21
A Reflection on Parliamentary Democracy
Introduction
In this essay, I aim to answer the following set of questions: Is it possible to describe parliamentary democracy—somewhat ideal typically—as indirect communication? Is it possible to transfer this concept, which Søren Kierkegaard developed as part of his existential dialectics, to the level of collective decision-making? And is it possible to assign to parliamentary democracy similar Christian qualities which Kierkegaard assigns to the notion of indirect communication?1077
It may be rightfully assumed that Kierkegaard was skeptical about what Samuel Huntington called the “first wave of democratization”1078 in the modernizing nineteenth century.1079 I claim, however, that Kierkegaard’s democratic skepticism did not prevent him from developing concepts which—in a strange dialectic way—are valuable in a twenty-first-century reflection on the idea of parliamentary democracy. In my view, the idea of indirect communication is such a concept. In order to illustrate that the concept of indirect communication correlates with the idea of parliamentary democracy, I will proceed in two steps: First, I will explain some important features of Kierkegaard’s understanding of indirect communication. I am not going to deal comprehensively with either Kierkegaard’s own writings on the subject nor the extensive secondary literature on Kierkegaard’s ideas on communication. Rather, I will be selective, exemplifying only those points which seem valuable for my overall argument. Second, I will relate Kierkegaard’s concept of indirect communication to elements of parliamentary democracy as described by a group of twentieth- and twenty-first-century European writers as diverse as Carl Schmitt, Jürgen Habermas, and Kari Palonen. My essay aims to move forward the presumptuous systematic claim that the concept of indirect communication describes one of the main features of parliamentary democracy—namely, that its strength lies in its weakness.
Kierkegaard on Indirect Communication
Socrates
According to Marius Timmann Mjaaland, the concept of indirect communication is rooted in Kierkegaard’s treatment of Socrates.1080 If we follow Kierkegaard, being “Socratic” means the art of helping others to give birth to the truth in their lives. It means the art of midwifery in the context of ideas, beliefs, cognitive reasoning or, more specifically, in the context of truth claims. According to Kierkegaard, Socrates did not speak plainly of the truth in front of his pupils. The process of “appropriating truth,”1081 as Mjaaland calls it, is more complicated: as a mother needs to give birth to her child herself with the midwife only as her assistance, so each and everyone needs to give birth to the truth him- or herself, with the teacher only as an assistant. Kierkegaard writes in the Philosophical Fragments: “Because I can discover my own untruth only by myself, because only when I discover it is it discovered, not before, even though the whole world knew it.”1082 It is no use when others tell me what I need to know about myself and the world. I have to undergo the labor pains of finding the truth myself.
The art of Socratic midwifery, thus, consists of a dialectic, negative notion. From the teacher’s perspective, this means withholding direct, key information in order to enable the other person to gain this information indirectly for him- or herself. From the student’s perspective, this means not expecting direct installments of truth from someone else but probing the information before me for its worth and deeper meaning. The relationship between the teacher and the student is not one in which the teacher is the owner of truth and the student is the learner of truth. There is no direct flow of information between the two of them: “There is no direct relation between the teacher and the learner.”1083 Kierkegaard refers to this Socratic art of midwifery in the following way: “At most he [Socrates] was capable of artistically, maieutically helping another person negatively to the same view.”1084 This willful communicative “ambiguity,” as Turnbull calls it,1085 has nothing to do with conscious lying or malign deception with the aim of hurting other people or gaining a personal advantage. Rather, cognitive midwifery fulfills a didactic purpose, because it is “a very fruitful strategy for removing self-deception,” as Aumann writes.1086
Neither the student, pupil, follower, disciple, etc., nor the teacher, instructor, master, etc., will come into full possession of the gift which is transferred in this midwifery fashion. Kierkegaard stresses on numerous occasions that he is not interested in a static knowledge of the truth in which the process of seeking truth has come to a standstill and the transfer from one to the other has turned into a monotonous stream. Kierkegaard aims for a dynamic process: “One who is existing is continually in the process of becoming; the actually existing subjective thinker, thinking, continually reproduces this in his existence and invests all his thinking in becoming.”1087 Midwifery, thus, is not the art of helping others to find and possess truth, but rather it is supporting others in their never-ending story of growth and becoming. The Socratic art, thus, is the appropriate way to grow intellectually and emotionally in an age of open-ended processes, ever more contingent social settings and a human condition marked by fluidity and change: “The perpetual process of becoming is the uncertainty of earthly life, in which everything is uncertain”1088—so Kierkegaard.
Helping others to grow and to learn entails another dimension. “In order to truly help someone else,”1089 one more element needs to be added. This is the dimension of serving. The hierarchy between the teacher and the student is neither top down nor is it simply bottom up. The roles of teacher and learner are not simply reversed, they are inversed. The hierarchy which exists between the two is inverted.1090 The teacher draws his or her legitimacy as teacher not from the fact that he possesses superior “Herrschaftswissen” or that tradition is on his or her side or that the student admires him or her. Rather, their task as a teacher is to serve their students while still remaining the teacher. The teacher teaches with authority but this authority lasts only so long as it is grounded in an act of true service. In Kierkegaard’s own words: “But all true helping begins with a humbling. The helper must first humble himself under the person he wants to help and thereby understand that to help is not to dominate but to serve, that to help is not to be the most dominating but the most patient, that to help is a willingness for the time being to put up with being in the wrong and not understanding what the other understands.”1091
The true (religious) teacher goes even so far that he not only humbles himself under the student but that he accepts to be denounced and ridiculed—not necessarily by the student, but by the crowd surrounding both of them. Everyone who communicates truthfully about the truth may become subject to this kind of scorn. Kierkegaard writes about “authentic religious teachers”: So long as they live, they are being “insulted, persecuted, laughed to scorn, mocked, spat upon.”1092 Thus, true teachers suffer as well as they serve. But in this suffering lies also the victory, as “in this world the truth is victorious only by suffering.”1093 Indirect communication, therefore, begins by an act of true service and humility on behalf of the teacher.
Jesus Christ
It should have become clear by now that the Socratic element here has been supplemented by a second element. This is the christological idea of, as Taylor puts it, “God’s incarnation in the historical figure of Jesus.”1094 Marius Mjaaland states that “Kierkegaard applies the Socratic method to the Christian claim of truth,”1095 thereby also putting a distance between himself and the historical Socrates. “Christ thus becomes the master of maieutics and the final reason for using the maieutic method.”1096 In the end, Christ appears to be the true midwife.
This christological dimension may be exemplified through the metaphor of the servant, which for Kierkegaard, exemplifies the religious ethical dimension of the God-human paradox, the rationally absurd idea that God became human in the incarnated body of Jesus Christ. Kierkegaard uses this metaphor regularly when he—directly or indirectly—speaks of Jesus Christ as the kenotic way of God’s earthly presence. This means: Christ is characterized not through his wisdom, beauty, power, or purity. According to Kierkegaard, Christ’s chief characteristic is his lowliness, his kenosis: a humility and powerlessness which are condensed in the mere fact that he became incarnate as a human being. In Practice in Christianity Kierkegaard refers to Christ as “God-man,”1097 both God and human. As such he—Christ—was a person who caused immense “offense”1098 because he refused to be transparent as divine and reveal himself directly as God’s son. Indeed, it was precisely his lowliness as a normal human being and his death on the cross coupled with the claim to be God’s son which caused “offense”: “The possibility of offense, it is easy to see, is in relation to lowliness. Just as being the God-man, that it would mean suffering a criminal’s punishment, is an occasion for offense, so is it also an occasion for offense to be sent out by the Father’s only begotten Son, that it will mean being persecuted, cast out from society, and finally put to death—and in such a way that everyone who does it will think he is doing God a service.”1099
In Philosophical Fragments, Kierkegaard recalls the (heretic) Docetic teaching in early Christian thought when he writes that “the servant form is not something put on but is actual, not a parastatic but an actual body.”1100 God really did become human in Christ and this human being really did live the life of a servant, not of a master. Being a servant meant for God that “he was a lowly human being, a lowly man who did not set himself off from the human throng either by soft raiment or by any other earthly advantage and was not distinguishable to other human beings, not even to the countless legions of angels he left behind when he humbled himself.”1101
All this makes the communicative act between God and humankind something rather complicated. We are not talking about “completely direct paragraph-communication or professor-communication.”1102 The God whose son is Jesus Christ also does not use “shock and awe” techniques in order to draw people to his side. God does not reveal Godself directly. More so: God specifically refuses to communicate directly. God’s presence is indirect, existential: God’s spirit is present in the weakness of a human body. God’s divinity is present in a human being. God’s magnitude is present in the meekness of one historical individual. Direct communication is refused, thereby a choice has to be made: “There is no direct communication and no direct reception: there is a choice.”1103 This is a choice which may or may not lead to faith in the source of this indirect communication, the teacher. Teacher and teaching are one and the same,1104 and the relationship to the student is complicated by the fact that the teacher—Christ—has no exterior features that make him desirable or a superior charismatic gift that turns him into a magnet for possible followers. You have faith in him, the “offense,” or you do not.
This has direct consequences for the authority and the power of the one who communicates in the name of God, indirectly. In this context, authority and power can only be framed in terms of a paradox as we saw earlier on.1105 Kierkegaard exemplifies this further in an essay entitled “The Difference between a Genius and an Apostle” in the following way: “Between God and a human being, then, there is and remains an eternal essential qualitative difference. The paradoxical-religious relation . . . appears when God appoints a specific human being to have divine authority.”1106 Communicating the truth can never be done with the help of power but only “by means of powerlessness.”1107 I agree with Mjaaland when he writes: “The communicator is the powerful one in so far as he has superior knowledge about the almighty God. Such a powerful position implies that the violent (ab)use of spiritual power is a significant problem, a problem Kierkegaard is well aware of. Thus, in order to communicate knowledge to others, he claims that the communicator ought to totally renounce his own power in order to ‘suffer’ the truth.”1108 The archetype of this form of indirect communication is Jesus Christ. As shown above Christ is the indirect communicator per se. His incarnation as the divine becoming mortal flesh sets a pattern for every kind of communication, verbal or nonverbal. This communication needs to be humble, willing to confront the paradoxical, and open to let go of any superficial, overt authority.
Communicating Truth
We have now arrived at the difference between direct and indirect communication. In this context both direct and indirect communication try to communicate truth. One difference between direct and indirect communication, though, lies in the intended effect of the communicative act on the recipient. Is the recipient supposed to be impressed and instantly convinced by the assumed truth? Will he swear imminent allegiance to its power and reject any doubt? In this case, we would speak of direct communication. Indirect communication on the other hand leaves space for doubt and discussion. Indirect communication stresses that the recipient needs time to digest the truth that he has heard. It does not aim for followers.1109 The recipient of the communication needs to venture on a long path of personal becoming by finding the truth for himself: “The essential in this knowledge is the appropriation itself.”1110 For not only the communicated truth as such is important. Even more important is one’s own personal approach to this truth. Whereas the communicative act—the truth-claim—is, in Kierkegaard’s words, the first reflection, the second reflection consists of one’s own position in regard to this communicative act or truth-claim.1111 Indirect communication, thereby, entails stringent self-reflection and the willingness to change through a sometimes humiliating process of personal becoming. Knowing the truth, thus, has less to do with direct knowledge but more with indirect being: “And therefore, Christianly understood, truth is obviously not to know the truth but to be the truth.”1112
Being the truth is obviously far more difficult than knowing a few facts which run under the title of “truth.” For every existential being, in Kierkegaard’s view, has to deal with the reality of its own contingency, constantly awaiting fulfillment. Herein lies another main difference between direct and indirect communication. Direct communication aims for finality. It cannot deal with unfinished business. Kierkegaard writes in the Unscientific Postscript: “Direct communication requires certainty, but certainty is impossible for a person in the process of becoming, and it is indeed a deception.”1113 Indirect communication will never be able to present final results and ultimate solutions.
Whereas direct communication equals static finality and existential conclusiveness, indirect communication equals open-ended becoming and willingness to deal with contingency. In Kierkegaard’s own words: “One who is existing is continually in the process of becoming; the actually existing subjective thinker, thinking, continually reproduces this in his existence and invests all his thinking in becoming . . . for one continually feels an urge to have something finished, but this urge is of evil and must be renounced. The perpetual process of becoming is the uncertainty of earthly life, in which everything is uncertain.”1114 The proper response then to complexity and uncertainty lies not in the radical reduction of complexity and the urge of imminent certainty. Rather it lies in the willingness to accept the ongoing struggle with contingency as a fact of human life and as a sign that truth is at work.
One’s communicative style, which is nothing more than the personal inside shown outwards, needs to reflect this openness and willingness to grow, even under resistance. Should I want to serve the truth in my life as a witness, I need to prepare to suffer as Jesus Christ suffered for being a truthful teacher and an offense. In reflection of his own experience as an author, Kierkegaard writes in The Point of View: “This is why everyone who in truth wants to serve the truth is eo ipso in some way a martyr.”1115
Let me summarize: indirect communication does not dispense with communicating truth. Indirect communication indeed wants to communicate truth. However, it takes into account the inverted role of teacher and student in the communicative process and the need for a critical reflection of the role of power within this process. Thus, it addresses the need for constant, infinite self-reflection and growth. It also considers that the communicated truth is not a static entity, but a living existential reality that is activated by subjective appropriation. And finally, it takes into account the role of humility, powerlessness, and possible suffering for all those who are involved in the act of truth-seeking indirect communication.
Parliamentary Democracy and the Strength of Weak Authority
As I attempt to transfer Kierkegaard’s concept of indirect communication into a reflection on parliamentary democracy, I am certain that I cannot count on the support of the historical Kierkegaard. Also, I need to acknowledge the categorical hurdles which I may encounter by applying Kierkegaard’s existential category of indirect communication to the legislative acts of a collective body such as the parliament.
I claim, nonetheless, that parliamentary democracy can ideally be understood as a kind of political indirect communication. I will explain this claim in three steps. First, parliamentary democracy favors so to speak indirect discussions to direct decisions. Second, it conceptualizes the search for truth as a process of infinite becoming. And finally, parliamentary democracy is a form of government in which power relationships are inverted. I understand parliamentary democracy as a representational system or structure of self-government that depends upon the involvement of (theoretically) all adults of any given political unit in the process of collective decision-making, through elections of representatives, on an equal footing and in an environment which guarantees personal freedom.
Discussions vs. Decisions
I mentioned earlier that Kierkegaard’s indirect communication evokes a personal response, a choice. The individual needs to learn how to best form a personal opinion and to act out of that in a decisive manner. Within parliamentary democracy, this personal response is usually elicited through and takes place within open, collective discussions rather than solitary decisions.
In parliament, almost every discussion will eventually end in some kind of decision, i.e., a vote. Nevertheless, discussions are not the inferior political prelude for that which is superior, the decision. Discussion and decision belong together. Ideally the course of a parliamentary discussion affects the outcome of the decision. Parliament can only arrive at a sober decision after it has weighed all the alternatives in a proper discussion. Speeches in parliament are in themselves political acts as are parliamentary decisions.1116 Even if they represent the minority opinion, speeches make political alternatives visible and, in the long run, also possible. They are a valuable contribution to a political process which in its very nature is inherently contingent.
This is a thought for which Carl Schmitt caused serious problems. Schmitt’s decisionism was based on the assumption that parliamentary discussion do not lead anywhere and are futile exercises. According to him they resemble the romantic notion of an “eternal conversation.”1117 Schmitt admits that in theory a discussion “means an exchange of opinion that is governed by the purpose of persuading the opponent of the truth and rightness—or be persuaded yourself—with rational arguments.”1118 Schmitt, however, thought of real parliaments not as institutions that were seeking truth but as chambers in which mere opinions, conflicting political interests, and ambitions for power collided with each other. For example, Schmitt dismisses parliament as the place “where one deliberates, i.e., where through discourse, the exchange of arguments and counter arguments you find the relative truth.”1119
Schmitt is correct in his description of the nature of parliamentary democracy. He is not right, though, with his normative evaluation of parliamentary practices. Schmitt was looking for more than relative, discursive truth. He was looking (or yearning) for definite decisions, brought by a definite, sovereign leader. Famously he regarded sovereignty as the authority to decide about the state of exception.1120 Schmitt wanted sovereign decisions to be free of any normative boundaries. They should be absolute.1121
The rationale of parliamentary democracy, however, lies exactly in its negation of any absolute, finite decision and in its denial of a nondiscursive sovereignty. Parliamentary politics equals—in Max Weber’s famous words—“a strong, slow drilling of hard shelves with passion and a sense of proportion.”1122 Not quick direct decisions but long, protracted and thereby indirect discussions are the bread and butter of parliamentary democracy. They are like ongoing self-reflections of a collective body. Whereas the direct communication of quick decisions promises imminent solutions to social problems through the sudden action of either dictatorship or revolution, the indirect communication of parliamentary discussions depends on the hard work of finding compromises which never quite reflect anyone’s political views to the full extent. These discussions are also the condition of possibility for forming one’s own opinion, one’s personal political character.
Truth and Democracy
According to Carl Schmitt, parliament debates relegate the notion of truth to the “mere function of a never-ending competition of opinions.”1123 Truth is not allowed to play a substantial role in parliamentary democracy, it is made relative. Eventually, truth is smothered by rivaling opinions and statements. The search for truth is abandoned for the sake of the search for a social equilibrium, an idea abhorrent to Schmitt and, for that matter, also to Kierkegaard.
The political philosopher of deliberation, Jürgen Habermas, however, does not hesitate to call parliamentary democracy a “wahrheitsempfindliche Regierungsform,” a form of government which is sensitive for the truth.1124 Habermas works with a concept of truth—communicative reason—which is far more dynamic than Schmitt’s rather static concept of truth. Hauke Brunkhorst comments on this Habermasian notion of truth and says that communicative reason—i.e., truth—consists of an ongoing execution of action.1125 Such a dynamic notion of truth attempts to incorporate the process of truth-finding into the concept of truth itself. In Unscientific Postscript Kierkegaard describes truth as a “way,” as something that exists only “in the becoming,” as a “process of appropriation” and never in a definitive result.1126 I am not sure whether Kierkegaard would agree with a Habermasian deliberative notion of truth, but he would certainly disagree with Schmitt’s absolute and finite thinking.
Parliamentary democracy, then, works under the assumption that parliament is not a passive agent of an a priori truth. Parliamentary debates and decisions reflect the common mind of a democratic polity exactly in that they do not formulate metaphysical truth claims but rather provisional convictions of great truthfulness, formed by individual politicians and voters. Democratic truth is preliminary, always in the “becoming.” Marie-Christine Kajewski puts it somewhat existentially: “To be in the truth means therefore, to remain in a state of questioning.”1127
Carl Schmitt bemoans the “renunciation of any definitive result”1128 in parliamentary democracy. It is, however, this reluctance to postulate finality which is the essence of any notion of democracy that takes parliamentary debates seriously. In the words of Kierkegaard: “Politics etc. has nothing to do with eternal truth. A politics that in the sense of eternal truth was in earnest about carrying eternal truth into actuality would to the highest degree immediately show itself to be the most ‘unpolitical’ that can be imagined.”1129
Democracy is open-ended. It deals with problems that call for a solution but these solutions are more often than not temporary. They are certainly not meant to last for eternity. Truth in democracy is therefore not an ontological reality—neither in the sense of Carl Schmitt nor in the postmodern sense of thinkers like Jean Luc Nancy, who has argued that “democracy is first of all a metaphysics and only afterward a politics. But the latter is not founded on the former. On the contrary, it is but the condition whereby it is exercised.”1130 But truth in democracy is also more than a mere search for the best possible outcome. Parliamentary democracy makes truth a reality in that it values the common, yet always also personal search for truth in debate and discussion, in the preliminary “becoming” of a decision, which is more likely to be a compromise than a consensus. Thus parliamentary democracy attains the natural feeling of a form of existence,1131 among politicians and among members of the electorate.
Strength That Lies in Weakness
The German legal philosopher Josef Isensee once called democracy “the humblest form of government in world history.”1132 Democracy can be typically described as a form of government that depends less on the political power of a few people over many than on the service rendered of these few representatives to the many members of the electorate. Fixed electoral cycles, the ever-present possibility of not being renominated as candidate or reelected as a member of parliament, the personal accountability throughout the electoral cycle: these aspects contribute to the relative weakness of politicians within a democratic polity. No clan protects them, no armed militia fights for them, no corrupted judge decides in their favor. A politician within parliamentary democracy depends solely on the goodwill of those people he or she represents and his or her personal competence and truthfulness—in theory at least.
Parliamentary, representative democracy thereby inverts typical hierarchies: those who rule, are ruled over by those whom they represent. Power relations are circular and not simply top down or bottom up. These relations reflect a kenotic movement. The throne of power is not really empty—as Claude Lefort once famously called it—but it is brought down in the middle of the electorate and shared—in theory—by all, in that they ask a few to occupy it, at least for the time being. Democratic government means service quite in the sense of the above quoted passage from Kierkegaard’s Point of View that helping does not mean to rule but to serve and this service is a form of humility. Therefore, democracy should be called a weak form of authority, because it keeps questioning itself and even invites its enemies to do the same.1133
The forum of this kenotic movement of democracy is parliament. Parliamentary speeches, according to Kari Palonen, are the medium of politics from below.1134 But they are more than that. Parliamentary speeches are a visible or audible sign of the invisible weakness of politicians within democracy. Members of parliament cannot simply decide and act as they wish, they first have to try to persuade and convince. They cannot decide as if they were the only one whose opinion matters, they have to find a compromise and decide as many. The real political influence of the individual parliamentarian is offset by an equally real powerlessness if the odds are against him or her.
The authority that is present in a politician can thereby be called paradoxical.1135 The individual person who is active as a parliamentarian (or as any other politician outside parliament) within a democratic polity has no real direct power. Should he want to initiate change, he must embark on a long, indirect mission of convincing people and proving his point. This relative powerlessness, however, is part of his authority. He or she is both vulnerable and strong at the same time. If he were strong, he would not be a politician within a democratic polity. This is indeed an “offence” to anyone who thinks that political power needs to be straightforward, direct, and omnipotent.
Conclusion
My somewhat presumptuous point here is this: Kierkegaard’s concept of indirect communication can be used to describe the nature of democratic politics and thus also the role of democratically elected parliamentarians. In that sense, parliamentary democracy may be understood as, first, an institutionalized form of collective indirect communication. It involves an institutionalized way of finding political compromises through collective debate, collective self-reflection and, finally, also collective decision-making. This ongoing collective debate, reflection, and decision-making points to the second insight that democracy is also an institutionalized search for truth and meaning. This search does not seek authority through a quest for absolute finality, rather its sincerity is rooted in the truthfulness of the politicians involved, both as individuals and as a collective body. Embedded in all this is, third, the essential quality of parliamentary democracy as an institutionalized and ongoing act of political humility of both individuals and collective. No one claims absolute authority, rather all share in the preliminary nature of the political process. This process of democratic decision-making is as important as its outcome.
Should I accept these assumptions, which are indeed hard to accept if I only look at democracy in its empirical form, they will lead me to a second even more presumptuous assumption, namely that parliamentary democracy can claim to possess christological qualities. It would appear therefore that there are “powerful Christian motivations for supporting and engaging with democracy today.”1136 These christological qualities are not derived from a traditional direct representational model (i.e., the divine right of a monarch), but are rooted in the indirect communication exemplified by Christ’s communication of himself.1137 If democracy can be described as a form of indirect communication and at the same time Christ can be depicted as the paradigmatic indirect communicator, then democracy possess indeed christological qualities. In the end, this would mean that anyone true to the Christian faith—as interpreted by Søren Kierkegaard—would have no choice but to favor parliamentary democracy over any other form of political system.
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1077. I am grateful to Stephen Backhouse and the editors for their valuable comments on an earlier version of this chapter.
1078. Huntington, “Democracy’s Third Wave,” 12.
1079. On the political and social background of Kierkegaard’s work in the context of the nineteenth century, see Kirmmse “Out with It,” 15–47, and Nicoletti “Politics and Religion,” 183–95.
1080. Timmann Mjaaland, “Theaetetus,” 115–46.
1081. Ibid., 117.
1082. Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, 14.
1083. Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, 247.
1084. Ibid., 80.
1085. Turnbull, “Ambiguity,” 13–22.
1086. Aumann, “Kierkegaard on Indirect Communication,” 324.
1087. Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, 86.
1088. Ibid.
1089. Ibid., 45.
1090. Conrad, “Heilige Herrschaft,” 4.
1091. Kierkegaard, Point of View, 45.
1092. Ibid., 68.
1093. Kierkegaard, Practice in Christianity, 193–94.
1094. Taylor, “Christology,” 194.
1095. Timmann Mjaaland, “Theaetetus,” 145.
1096. Ibid., 143.
1097. Kierkegaard, Practice in Christianity, 81.
1098. Ibid., 82.
1099. Ibid., 115–16.
1100. Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, 55.
1101. Ibid., 56.
1102. Kierkegaard, Practice in Christianity, 123.
1103. Ibid., 140.
1104. Ibid.
1105. Dunning, “Who Sets the Task?,” 18–32.
1106. Kierkegaard, Without Authority, 100.
1107. Kierkegaard, Point of View, 50.
1108. Timmann Mjaaland: “Theaetetus,” 138.
1109. Garrett “Essential Secret,” 340.
1110. Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, 79.
1111. Ibid., 76.
1112. Kierkegaard, Practice in Christianity, 205.
1113. Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, 74.
1114. Ibid., 86.
1115. Kierkegaard, Point of View, 109.
1116. Palonen, Rhetorik des Unbeliebten, 175–81.
1117. Schmitt, Politische Romantik, 32, my translation.
1118. Schmitt, Die geistesgeschichtliche Lage des heutigen Parlamentarismus, 9, my translation.
1119. Ibid., 58, my translation, emphasis added.
1120. Schmitt, Politische Theologie, 13, my translation.
1121. Ibid., 18, my translation.
1122. Weber, Politik, 82, my translation.
1123. Schmitt, Die geistesgeschichtliche Lage, 46, my translation.
1124. Habermas, Religion in der Öffentlichkeit, 150.
1125. In German laufender Vollzug von Praxis. See Brunkhorst, “Demokratie und Wahrheit,” 497–98.
1126. Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, 78.
1127. Kajewski, Wahrheit und Demokratie, 220, author’s translation.
1128. Schmitt, Die geistesgeschichtliche Lage, 46, author’s translation.
1129. Kierkegaard, Point of View, 109–10.
1130. Nancy, Truth in Democracy, 34.
1131. Lübbe, “Mehrheit statt Wahrheit,” 145.
1132. In German: die bescheidenste Staatsform der Weltgeschichte. See Isensee, “Widerstand und demokratische Normalität,” 48.
1133. Nolte, Was ist Demokratie?, 20.
1134. Palonen, Rhetorik des Unbeliebten, 176.
1135. Kierkegaard uses the concept of paradoxical authority to describe a human agent of godly authority, the apostle, in Kierkegaard, Without Authority, 100. I make analogical use of the concept for my purposes. I am sure Kierkegaard would negate the analogy between apostle and politician.
1136. Chaplin, “Christian Theories of Democracy,” 37.
1137. Rahner Grundkurs des Glaubens, 123.