing to forget oneself and a positive thing to become personally engaged. Taking a keen look at the history of the world cannot replace a healthy look into oneself, unique discoveries, even of gunpowder, cannot make up for the lack of self-knowledge.“To Kierkegaard, the worst thing about the Church was that it gave its members a false sense of security; therefore he felt himself called to sound the alarm against such illusions and to undertake a radical revision of what it means to be a Christian. Kirkegaard stresses the importance of receiving Christ as the model that we do not resemble and as the Redeemer who is full of mercy if we humble ourselves. Christ-likeness cannot be attained in this life of struggle and affliction, but only in eternity, and therefore the idea of a congregation in this life is an impatient anticipation of eternity: the “ congregation” does not belong to time, but to eternity. Kierkegaard’s concept of “ the congregation“ thus seems eschatological, whereas Grundtvig’s congregation is Christ’s real, concrete connection with the world, a distinction that Henning Høirup has pointed out.Hellmut Toftdahl, however, does not think that Kierkegaard’s concept of the congregation is eschatological, his concept of eternity militating against such a view. Eternity to Kierkegaard is not related to time, but to an existence where time has been eliminated, succession abolished and distances replaced by the eventful present; eternity is a stationary NOW. That the congregation belongs to eternity means, then, that it comes into being where eternity is created in time, that is, where man becomes the individual who receives. It is, in other words, a congregation of individualists that Kierkegaard is talking about, not a crowd like the Grundtvigian circle of friends, who are members of a kind of association. Kierkegaard’s congregation is a group of people existing now, who have, by chance, at the same time and in the same place, turned towards their “ eternal Self” ; it is a happening, which in Kierkegaardian terms must be said to belong to eternity - eternity within time. Grundtvig’s congregation is admitted to Christ through a common arrangement between minister and congregation. Kierkegaard’s congregation seeks out Christ together, imitating His fervour. The difference lies in the inner activity and emotion of the individual member of the congregation.Grundtvig, like Kierkegaard, was aware of the danger inherent in theology influenced by orthodoxy: the danger of forgetting man while speculating on the right doctrines with regard to existence, of letting too much thinking hinder fulfillment of life. Through his many battles with himself, Grundtvig came to the conclusion that Christianity in its original form was narrow. He was against Lutheran orthodoxy and penitential Christianity, which regarded life on earth as an exile, a pilgrimage towards a better life hereafter. To Grundtvig, this form of Christianity takes the colour out of life and saps the strength of Christian absolution and redemption. Life on earth justifies itself, not just as a roundabout way of becoming a Christian, but as a prerequisite for the constant growth and development of the Christian life. Only if this life is lived to the full, can Christianity be found. “First a man, and then a Christian.”It was also Kierkegaard’s mission to save what is human, but he does it in a more differentiated way than Grundtvig, as a result of his philosophical schooling. He is above all against the philosophy, inspired by Hegel, that can be briefly characterized as: over-reflection and identification of thought with being. Kierkegaard does not talk in general terms about being a human being in one or other social context, like, for instance, Karl Marx. He is an ontologist and, therefore, speaks mostly of existentialism, about how to exist as an individual. He says that in order to explain how to live religiously, he has gone as far back as possible, namely to the question of living as a human being, because “ if one has forgotten what it is to live religiously, one will also have forgotten what it is to live as a human being.”Grundtvig wanted to save man from religious speculation by giving him something concrete, the words of the Sacraments and the living word in human fellowship as opposed to dead thinking. Kierkegaard wanted to save man from losing himself in speculative thinking. But Kierkegaard goes deeper than Grundtvig, because Grundtvig finds the solution in dogmatics, i.e. new speculative knowledge, whereas Kierkegaard penetrates the speculative systematization by means of this very systematization: logic applied with enormous energy. At the time of Grundtvig and Kierkegaard the age of the artisan and the craftsman was dying out, to be replaced by the age of the machine. The creators - and pillars - of this new society became the producers who, naturally, formed the community in accordance with their demands for maximum consumption.As a result, the bourgeoisie, the artists and the intellectuals were made homeless in this society which they had not helped to establish. Consequently, the large majority today enjoy the products of the Industrial Age, while the intellectuals are on the whole divided into two camps: a conservative group which cultivates absurdity and alienation and a revolutionary faction which recognizes absurdity and alienation, but still believes that it is possible to change society.Far-sighted philosophers in the 19th century were aware that these problems would arise in the society of the future, where the individual would be suppressed by a stronger collective force. The objective of Hegel, Marx, Kierkegaard and Nietzsche became: how to remain oneself in spite of the increasing threat of annihilation of the individual. Therefore these philosophers are “modern” in so far as the problems they discuss still concern people today. In an assessment of the relation between Kierkegaard and Grundtvig, it might be relevant to study the attitude of both to the welfare-problem called “ alienation.”The expression itself derives from Karl Marx who used it in a similar context, but Marx believed that the phenomenon would disappear in a Communist society, where man would rediscover his value as a creative individual. Marx equated human identity with creative development, but overlooked the fact that in his development man can come up against forces he cannot control, if he develops without being limited by some inner or outer authority.It is on this point that Kierkegaard becomes topical. He also sees man as the will to development, but irreligious existence leads to despair, “ sickness unto death” , because during his development man becomes more and more alien to himself, a living corpse without identity. When man has been forced into complete freedom of existence, the condition that is characterized by “ subjectivity is truth” , and he then despairs, then he meets God in the paradoxical realization that subjectivity as truth is falsehood. The meeting with God is inevitable, because it is a paradox to wish to become a whole, when one has recognized that one has nothing to hold on to, nothing objectively recognizable, and the paradox is in fact God. To Kierkegaard, knowledge of God is a consequence of self-knowledge, and the despair, the living death, the alienation is the void from which alone one can gain the self-knowledge that results in knowledge of God. Any attempt to find a short cut only leads to despair.The relation to God is then not a question of new speculative understanding. It is an ethical demand to man to rid himself of the indignation and feeling of absurdity, arising from a state of emergency. God, in Kierkegaard's theology, is the will to create instead of to despair, but this creation comes about by virtue of the absurd, because man in his despair has recognized his nothingness. Faith is thus no cure for this sickness unto death, but in the passion of faith one forms a self in spite of despair. The conflict between faith and despair creates tension, and the criterion of the true believer is whether or not he can endure this constant tension and not seek reassurance in objective knowledge or other people’s oratorical gifts. In specifically Christian religiousness, Christ is paradoxically a personification, in time, of God, that is, of the will and unique ability to become an intensely existing self. God is an ontological idea; this idea emerges personified in Christ, the paradox being that an idea can become flesh and blood. Christ becomes a model for the Christian who has no identity. By imagining himself contemporary with Christ, he tries to imitate Christ’s intensity of existence; there is no question of any objective reassurance: the objective historical details about Christ are of secondary importance to the Kierkegaardian Christian. That subjectivity becomes falsehood does not mean that objectivity becomes truth. Objectivity is not an alternative to subjectivity, it is the above-mentioned tension between faith and uncertainty.Any short cut to Christianity and thus to selfknowledge, without despair, is not possible according to Kierkegaard. Not even happiness is without despair, “ for deep, deep down, in the secret recesses of happiness lives apprehension which is despair.“On these points Kierkegaard scores heavily against Grundtvig. If despair and alienation are the necessary needle’s eye leading to intense Christianity, which in the Kierkegaardian conception means any intense existence whatever, then there is much to object to in Grundtvig’s theology as well as in his whole cultural programme.Grundtvig’s extensive visions have above all not been carefully enough thought out. He lifts up creation and man, rid of the strain of penance. His attempts at secularization and popular enlightenment must be seen as part of the aim to make people live a natural human existence. But, as Kierkegaard has pointed out, his secularization lacks judgement, for secularization as a spontaneous measure, taught as a unique discovery, is not proof against independent thinking: “All spontaneity in spite of illusory confidence and calm is apprehension.”Grundtvig’s living word can just as well be used as a means of leading man to inhumanity as to humanity, unless the person using it at the same time sharpens his audience’s critical sense - and then it is no longer the living word. Grundtvig did not have our experience of today of how the living word can be misused by ideologists, but that does not justify his constant urge to reassure his followers with regard to the critical reflection that Kierkegaard represented.Kierkegaard does not promise that it is possible to reach the land of the living,

Grundtvig og Kierkegaard

»Grundtvig and Kierkegaard «Otto Bertelsen: ‘The Dialogue between Grundtvig and Kierkegaard’. Published by CA. Reitzel, Copenhagen, 1990, 129 pp.By Hellmut ToftdahlThe comparison between Kierkegaard and Grundtvig has presented a temptation for many scholars. It has led to widely different conclusions about similarities and differences. Each generation, intent upon seeking a deeper understanding of the conditions of human life and the existential message of Christianity, is likely to find that a personal attitude to the two giants in the spiritual life of the 19th century must inevitably be taken.Otto Bertelsen not only compares the ideas of the two thinkers, but also reviews them in a mutual perspective. The material provided is comprehensive and proves that the two knew each other very well. The writer also makes convincing conjectures about what they may have meant by this or that passage, and what they may have read from each other’s works. This makes for a vivid and captivating presentation and prepares for the main thesis of the book: that the dialogue between them was more extensive than has been assumed to far. In particular, the admiration felt by the young Kierkegaard for the rebellious Grundtvig, who announced that the Word of the Lord was missing in His own House, and brought himself in opposition to the Establishment with .The Rejoinder of the Church. (‘Kirkens Genmæle’), is lucidly described so as to show how the reformer dream was a characteristic they shared. Grundtvig wanted an ‘external’ reformation by making the national church so free that even a Kierkegaard would be able to be a clergyman in it. Kierkegaard wanted an ‘internal’ reformation by presenting the Christian demand in such radical terms that everybody must desist from being counted as ‘Witness for Truth’. If he was only allowed this ‘concession’, not one iota of change in the existing church government would be required. The writer points out that during the Church Battle Kierkegaard becomes so radical in his attacks on the Christian church that the Establishment would not have been able to survive if it had accepted the criticism.Aspects of material history are also included in the comparison. Bertelsen shows how they were both keenly aware of the suppression of the proletariat by the established church. But for both of them, social indignation was an emotion, closely linked with the charity of Christianity and a universal, liberal understanding of how miserable material conditions may deprive man of his dignity. Neither of them harboured any notions of a class revolution, but they both shared worries that a democratic, materialistic mass culture will lead the individual away from its destiny as a .divine experiment.. To Kierkegaard the cure against this would consist in an intensification of the spiritual life of the individual, while Grundtvig counted on raising the consciousness of the individual through enlightenment of the people. Bertelsen intimates that Grundtvig and Kierkegaard ‘might, together, re-vitalize the folk high school’.The book should be recommended as a quick, but thorough and honest introduction to both thinkers. It shows that the need for a personal experience of religion has not been invented by new-religious movements of the present time, but was a vital challenge for the stagnant understanding of Christianity of the previous century. It also shows that the theology of personal experience does not necessarily contest the validity of the belief that the Christian faith is essentially something unchangeable that exclusively depends on the faith in Christ. Now, towards the end of this century, which, after substituting ideologies for religion, sees ideologies crumbling, the book serves as a reminder of what we lost when we turned materialism and the social state into the Absolute.With regard to the question of maintaining one’s original identity under the external pressure from a massive socialization, which is both powerful and systematic, the dialogue between the two thinkers has acquired a renewed relevance, not just for individuals, but for whole peoples whose identity and living space is threatened by the paternalistic systematization of the present. Bertelsen’s book is a good book for Danes to bring with them into the coming Europe

N.F.S. Grundtvig: »Om Mennesket i Verden«

N. F. S. Grundtvig: On Mankind in the World, Published with an introduction and notes by K. B. Gjesing. Herning 1983. 80 pages. 120 Dkr.Reviewed by Hellmut ToftdahlA separate edition of “an important written source” , often cited in Grundtvig literature, but not a photographic reproduction, as in the edition of the journal Danevirke, from the second volume of which (1817) it is taken. The publisher sheds light on the article’s relation to Grundtvig’s day and age and comments on it with reference to Grundtvig research, in particular Henning Høirup’s Grundtvig’s View of Faith and Epistemology and Erik Heinemeier’s Grundtvig’s View of Man, but only in a footnote to C. I. Scharling’s Grundtvig and Romanticism, in the light of Grundtvig’s Relationship to Schelling. The publisher’s perspective is more ideological than theological and skates over Grundtvig’s clash with romanticism.The article is concerned with the early part of the period when Grundtvig was reacting to Schelling, but at the same time it is noted that in his phraseology and conceptual apparatus Grundtvig is dependent on his school. The publisher appears to be unaware that it is through this philosophical journal that Grundtvig channels his reformatory dreams. The reviewer quotes what Grundtvig himself said about this: “Every word I write is a sharp spear; it is just wrapped in cotton.” This “ cotton” was precisely the conceptual apparatus of the age’s intellectuals. It is true that like all others, even today, Grundtvig thought in dualistic terms. But he refused to identify himself with this way of thought, knowing that the distinction between truth and lying was at odds with the distinction between the bodily and the spiritual. Truth should have a body, and therefore romanticism must comply with Christianity and the historical coming to consciousness after faith. The reviewer regrets the lack of reference to the work of Helge Grell, William Michelsen and Flemming Lundgreen-Nielsen. The condition of man as a creature with a tendency to raise himself above the creator falls outside the publisher’s ideological understanding; but it was here that Grundtvig saw the greatest danger in German romanticism, as is clear from his own text

Lingvistik, systemdigtning og Grundtvig

Linguistics, systemic poetry and GrundtvigBy Hellmuth ToftdahlIn this brief essay Grundvig5s poetics is juxtaposed with the view of poetry that, in Denmark, has been put forward by, among others, the poet and critic Per Højholt and supported by Niels Egebak. The following points are argued against:1. The assumption that any linguistic expression that is shaped along traditional lines determined by communication is lifeless and distant and leaves the listener or reader unaffected.2. The assumption that any linguistic expression gains life and becomes exciting only when, somehow or other, it breaks down the conventions surrounding the process of communication.From this it is concluded:1. By absorbing the blocks of linguistic material with which he is faced, the reader does not experience a finished work of art, but has to produce the work for himself2. The linguistic act becomes revolutionary in so far as the linguistic universe of the reader is undermined from within by the poison that has been smuggled in with the linguistically revolutionary text. An unprejudiced attitude is indoctrinated without arguments, but by causing the reader’s linguistic universe to disintegrate, without giving him a chance to defend himself. The poet forces the crisis of identity upon the reader.The young Grundtvig’s thoughts supply an interesting alternative or supplement to the view of literature that has been outlined above. To him poetry was not only a means of communication, it also possessed a magical power that might be transmitted to the receiver, counteracting his tendency to stagnation, and giving him the powers of expressing himself. According to Grundtvig, poetry originated in a vision, i. e. a spontaneous experience of universal rationality. To the individual this experience appears absurd only if he is over-occupied with his own brief history. A sound human being is convinced that reason exists, but that it is a waste of energy to brood over its nature. Time will show what truth is.To Grundtvig all ideologies were pitiful attempts to make a substitute for religion. True poetry frees man from the fetters that he has imposed upon himself, and gives rise to a feeling of freedom, of participation in an outer, organic reality