A few weeks ago, Kierkegaardian Essays: A Festschrift in Honour of George Pattison was released. Edited by Clare Carlisle and Steven Shakespeare, the book was conceived not only as a tribute to one of the finest Kierkegaard scholars of our time—George Pattison, who held the Lady Margaret Professorship of Divinity at Oxford from 2004-2013—but also as a way of thinking through the meaning of the adjective “Kierkegaardian.”
Søren Kierkegaard argued that the most essential truths come to light by asking "How…?" This innovative collection of essays by leading scholars focuses on this questioning "How?", asking how we should relate to ourselves, to others, and to God; how we should be in the world; how we can become human. The result is a searching, original colloquium on what it means to be Kierkegaardian in the 21st century.
I’ll say more about my contribution to this volume in a moment. But first a few thoughts about George, who was my Doktovater at Oxford. It goes without saying that George is an excellent scholar, but he also has a droll sense of humor. I saw him lecture on many occasions at Oxford, though a talk he gave in Copenhagen remains noteworthy. I can’t remember the exact theme—it has been roughly fifteen years—but he spoke from the point of view of a pseudonym. It was an iconoclastic move, both in terms of the audience’s expectations and the standards of academic practice. Still, as usual, George’s creativity and insight were well received, and I remember being astonished that he would dare such a thing. Afterwards, during a reception, I approached George and said, “That was great. I would love to write something like that one day, though now is probably not the right time.” He took a sip from his drink, looked at me, and simply replied: “Quite right.”
Doubtless he was chuckling at my naïveté, but this exchange also indicates George’s commitment to being a good supervisor. At Oxford in the mid- to late-2000s, there were no guarantees about the role and commitment-level of one’s doctoral supervisor. But George was always conscientious. At the beginning of each term, he would schedule a time to meet, and he kept his appointments unfailingly. He also held regular term-time seminars at Christ Church, which provided additional opportunities to discuss whatever seemed important—philosophy, theology, the new arrivals at the Phoenix Picturehouse in Jericho.
At the same time, however, George was not a meddler, much less a control freak. He never fussed over my dissertation but, in good Kierkegaardian fashion, preferred to ask questions. Oftentimes these questions would answer themselves. At one point, when I told him that I suspected that Kierkegaard’s family had connections to the Moravian community of Herrnhut, he listened with interest, wondering if there would be any records of such a relationship. I mentioned that the Unitätsarchiv der Evangelischen Bruder-Unitat was located in Saxony and would likely contain documents pertaining to Moravian missions in Denmark. His response: “Guess you need to go Germany.”
This attitude is, I suppose, classically British—responsible and stoical, but with a wry grin. And yet, I really think that it is just as rooted in George’s love of scholarship. He is, in many ways, a scholar’s scholar—the kind of person who would read and talk about Hegel, Dostoevsky, and Heidegger no matter his station in life. With that in mind, some might say that George is a dying breed, and I wouldn’t disagree. But one could just as easily that he’s truly “Kierkegaardian.”
In any case, my contribution to Kierkegaardian Essays is entitled “Melancholy and Modernity,” and it’s an attempt to think through the problem of “melancholy” (and the related concept of “depression”) in the context smartphones and social media. As I summarize:
The goal of this essay…is to examine the concept of melancholy in Kierkegaard’s oeuvre. On the one hand, it will be argued that to be a Kierkegaardian is never to be comfortable or satisfied. On the other hand, this sense of melancholic dissatisfaction is not an end in itself. As will be seen, Kierkegaard treats melancholy as critical for spiritual upbuilding, and thus it is an important marker on the path to genuine happiness—a point worth keeping in mind as the social and psychological challenges of the Digital Age continue to surface.
Hopefully this piece will help clarify why Kierkegaard’s moniker “the melancholy Dane” need not be seen as a slight. Perhaps it can be suggest a certain awareness or perspicuity in Kierkegaard’s thinking, which could be an important resource as we cope with an era marked by a much-discussed “mental health crisis.”
There's a section I really quite like and think of often at the end of chapter four of "Purity of Heart is to Will One Thing": "And in life there is no visible teacher who encourages the good pupil, for we are all pupils. If the good pupil keeps on, he must find the encouragement in himself." Wise, and difficult, as always. But I do think that having had good teachers and good supervisors, whose voice carries through with us into our "encouragement to keep going" is so important. And of course, SK's own upbuilding discourses, on the way to that encouragement..