Three Discourses on Imagined Occasions

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Three Discourses on Imagined Occasions

First edition, title page.
Author	Søren Kierkegaard
Original title	Tre Taler ved tænkte Leiligheder
Working title	Three Discourses on Imagined Occasions
Translators	David F. Swenson and Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong
Cover artist	Frank Mahood
Language	Danish
Subject	Christianity
Published	April 29, 1845
Publication place	Denmark
Media type	Hardback
Pages	114
ISBN	9780691140742
Preceded by	Four Upbuilding Discourses, 1844
Followed by	Stages on Life's Way

Three Discourses on Imagined Occasions (1845) is a book written by Søren Kierkegaard.

Kierkegaard published Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses between the years 1843 and 1844, as well as several pseudonymous books. His category from Either/Or is to choose, and his category from his discourses is the "single individual". He informed readers to pay attention to the prefaces in his works and has one in this book that speaks about "meaning", and the "appropriation" of meaning, and he has repeatedly said that he didn't have the "authority to preach or to teach." Here, in his preface, he wrote: "This little book, which might be called a book of occasional addresses, although it has neither the occasion that creates the speaker and gives him authority nor the occasion that creates the hearer and makes him a learner, is lacking in the legitimation of a call, and is thus lacking in its shortcomings without excuse. It is without assistance from external circumstances, and thus quite helpless in its elaboration."^[1]

He wrote of an apostle who didn't have the easiest time being a Christian. "Now Paul! Did he live in the favor of the mighty so that it could commend his teaching? No, he was a prisoner! Did the wise hail his teaching so that their reputation could guarantee its truth? No, to them, it was foolishness. Was his teaching capable of quickly supplying the individual with a supernatural power? did it offer itself for sale to people through legerdemain? No, it had to be acquired slowly, appropriated in the ordeal that began with the renunciation of everything."^[2] Would Paul have become a Christian if he knew what was in store for him? Every single individual has a future, and there comes a time when a decision is made that can have long-lasting effects. Paul wrote about his own experiences in his epistles, and Kierkegaard thought this was a legitimate way to preach about Christianity. But he stressed indirect communication.

The law of delicacy by which an author is permitted to use what he has experienced is that he never says the truth but keeps the truth for himself and only lets it emerge in different ways. Søren Kierkegaard, Journals and Papers IV A 161^[3]

In these final three discourses of his first authorship, he chose to write about Confession before God about guilt, sin, forgiveness, marriage, and death and the answers that seem to come or don't seem to come to the inquiring individual.

He who knocks-to him, shall it be opened.^[4] And even if God does not immediately open, be comforted. Imagine an older person who sat in his room making some preparations to please a child who is to visit him at a certain time. But the child came too early. He knocked, but it was not opened to him. The child could see that there was somebody in the room because there was a light. The child's knocking therefore was certainly heard; and yet the door was not opened. So, the child became disconsolate. Ah, but why was not the door opened? Because the preparations for the child's happiness were not yet quite finished. Meditations from Kierkegaard, by Thomas Henry Croxall 1955 p. 99 Journals VIII 586

Soren Aaby Kierkegaard had Three Discourses on Imagined Occasions published on April 29, 1845, and Stages on Life's Way on April 30, 1845. Both books were divided into three sections: confession, marriage, and death—three crucial occasions in the life of each single individual. David F. Swenson translated the book as Thoughts on Crucial Situations in Human Life (subtitle: Three Discourses on Imagined Occasions) in 1941 and Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong did so in 1993 under the title, Three Discourses on Imagined Occasions.

• What It Means To Seek God, On the Occasion of a Confessional Service
• Love Conquers All, On the Occasion of a Wedding
• The Decisiveness of Death, At the Side of a Grave, (Hong, At a Graveside)

(Swenson's translation has both titles, while Hong's has only the latter; both Swenson and Hong translated Kierkegaard's Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses also)

Each of these imagined discourses involves the anxiety of making a decision. Kierkegaard wrote much on that subject earlier as well as in his later works.

• 1844: The Concept of Anxiety
• 1848: The Care of Indecesiveness, Vacillation, and Disconsolateness from Christian Discourses

Many times, an individual has a physical illness and goes to the physician for help. But is that the only kind of sickness there is? Kierkegaard was interested in spiritual sickness called sin and the expectancy of forgiveness, which are both Christian categories.^[5] We "must want to understand the forgiveness of sins—and then despair of understanding it."^[6] Later, in The Sickness Unto Death Kierkegaard writes of the sin of despairing over one's sin and the sin of despairing of the forgiveness of sins.^[7] Robert L. Perkins from Mercer University published a group of essays about these three discourses in 2006. Kierkegaard has moved forward from fear and trembling to fear and wonder within the two years of his published works. Wonder is more positive than fear.^[8]

He suspected his father, Michael, suffered from this "sickness of the spirit" because of something he had done as a young man or while grieving the loss of his first wife. Lee M. Hollander thought he was afraid he had committed the Eternal sin, one that can never be forgiven. Kierkegaard called his gaining knowledge of his father's sin the "great earthquake". Maybe he heard someone say that cursing God was the unforgivable sin or that fornication was the unforgivable sin. Kierkegaard wrote out of concern for his father's anxiety and for others like him who believe that God shuts his door against them.^[9] He asks, “How does a person get to know that he is the greatest sinner?”^[10] Kierkegaard started in Either/Or with two characters known only as A and B, both in search of a self, and he worked himself up to The Concept of Anxiety where he remarked; "If a person does not first make clear to himself the meaning of “self,” it is of no use to say of sin that it is selfishness."^[11] His father was only twelve when he cursed God and didn't have faith that God would forgive him. Goethe had the same problem because he had many experiences while he was still young.^[12][13][14]

Many speculative individuals want to express their opinion about the mysteries of the Christian religion and the nature of sin and guilt. Kierkegaard warns against doing this because "the most dangerous condition is that of the one who is deceived by much knowledge,"^[15] Knowing is one thing, doing another. "If anyone has the task of preaching or teaching others about their guilt, of teaching something that this discourse, which is without authority, does not do, he does have the consolation that the purest heart is precisely the one most willing to comprehend his own guilt most deeply."^[16] Kierkegaard asked every single individual these questions in his 1847 book, Works of Love in an effort to show how useless it is to compare sin for sin and guilt for guilt.

Tell me if it is possible to speak about this verse that says love is the fulfilling of the Law without judging against one’s will, even if it is one’s will only to judge oneself! Is there any more accurate expression for how infinitely far a person is from fulfilling the requirement than this, that the distance is so great that he actually cannot begin to calculate it, cannot total up the account! Not only is so much neglected every day, to say nothing of what guilt is incurred, but when some time has passed, one is not even able to state accurately the guilt as it once appeared to oneself, because time changes and mitigates one’s judgment of the past-but, alas, no amount of time changes the requirement, eternity’s requirement-that love is the fulfilling of the Law. (Romans 10.4), (Romans 13.10), (1 Timothy 1.5) Soren Kierkegaard, Works of Love 1847, Hong 1995 p. 134

Kierkegaard was interested in "how" one comes to acquire knowledge. Adolph Peter Adlers experience may have influenced him. He identified his audience as the "reader" and the "listener,"^[18] but now he speaks of the "seeker". He says, "No man can see God without purity,” and “no man can know God without becoming a sinner.” Dostoevsky tried to reproduce this concept in his art.^[19] In Stages on Life's Way, published the next day, he used David and Solomon as examples of those prototypes who did become pure in God's sight by becoming sinners. "While David lay on the ground with a crushed and contrite heart, Solomon arose from his couch, but his understanding was crushed. Horror seized him when he thought of what it was like to be God’s elect. He surmised that holy intimacy with God, the sincerity of the pure man before the Lord, was not the explanation, but that a private guilt was the secret which explained everything."^[20]

He speaks of finding God in the "darkness" and the "stillness"^[21] and "of this stillness and its power and the infinite nothing into which it plunges all dissimilarities, even those of wrongs and forgiveness, and of the abyss into which the solitary one sinks in stillness."^[22] And she asks, "Is it so easy to become still?"^[23] This, then, is his imaginative creation of the world of the spirit and he lets the reader know that it's imaginative in his title.

He also wrote much about "expectancy"^[24] and where it is found. Now he writes about the darkness, stillness, the "unknown" and sin. He says, "Sin is the common lot of the human race".^[25]

There was a time in the world when humankind, weary of wonder, weary of fate, turned away from the external and discovered that there was no object of wonder, that the unknown was a nothing and wonder a deception. What once was life’s substance coming again in the repetition of the race.^[26].... It is so hard to find God that one even demonstrates that he exists and finds a demonstration necessary. Let the work of the demonstrating be hard, let it in particular give trouble to the person who is to understand that it demonstrates something. For the one who is demonstrating it is an easy matter, because he has come to stand on the outside and is not dealing with God but is discussing something about God. If, however, seeking is to mean that one is oneself changed, then let the seeker look to himself. .... If a speaker had a voice like the thunder of the heavens, a countenance that struck terror, if he knew how to aim with his eyes, and now as you sat there, my listener, he pointed at you and said, “You, there, you are a sinner,” and even did it with such force that your eyes dropped to the ground and the blood drained from your cheeks and you perhaps did not recover from the impact for a long time, then you certainly would realize that in so behaving he was transforming the setting into a burlesque theater, where he played the buffoon, and you would deplore his having disturbed you in finding stillness. Soren Kierkegaard, Three Discourses on Imagined Occasions, Hong 199, p. 21, 25, 27^[27]

"Where is earnestness learned? In life." And how can earnestness be lost? How is it related to the resolution? Does "love conquer everything?"^[28] Kierkegaard thinks, "A true conception of life and of oneself is required for the resolution of marriage, but this already implies the second great requirement, which is just like the first: a true conception of God. No one can have a true conception of God without having a corresponding conception of life and oneself, or a true conception of life without a corresponding conception of God, or a true conception of life without a corresponding conception of oneself. But a true conception of God is required; an understanding between God and the happy one is required, and thus a language is required in which they talk to each other. This language is the resolution, the only language in which God will involve himself with a human being."^[29] He asks, "Where does a person find guidance if he himself does not work out his own soul's salvation in fear and trembling"?^[30] He's writing about the wedding ceremony in this discourse just as he wrote about it in Either/Or and Repetition.^[31] Here he presents his imaginative construction of the value of the single individual deciding on marriage in the presence of God. Even though he never married, he still knows that "the adult learns only by appropriating and he essentially appropriates the essential only by doing it."^[32]

Aye, the world never has a lack of guides.^[33] Behold, here is the man who would guide everybody, and cannot help himself. Now one is proclaimed as wise, and admiration recognizes him as such because he cannot even understand what the common man understands. Now someone has the power of eloquence and leads astray, having the powerful works of untruth. Now what we have learned from childhood has become old-fashioned, and we must learn it all over again. Now someone would tear a husband from his wife’s side, make him important through participation in great enterprises, and teach him to think slightingly about the sacred vocation of marriage. Now one would tempt the wife and teach her to sigh under the heavy yoke of matrimony. Now one dangles before the husband and wife a community fellowship that makes the marriage relation unimportant. Now one would teach the married couple to enjoy life, taking the children and therewith the cares of life away from them, so that the parents can live for higher things. And then our expectations are tensed by something extraordinary, a new order of things to come, and we all, both married and unmarried, get a vacation, like children because the schoolmaster is moving, and are free until he gets settled. But we are no longer school children, and everyone shall give an account of himself before God, and the sacred obligation shall give every day its task^[34] and its responsibility. Where then do we find guidance if we do not work out our own soul’s salvation with fear and trembling, for thus we become earnest? (See also Works of Love, Hong 1995 p. 179)

• Soren Kierkegaard, Thoughts on Crucial Situations in Life, (1845) Swenson translation (1941) p. 65-66

An "observer" may say that the resolution of love was lacking because the marriage didn't work out, but how does the observer know that? Perhaps "it wanted a rebirth of erotic love" or of "earnestness".^[35] A poet looks for the "rare individual" to demonstrate love's rebirth. Kierkegaard almost married Regine Olsen but changed his mind. Perhaps he wanted her to help him in his vocation as a writer, just as Lillian Marvin Swenson helped her husband David and Edna H. Hong helped Howard V Hong later in life. He used that experience to build himself up rather than tear himself down. He places the responsibility on the individual listener, reader, watcher, or "doer".^[36] He stated his idea of hope and courage in the face of doubt in his Journals and again in this book.

There is a world of difference between proud courage which dares to fear the worst and the humble courage which dares to hope for the best. My Lord God, give me once more the courage to hope; merciful God let me hope once again, fructify my barren and infertile mind. My doubt is terrible.-Nothing can withstand it-it is a cursed hunger and I can swallow up every argument, every consolation and sedative-I rush at 10,000 miles a second through every obstacle. It is a positive starting point for philosophy when Aristotle says that philosophy begins with wonder, not as in our day with doubt. Moreover, the world will learn that the thing is not to begin with the negative, and the reason why it has succeeded up to the present is that it has never really given itself over to the negative, and so has never seriously done what it said. Its doubt is mere child’s play. For the rights of understanding to be valid one must venture out into life, out on the sea and lift up one’s voice, even though God hears it not, and not stand on the shore and watch others fighting and struggling-only then does understanding acquire its official sanction, for to stand on one leg and prove God’s existence is a very different thing from going on one’s knees and thanking him. Soren Kierkegaard's Journals November 15, 1841^[37]

"Even if the appointed guide in the place where you live were incompetent, well, if you so choose, be the good listener who still benefits from his mediocre discourse." Kierkegaard continues, "And if the person speaking here is perhaps too young or perhaps expresses himself unclearly or his thought is unclear-well, my listener, then put the discourse aside, or, if you choose, do the great thing, be a good reader who benefits even from an inadequate discourse. Just as there is supposed to be a power of discourse that can almost work miracles, so there is also a listener’s power that can work miracles if the listener so chooses. That kind of listener is the earnest listener. He says, “I want to be built up,” and so he is built up.^[38] But the earnestness lies in the resolution." Three Discourses on Imaged Occasions, On the Occasion of a Wedding, Soren Kierkegaard, June 17, 1844, Hong 1993 p. 62

His book Either/Or discussed whether or not love can be deceived. Is it a good thing to find out you have been deceived, or is it something that makes you angry? Kierkegaard had already discussed anger in his Two Upbuilding Discourses, 1843 where he quoted the Epistle of James, Therefore, my beloved brethren, let every man be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger, because man’s anger does not work what is righteous before God. (James 1:17-22)^[39] Earlier in the same discourse, he had discussed equality. There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.^[40] He asks pointed questions: "Did the woman who was a sinner^[41] feel her guilt more deeply when the scribes were accusing her than when there was no accuser anymore and she stood alone before the Lord? But you also realize that the most dangerously deceived person is the one who is self-deceived, that the most dangerous condition is that of the one who is deceived by much knowledge, and, furthermore, that it is a lamentable weakness to have one’s consolation in another’s light-mindedness, but it is also a lamentable weakness to have one’s terror in another’s heavy-mindedness. Leave it solely to God-after all, he knows best how to take care of everything for one who becomes alone by seeking him."^[42]

Kierkegaard has been writing about the confession of sin before God, the confession of love for another before God and how an individual learns to make a resolution. Now he's writing about "death's decision" and the "earnestness"^[43] that death brings into the world. Death says, “I exist; if anyone wants to learn from me, then let him come to me.”^[44]

Many individuals want to be teachers of mankind, but Kierkegaard has emphasized the teachers that accompany man from one generation to another. He wrote of Abraham, Job, The Apostle Paul, Anna and Simeon as teachers of mankind in his Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses and Johann Goethe and Friedrich Hegel as teachers of aesthetics and ethics. But he's writing about the earnest confession before God, marriage, and death as teachers of another kind that accompanies mankind from generation to generation. Later, he uses the "lily of the field and the bird of the air"^[45] to teach what it means to be a human being; he calls them the "divinely appointed teachers".^[46]

Kierkegaard says, "Just as death’s decision is not definable by equality, so it is likewise not definable by inequality."^[47] Death is not the way all become equal but being able to go before God as a single individual is what creates equality for all since God shows no partiality and God has created death as the inexplicable.^[48][49]

Therefore, God doesn't deal with the crowd but with the single individual as the one having anxiety and worry. The king and the beggar are equal before God, and the beggar is no more to pray against the king than the king is to pray against the beggar. The same goes for the man and the woman.^[50] The highest His Imperial Highness is able to do, however, is to make the decision before God. The lowliest human being can also make his decision before God.^[51]

With regard to well-spent time in relation to the interruption of death, it is not essential whether the time was long or short; and with regard to the essential work in relation to the interruption of death, it is not essential whether the work was finished or only begun. With regard to the accidental, the length of time is the essential factor, as with happiness, for example-the end alone decides whether one has been happy. With incidental work, which is in the external, it is essential that the work be finished. But the essential work is not defined essentially by time and the external, insofar as death is the interruption. Earnestness, therefore, becomes the living of each day as if it were the last and also the first in a long life, and the choosing of work that does not depend on whether one is granted a lifetime to complete it well or only a brief time to have begun it well.

• Soren Kierkegaard, Three Discourses on Imagined Occasions, Hong p. 96

Kierkegaard published these discourses by himself in the usual edition of 525 copies, with only 175 sold by 1847. A second edition was published in 1875. He had already finished his concluding postscript and delivered it to Luno, his printer, by December 1845.^[52] The Corsair Affair occupied some of his time and caused him some anxiety after 1845. Later, on February 7, 1846, he wrote in his diary, "It is now my intention to qualify as a pastor. For several months, I have been praying to God to help me."^[53] He didn’t want to preach in a huge church but rather in a small church where he could speak to a single individual. He had already preached one sermon at Trinitatis Church in Copenhagen on February 24, 1844^[54][55] so he has some experience but is still full of imaginative constructions.^[56]

I have often imagined myself in a pastor’s place. If the crowds storm to hear him, if the great arch of the church cannot contain the great throngs and people even stand outside listening to him-well, honor and praise to one so gifted that his feelings are gripped, that he can talk as one inspired, inspired by the sight of the crowds, because where the crowd is there must be truth, inspired by the thought that there has to be a little for some, because there are a lot of people, and a lot of people with a little truth is surely truth-to me this would be impossible! But suppose it was a Sunday afternoon, the weather was gloomy and miserable, the winter storm emptied the streets, everyone who had a warm apartment let God wait in the church for better weather-if there were sitting in the empty church a couple of poor women who had no heat in the apartment and could just as well freeze in the church, indeed, I could talk both them and myself warm! I have often imagined myself beside a grave. If all the people of honor and distinction were assembled there, if solemnity pervaded the whole great throng-well, honor and praise to one so gifted that he could add to the solemnity by being prompted to be the interpreter of the throng, to be the expression for the truth of sorrow-I could not do it! But if it was a poor hearse and it was accompanied by no one but a poor old woman, the widow of the dead man, who had never before experienced having her husband go away without taking her along-if she were to ask me, on my honor I would give a funeral oration as well as anyone. Soren Kierkegaard, Journals and Papers V 5948 (Pap. VII A 176) 1846 p. 367-368 Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits, 1847, Hong

David F. Swenson translated many of Kierkegaard's works into English and helped introduce him to the English reading public as early as 1916. His translation was published in 1941. He wrote a short introduction stating that "God is a person; His will is the everlasting distinction between righteousness and unrighteousness, good and evil; it is goodness and love. Love and righteousness do not attach to impersonal things or essences; the idea of good is not good."^[57] Swenson discussed this same book again when he translated Kierkegaard's Edifying Discourses in 1945. He said, "Only in this final group of discourses, which, while outside the eighteen, essentially belong with them (Thoughts on Crucial Situations in Human Life), which appeared in 1845 and was written to accompany the Postscript has God become a person, and the Christian faith is a concrete personal attitude."^[58]

Walter Lowrie reminds the reader that Kierkegaard has said, 'With my right hand, I held out the Edifying Discourses, with my left the aesthetic works, and all grasped with the right hand what I held in my left.’ This would pair right and left as Three Discourses on Imagined Occasions and Stages on Life’s Way, then Three Discourses in Various Spirits with A Literary Review, and The Lilies of the Field and the Birds of the Air with Either/Or, 2nd edition.^[59] He indicates a plan to Kierkegaard's writing.

Howard V. Hong said Kierkegaard had “seeds for more than six discourses in mind: three on Peter’s denial of Christ, three on the Canaanite woman, and two on suffering as guilty or innocent, as well as funeral addresses to the king’s deceased valet and for the prophetess Anna. He pared this down to the Three Imagined Discourses published here in 1845.^[60]

John Gates barely mentions the Imagined Discourses in his book on the life of Kierkegaard, but he does see it as a turning point in the development of his vocation and gives an insight into his manner of writing.

On the day before the publication of Stages on Life’s Way, Kierkegaard had published a book under his own name, entitled Three Occasional Discourses. His prolific authorship in these years was due in part to the tremendous urge of his creative genius and in part to his serious purpose to confront men with Christianity. Such productivity represented a vast amount of sheer, grinding hard work. He rose every morning, gave thanks to God, and then to work, with time off only for meals and his midday walk. Sometimes he interrupted work in the evening to appear at the theater for about ten minutes to maintain the fiction that he was a loafer.^[61] At a set time in the evening he stopped his work, again gave thanks to God, and so to bed and to sleep. Writing had become his vocation, and he pursued it with single-minded devotion." The Life and Thought of Kierkegaard for Everyman, by John A Gates 1960 p. 91-93^[62]

Gregor Malantschuk said Kierkegaard's first eighteen discourses were about resignation. "The individual learns in everything to bend his will to God and to endure patiently his destiny. Then he published Three Discourses on Imagined Occasions, the first of which treats man's aspiration toward God and his meeting with God and gives a deep insight into the development of man's conception of God. The second discusses the gravity of the wedding vow and the responsibility of God in establishing a marriage. The last is a solemn, enlightening meditation on death." Malantschuk goes on to say, "None of these discourses has yet arrived at the distinctively Christian. For this there must first be a long preparation."^[63]

Wikiquote has quotations related to Three Discourses on Imagined Occasions.

• Quotations related to Three Discourses on Imagined Occasions at Wikiquote
• Love Conquers All Complete text, Swenson translation
• Three Discourses on Imagined Occasions Princeton University Press
• Thoughts on crucial situations in human life; three discourses on imagined occasions, by Søren Kierkegaard, translated from the Danish by David F. Swenson, edited by Lillian Marvin Swenson Haithi trust
• Prefaces and Writing Sampler: And, Three Discourses on Imagined Occasions edited by Robert L. Perkins Mercer University Press, 2006
• David F Swenson, The Category of the Unknowable (September 14, 1905) archive.org
• Anthony Storm on Kierkegaard's Three Discourses on Imagined Occasions