Det Teologiske Fakultet > Formidling > eTEOL - elektronisk nyhedsbrev > Artikler > februar2010 > An Australian
An Australian Kierkegaardian in Copenhagen
Patrick Stokes
"So have you seen Fred and Mary yet?"
If only I had a krone for every time someone has asked me that question in the last two years. "Fred and Mary," of course, are Kronprins Frederik and Kronprinsesse Mary, and the question is one our friends and family back in Australia always ask; they're not being disrespectful to the royal family, they're just trying to place where we are in the world and what our lives here are like. In the Australian imagination, Denmark is a jumble of associations: the Little Mermaid, Jørgen Utzon designing the Sydney Opera House, depressing but well-made movies, good TV crime dramas (Rejseholdet and Ørnen were huge back home), little butter cookies that come in a tin, and, most of all these days, "our Fred and Mary." Beyond that, Aussies are a little fuzzy about the place. Danes, for their part, always seem a little surprised to be meeting an Australian at all. It seems an unthinkably long way from Denmark.
Since February 2008 I've been working at the Søren Kierkegaard Research Centre as a postdoctoral fellow (funded by the Forskningsråd for Kultur og Kommunikation), having previously been at the Hong Kierkegaard Library at St Olaf College in Minnesota. I did my PhD on Kierkegaard in Australia, at the University of Melbourne. Working on Kierkegaard in Australia can be a lonely experience; there are only a handful of Kierkegaard scholars in Australia and New Zealand and very few philosophy or theology departments there teach his work. Even internationally, the Kierkegaard Studies community is relatively small, but also quite close-knit. Kierkegaard may be a niche topic, but it offers the opportunity to see the world and work with some very passionate and dedicated researchers around the world, from Kyoto to Montreal and all sorts of places in between. Still, there's something special about working in Kierkegaard's home town.
I stumbled onto Kierkegaard by accident. Like many first-year undergraduates I went through a "Jean-Paul Sartre phase" and kept seeing the name "Kierkegaard" in his footnotes - a name I'd heard mentioned in a Monty Python sketch, but knew nothing else about. For some reason I felt compelled to follow it up and do some reading of my own. And I was hooked. Here was a philosopher who understood that we don't stop being human beings when we philosophize, that we can't abstract ourselves out of the task of living our lives. Here was someone who didn't simply tell the reader what to believe, but reminds us that we must decide for ourselves, that without a subjective, inward grasp of subjects like ethics and religion we have not really understood them at all. I've been reading Kierkegaard ever since, first in Howard and Edna Hong's English translations and more recently in Danish - a language Kierkegaard was passionately devoted to, even petitioning the King for permission to write his magisterial dissertation in Danish instead of Latin. His books are exhilarating, maddening, uplifting, exhausting, confusing, funny and incredibly illuminating.
My interest in Kierkegaard is primarily philosophical rather than theological, and my focus over the last few years has been on drawing insights from Kierkegaard's work that can contribute to ongoing philosophical discussions. My project in Copenhagen has focused on Kierkegaard's unique account of selfhood, which I've tried to bring into dialogue with contemporary discussions about the nature of personal identity - what makes us who we are and what unifies us across time with our past and future selves. It's an exciting topic and it's one that I think Kierkegaard has a lot of important things to say to. I'm convinced that Kierkegaard should not be read simply as a chapter in the history of philosophy, as a sort of dimly-remembered, slightly eccentric uncle of Heidegger's, but as a repository of penetrating psychological insight and philosophically astute understanding that mainstream philosophy has barely begun to utilize. I want, in short, to read Kierkegaard as someone with something to say to contemporary philosophy, not as a relic.
Still, to understand Kierkegaard's thought you must get to grips with both the man himself and the context of Denmark's Golden Age. Though he was something of an outsider in the intellectual circles of 1800s Copenhagen, Kierkegaard is nonetheless very much a product of the Late Idealist period immediately following Hegel's death - and a thoroughly københavnsk philosopher. The city is as much a character in his books as the pseudonyms he gives voice to. Working here has given me daily access to the historical side of Kierkegaard Studies and indeed to the history that's woven into the physical fabric of Copenhagen itself.
Perhaps that's the biggest difference between living in Australia and in Europe: while the history of Aboriginal Australia goes back at least 40,000 years, European colonization has only had a couple of hundred years to make its mark on a vast landscape, and in Australian cities there are very few reminders of life before the 20th century. Copenhagen, by contrast, wears its history elegantly. The past is always present here, from the buildings and statues down to the dusty old books from Kierkegaard's day and before that one can find in any antikvariat shop (every time I wander down Fiolstræde, our bookshelf gets a little more crowded...). Kierkegaard walked these same streets every day, often for hours at a time. During my own strolls through the inner city, I often find myself thinking that if Kierkegaard were here today he'd still know his way around. The neon and billboards (and the missing city walls) would surprise him, and he might scowl at the statues of Mynster and Martensen as he passed Vor Frue Kirke, but he'd still find his way from Gråbrødretorv to Gammel Strand with ease.
My wife Jess and I had visited Copenhagen once before, and knew right away we could easily live here. As a city, it's exactly the right size: big enough that there's always something to do, small enough to be comfortable. While it has a far smaller population than our home town of Melbourne we still get the feeling of living in a big city with a lot to offer. More than that, though, we love the relaxed feel of the place. Copenhagen life has an irresistibly pleasant pace and rhythm to it.
Sadly our time here is nearly up. It has been a rare and wonderful privilege to live in this delightful, stylish, graceful city, to work with the dedicated scholars who keep the Golden Age alive and to walk the streets Kierkegaard walked. We will always have fond memories of Copenhagen, and throughout her whole life our daughter will see the word "Frederiksberg" on her passport and be reminded she came into the world here, one of the last to be born in Frederiksberg Hospital in fact. The past is always present.
And no, I haven't seen Fred and Mary yet.