The concept of the comic pops up everywhere in Søren Kierkegaard's universe. The Danish thinker never seems to tire of pointing out how important the comic is for existence. Why in fact?

2013.07.24 | Af Anne Louise Nielsen

Like many other of Kierkegaard's categories, seizing on the comic as if it was some object is not easy. Rather, the comic is essentially a contradiction, and according to the pseudonym Johannnes Climacus, contradictions are present wherever there is life and wherever there are people.

Every human life thus carries a self-contradiction. Basically, this is because humans are striving, passionate creatures, and our striving constantly clashes with the outside world.

”… The more you suffer, the greater the sense, I believe, you have for the comic...,” says Climacus.

A good sense for the comic

Climacus believes it is essential to have a good sense for the comic: In theatre metaphor, the world's various characters are constantly playing interesting tragedies and comedies, but no less interesting is the comedy which is his own life – and to which he is usually blind. Understanding comes and goes like laughter which soon dissipates again.

Kierkegaard's aim with the comic is, among other things, to extend the Christian love of your neighbour in the sense that you do not just practise loving those who are close to you, and whose lives seem free from contradictions. You must also practise loving your neighbour who is a stranger, and whose life is so obviously full of contradictions. Kierkegaard calls it 'the quiet transparency of the comic'.

The comic and earnestness must be unified

The comic is, not least, the tool which can structure Kierkegaard's famous theory on the aesthetic, the ethical and the religious stages on life's way. The question for the three stages is whether the comic is extrinsic or intrinsic, i.e. the degree to which the individual is aware of his own self-contradiction.

At the end of the day, it is a question of freeing oneself from the comic and daring to rely on the passionate side of one's nature. Kierkegaard therefore reminds modern man on the one hand not to resort to pure irony, caricature and emptiness, and on the other not to narrow-minded earnestness and lack of self-irony, but that earnestness and a sense for the comic must be paired!

Anne Louise Nielsen is a PhD student in Theology