Date: Thu, 3 Sep 1998 22:52:38 -0400 (EDT)



	I came across Kierkegaard recently and I was reminded how much
I tend to read him with a smile. This admission for instance which it
would be wrong to assume is ironic and so easily reversed for a happy
ending, for the hoped for reward of some comfort: "Alas, it is only too
well understood by the few who know me, and, I must admit, also known
to myself: I am a depraved and corrupt individual [...] Socrates is my
only comfort" (_Concluding Unscientific Postcript_ pg. 144). Yes, there
can be no irony when understood-reversals attempt to shake a mask, and
when his opposition to
himself is characterized by a line like, "Seriousness consist precisely in
having this honest suspicion of thyself, treating thyself as a
suspicous character" (_For Self-Examination_ pg. 68). And, in
character, he brags about  his crafty sensibility. A Socratic oath
where the rule consist in "know thyself," is not so much interpreted,
as if some dead guy's writing required a commentary, but acted upon
when, "instead of learning by living how to recall the life of the
dead, one goes and tries to learn from the dead, apprehended as if they
never lived, how one should live -- as if one were already dead"
(_CUP_ pg. 141). This thread could get hopeless Rick.

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