In previous works Kierkegaard had already intimated that what furnished man the impetus to rise into the highest sphere and to assail passionately and incessantly the barrier of the paradox, or else caused him to lapse into "demonic despair," was the consciousness of sin. In the book Begrebet Angest "The Concept of Sin," he now attempts with an infinite and laborious subtlety to explain the nature of sin. Its origin is found in the "sympathetic antipathy" of Dread—that force which at one and the same time attracts and repels from the suspected danger of a fall and is present even in the state of innocence, in children. It finally results in a kind of "dizziness" which is fatal. Yet, so Kierkegaard contends, the "fall" of man is, in every single instance, due to a definite act of the will, a "leap"—which seems a patent contradiction.
To the modern reader, this is the least palatable of Kierkegaard's works, conceived as it is with a sovereign and almost medieval disregard of the predisposing undeniable factors of environment and heredity (which, to be sure, poorly fit his notion of the absolute responsibility of the individual). Its somberness is redeemed, to a certain degree, by a series of marvelous observations, drawn from history and literature, on the various phases and manifestations of Dread in human life.
On the same day as the book just discussed there appeared, as a "counter-irritant," the hilariously exuberant Forord "Forewords," a collection of some eight playful but vicious attacks, in the form of prefaces, on various foolish manifestations of Hegelianism in Denmark. They are aimed chiefly at the high-priest of the "system," the poet Johan Ludvig Heiberg who, as the arbiter elegantiarum of the times had presumed to review, with a plentiful lack of insight, Kierkegaard's activity. But some of the most telling shots are fired at a number of the individualist Kierkegaard's pet aversions.
His next great work, Stadier paa Livets Vei "Stages on Life's Road," forms a sort of resume of the results so far gained. The three "spheres" are more clearly elaborated.
The æsthetic sphere is represented existentially by the incomparable In Vino Veritas, generally called "The Banquet," from a purely literary point of view the most perfect of Kierkegaard's works, which, if written in one of the great languages of Europe, would have procured him world fame. Composed in direct emulation of Plato's immortal Symposion, it bears comparison with it as well as any modern composition can.[6] Indeed, it excels Plato's work in subtlety, richness, and refined humor. To be sure, Kierkegaard has charged his creation with such romantic super-abundance of delicate observations and rococo ornament that the whole comes dangerously near being improbable; whereas the older work stands solidly in reality.
It is with definite purpose that the theme of the speeches of the five participants in the banquet is love, i.e., the relation of the two sexes in love; for it is there the main battle between the æsthetic and the ethical view of life must be fought out. Accordingly, Judge William, to whom the last idyllic pages of "The Banquet" again introduce us, in the second part breaks another shaft in defense of marriage, which in the ethical view of life is the typical realization of the "general law." Love exists also for the ethical individual. In fact, love and no other consideration whatsoever can justify marriage. But whereas to the æsthetic individual love is merely eroticism, viz., a passing self-indulgence without any obligation, the ethical individual attaches to himself the woman of his choice by an act of volition, for better or for worse, and by his marriage vow incurs an obligation to society. Marriage is thus a synthesis of love and duty. A pity only that Kierkegaard's astonishingly low evaluation of woman utterly mars what would otherwise be a classic defense of marriage.
The religious sphere is shown forth in the third part, Skyldig—Ikke-Skyldig "Guilty—Not-Guilty," with the apt subtitle "A History of Woe." Working over, for the third time, and in the most intense fashion, his own unsuccessful attempt to "realize the general law," i.e., by marrying, he here presents in the form of a diary the essential facts of his own engagement, but in darker colors than in "Repetition." It is broken because of religious incompatibility and the lover's unconquerable melancholy; and by his voluntary renunciation, coupled with acute suffering through his sense of guilt for his act, he is driven up to an approximation of the religious sphere. Not unjustly, Kierkegaard himself regarded this as the richest of his works.
One may say that "Guilty—Not-Guilty" corresponds to Kierkegaard's own development at this stage. Christianity is still above him. How may it be attained? This is the grand theme of the huge book whimsically named "Final Unscientific Postscript to the Philosophical Trifles," Afsluttende Uvidenskabelig Efterskrift (1846): "How shall I become a Christian, I, Johannes Climacus, born in this city, thirty years of age, and not in any way different from the ordinary run of men"?
Following up the results gained in the "Trifles," the subjectivity of faith is established once for all: it is not to be attained by swearing to any set of dogmas, not even Scripture; for who will vouch for its being an absolutely reliable and inspired account of Christ? Besides, as Lessing had demonstrated conclusively: historic facts never can become the proof of eternal verities. Nor can the existence of the Church through the ages furnish any guarantee for faith—straight counter to the opinion, held by Kierkegaard's famous contemporary Grundtvig—any more than can mere contemporaneousness establish a guarantee for those living at the beginning. To sum up: "One who has an objective Christianity and nothing else, he is eo ipso a heathen." For the same reason, "philosophic speculation" is not the proper approach, since it seeks to understand Christianity objectively, as an historic phenomenon—which rules it out from the start.
It is only by a decisive "leap," from objective thinking into subjective faith, with the consciousness of sin as the driving power, that the individual may realize (we would say, attain) Christianity. Nor is it gained once for all, but must ever be maintained by passionately assailing the paradox of faith, which is, that one's eternal salvation is based on an historic fact. The main thing always is the "how," not the "what." Kierkegaard goes so far as to say that he who with fervency and inwardness prays to some false god is to be preferred to him who worships the true god, but without the passion of devotion.