1. Søren Kierkegaard (1813-55)

1.1. Kierkegaard’s Analysis of Human Existence

Søren Kierkegaard asked himself the question, “What is the human being?” His answer was, “A human being is spirit. But what is spirit? Spirit is the self. But what is the self? The self is a relation that relates itself to itself.” ⁶ Then, who is it that establishes such a relation? It must be a third party, a reality other than one’s own self, and that reality is none other than God Himself. Therefore, Kierkegaard concluded, the original self is the self that stands before God.

Yet, human beings, who should thus live in a relationship with God, have become separated from God. Kierkegaard explained the nature of that separation, in his analysis of Genesis outlined in his book, The Concept of Dread, as follows: In the beginning, Adam was in a state of peace and comfort, but at the same time, he was in a state of dread (Angst). When God told Adam, “of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat” (Gen. 2:17), the possibility of freedom was awakened within Adam. This possibility of freedom caused Adam an extreme sense of dread. As Adam looked into the abyss of freedom, he became dizzy and clung to his own self. That was the precise moment when the original sin first came into being.

As a result, a division arose in the “relation that relates itself to itself,” and human beings fell into despair (Verzweifelung). People tried to remove this despair, regarding it as something that has come from the outside, but they can never remove it with such an understanding. Only through faith, by rediscovering their relationship to God, can they restore their original relationship to themselves, and escape from despair.

Kierkegaard criticized the public for its irresponsibility and lack of conscience, saying, “A public is everything and nothing, the most dangerous of all powers and the most insignificant.” ⁷ He asserted that, in order for people to actualize their true human nature, they must depart from the world of the public and stand before God all by themselves―each as an individual. He explained the stages through which people return to their original selves in terms of three stages of existence.

The first stage is the stage of “aesthetic existence.” Persons in this stage simply follow their sensual desires exactly as they are, and live just as they please. The purpose of this kind of life is pleasure. The position of someone in the stage of aesthetic existence is that of a seducer, a pursuer of erotic love. But since the moment of pleasure is not something that can be maintained continuously, persons in the aesthetic stage are trapped by fatigue and dread. They become frustrated and fall into despair―but, through their making a decision they proceed to the next stage.

The second stage is that of “ethical existence.” Persons in this stage seek to live according to their conscience, with good and evil as their standard of judgment. They seek to live as good citizens with a sense of responsibility and duty. Yet, no matter how hard they may try, they can not live totally in accordance with their conscience. So, they become frustrated and fall into despair. Again, through making a decision they can proceed to the next stage.

The third stage is that of “religious existence.” Here, each person stands alone, with faith in the presence of God; only by doing so can the person become a true existential being. In order to enter this stage, a leap of faith is required. Such a leap is possible if one believes in a paradox that can not be understood with the intellect. It is to believe that which is irrational, such as Abraham’s obedience to God’s commandment to offer his son Isaac as a sacrifice, or the irrational statement that the eternal God became incarnate in the finite time spectrum and became a man (Jesus). Only by such a leap of faith can people truly recover their relationship to God. Kierkegaard considered. Abraham’s obedience to God’s commandment to offer his son Isaac as a sacrifice, which seems contrary to any sense of human ethics, as a typical model of the religious life.

This being the case, when individuals who have become true existences centered on God―in other words, who have become their original selves―come to love one another, through the mediation of God, by following Jesus’ words to “love your neighbor as yourself,” only then, said Kierkegaard, through such “works of love,” can a true society be established.

1.2. A Unification Thought Appraisal of Kierkegaard’s View of the Human Being

According to Kierkegaard, as people separated from God, a division arose in the “relation that relates itself to itself,” causing people to fall into despair. From the perspective of Unification Thought, this “relation that relates itself to itself” can be regarded as the relation between one’s mind and body or the relation between one’s spirit mind and physical mind. This means that, as human beings are separated from God, our mind and body have become divided. This implies that the mind and body, in an original being, are united, centering on God. Then, how can one’s mind and body become one? This is possible once the spirit mind and the physical mind restore their proper relationship of subject and object, and perform harmonious give and receive action.

Søren Kierkegaard said that “when someone stands before God as an individual,” that person stands in an absolute relationship to the Absolute Being (or God). This corresponds to the concept of a “being of individuality” referred to in Unification Thought. Yet, Kierkegaard did not explain why this individual can be considered to be absolute. From the Unification Thought perspective, the reason why a human being, as a “being of individuality,” can be considered as absolute is that a human being resembles an Individual Image in God, the Absolute Being. Thus, Kierkegaard’s views of a human being as a “relation that relates itself to itself” and as an “individual” correspond easily to the “united being of mind and body” and the “being of individuality,” respectively, as found in Unification Thought.

Nevertheless, this is not all there is to the original human nature. The most essential aspect of the original human nature is that of heart. Moreover, it would only be a partial understanding to say that a person stands before God alone as an individual, namely as a being of individuality. When man and woman get married and stand before God as husband and wife, they truly become perfect as human beings, namely as a harmonious couple of yang and yin. They are also beings of logos and creativity. Moreover, they are beings with position, endowed with both the nature of a subject and the nature of an object. An “individual” standing before God, as proposed by Kierkegaard, although sincere, is but a solitary and lonely figure.

Why have human beings become separated from God? Unless the cause of this separation is clarified, it will be impossible for one to return to one’s original self, that is, to the person of the original ideal of God. Kierkegaard said that Adam fell into sin through the dread that arose from the possibility of freedom. Can this be true? According to the Divine Principle, neither freedom nor dread was the cause of the human fall. The first human ancestors, Adam and Eve, did not observe God’s Word, but followed the temptation of the Archangel instead, thus misdirecting their love. The force of the non-principled love that arose as a result is what made them fall away from God. As Adam and Eve began to deviate from the right path, in violation of the Word of God, the freedom of their original mind is what gave rise to their dread, the dread of having violated God’s Word. Thus, freedom and dread worked, instead, in the direction of trying to prevent them from deviating. Yet, the power of their non-principled love suppressed this feeling of dread, making them cross the line of the fall. As a result, human beings became separated from God, and dread and despair came into being due to the guilt they experienced as a result of their disobedience to God’s Word, and their separation from the love of God. Accordingly, unless the problem of the fall is correctly solved, it is impossible to fundamentally solve people’s dread and despair.

Kierkegaard’s concept of God’s love is also ambiguous. God’s love arises from Heart, which is the limitless emotional impulse to warmly give everything to His object partners. When God’s love appears on earth, it manifests as various directional loves. In a family, it manifests as the directional, divisional loves of parents’ love for children, husband’s and wife’s mutual love, brothers’ and sisters’ love, and children’s love for parents. When these basic loves are extended or expanded in various ways, they manifest as one’s love for humankind, one’s love for one’s nation, one’s love for one’s neighbors, one’s love for animals, one’s love for nature, and so on. Thus, God’s love is not an ambiguous love, but rather it appears as various concrete and directional expressions of love.

Kierkegaard asserted that in order for us to recover our authentic state we must fight against the falsity of the crowd and return to God. This reflects his own personal path in seeking to encounter God, a path which he walked while enduring persecution and ridicule from his contemporaries. It was, moreover, his appeal to the religious people of his time to become true persons of faith. His efforts should be deeply appreciated.

At the age of twenty four Kierkegaard fell in love with, Regina Olsen, who was fourteen, and three years later became engaged to her. The next year, however, out of fear that he might plunge her into unhappiness through marriage, he unilaterally broke off the engagement and began looking for a love of a higher dimension than mere romantic love. Because of this, he was criticized by his society. From the viewpoint of Unification Thought, we can understand that his desire was to realize a true love between man and woman centered on God, after having perfected his character. It can be said that the original image of the human being pursued by Kierkegaard was basically in accord with Unification Thought in terms of its direction.