Kierkegaard: Direct Communication And Indirect Communication

However, if indirect communication is framed and supported by direct communication, at the same time it is true that indirect communication must necessarily maintains a priority over direct communication within Kierkegaard's thought. If this is not necessarily because of a matter of logical necessity - such as when an element within a pair must necessarily precede or follow the other - it is rather because of a matter of the priority of what indirect communication conveys. In this regard, Kierkegaard writes that 'Christ has been abolished altogether, thrown out and his teaching taken over, and finally he is almost regarded as one regards an anonymous writer: the teaching is the principal thing [...] this is why people delude themselves into

In this sense, even though Christianity is not essentially a doctrine, nonetheless it contains a doctrine but this does not constitute the core and reason of being of the Christian faith. Accordingly, doctrinal information concerning Christianity must be employed with upbuilding in mind, lest they become the center of the matter, thereby transforming Christianity in something that is not – namely, the communication of a certain doctrine regarding human beings and the world they live in.

In conclusion, direct communication can be used against those caught in the delusion of having become human. This, happens both at the level of understanding what being a Christian requires, hence on the level of the social practices which

But man shrewdly and knavishly invented a new kind of Christianity [...] what Christianity wants is the following of Christ. What man does not want is suffering […] so he dispenses with "following," and consequently with suffering' -, as well as on the level of attacking a false understanding of which shape the ideal informing and inspiring such social practices should take - 'when what has to be attained by preaching and teaching Christianity is an agreeable, a pleasurable life in a position of prestige, then the picture of Christ must be altered considerably [...] the severity which is inseparable from the seriousness of eternity, that must go. Christ thus becomes a languishing figure, the impersonation of insipid human kindliness’ – this, discloses a depth of irony's action which Lear does not explictly acknowledge. In this sense, Kierkegaard's attack upon Christendom is an attempt at direct communication in that it is directly communicating the information that those who are born within Christendom are not to be automatically considered as Christian because of this. Notwithstanding its directness, such communicative effort is no less ironically charged than any of Kierkegaard's indirect efforts. It is Kierkegaard’s contention that existing is something that