Kierkegaard’s Theories of the Stages of Existence and Subjective Truth as a Model for Further Research into the Phenomenology of Religious Attitudes

Abstract

There are many religions in the human world, and people manifest their religiousness in many different ways. The main problem this paper addresses concerns the possibility of sorting out this complex world of human religiousness by showing that it can be phenomenologically reduced to a few very basic existential attitudes. These attitudes express the main types of ways in which a human being relates to his or herself and the world, independently of the worldview or religion professed by the individual. I use Kierkegaard’s theories of the stages of existence and subjective truth as a model. The theory of the stages of existence provides five basic existential attitudes on the basis of which religious attitudes can develop: spiritlessness, the aesthetic, the ethical, religiousness A, and religiousness B. The theory of subjective truth shows how the concept of truth functions in an ethical and existential sense as the personal truth of an individual engaged in building their religious identity. In turn, I discuss the problem of the relation of Kierkegaard’s philosophy to phenomenology, briefly introduce his concept of subjective truth and the stages of existence, and show how existential attitudes can be transformed into religious ones. I also consider the problem of the demonic as the inverted order of this anthropological and existential model. Finally, I argue that the model developed herein may be useful for further research into the phenomenology of religious attitudes.

1. Introduction

This article aims to show how the stages of existence that Kierkegaard presents in the first (aesthetic) phase of his writings can serve as an introductory description of religious attitudes1. While there is no doubt that religious attitudes can take on a variety of forms in the human world, here, the issue concerns not the religious diversity of the world but the existential attitudes through which people express religious beliefs and manifest their religious affiliations. The thesis advanced in this paper is that this diversification of religious attitudes could in some way be systematized and anthropologically defined when mapped onto the scheme of the stages of existence that Kierkegaard delineated.

What this means is that, despite there being a multitude of religions in the world, the representatives thereof express their religiousness in similar ways—in an anthropological–existential sense—which could be subject to a certain typologization with respect to how said representatives reveal in immanence their relation to transcendence2. This manifestation of religiousness in various religions may take on formally similar shapes (in spite of tremendous differences in the content of the manifestation of that which is religious), for it relates to a certain permanent structure of a human’s functioning, this structure having first been described coherently according to existential categories by Kierkegaard himself3.

The second aim of the article is to show that such a model can be philosophically useful for further research into the phenomenology of religious attitudes, that is, into the way the depths and meaning of human religiousness manifest themselves in various religious attitudes to varying degrees in all of the former’s multifacetedness and richness. The objective of this article is obviously not to provide a detailed phenomenological description of this diversity but instead to offer a stimulus for further research by identifying the tools in Kierkegaard’s thought that could be used for this purpose. Such an introductory demonstration of how the multiplicity of religious attitudes can be reduced to several fundamental existential attitudes appears to lay the foundation for further phenomenological immersion into what human religiousness is as a manifestation in immanence of a person’s relation to transcendence.

It should be noted that the theory of the stages of existence, once an essential element for understanding Kierkegaard’s existential anthropology4, today plays a marginal role in the Kierkegaard literature5. It seems a worthwhile endeavor to resurrect this old and mostly forgotten project of Kierkegaard’s and to highlight the phenomenological potential hidden in it.

To this end, a brief account will be provided of the discussion on whether Kierkegaard’s thought can be—and to what extent—bundled with phenomenological research. Subsequently, the theory of the stages of existence will be outlined, as will Kierkegaard’s theory of subjective truth, with attention given to how these two ideas complement one another. The third step will show how potentially religious attitudes can be revealed within these stages, understood as initial existential attitudes. Thus, it will be shown how existential attitudes can transform into religious attitudes, which is a certain extension of Kierkegaard’s vision, for whom, as is well known, religious existence was only one (albeit the most important) of the possible stages of existence.

2. Kierkegaard and Phenomenology

The literature on Kierkegaard’s relationship to the phenomenological school of thought is extensive. Some scholars in this area point to inspirations in Hegel’s thought and to Kierkegaard’s creative expansion of the former’s theses on the phenomenology of spirit when analyzing how Kierkegaard presents a human being’s inner development of consciousness in his own works ([19,20,21,22]). Still, others deliberate on how Kierkegaard was an inspiration for 20th-century existential phenomenology, with him delivering the philosophers of the day ready-made categorial tools to further analyze humankind’s existential situation in the world ([23,24,25]). Yet another group of scholars attempts to show how Kierkegaard’s works have a close relationship with the theological turn in contemporary French phenomenology ([26,27,28,29,30]). These are not just works on the history of philosophy, as there are also studies juxtaposing Kierkegaard’s categorical analyses with the considerations of 20th- and 21st-century phenomenologists ([31,32]).

Such research led to the accrual of a discussion on whether Kierkegaard can be considered a phenomenologist at all, whether in the Hegelian sense or the twentieth-century sense. The most interesting position in this debate seems to be that of George Pattison ([33,34])—as well Claudia Welz’s reply to his arguments ([30,35]).

Pattison is critical of any move to perform a simple transposition here, one which, on the basis of Kierkegaard’s influence on 20th-century phenomenology, would automatically make him (in the eyes of some) a phenomenologist or a thinker who created some sort of proto-phenomenology. Pattison stresses that Kierkegaard has a peculiar place in the history of phenomenology, namely as the one who constitutes a significant link between two of the main figures in the history of modern phenomenology: Hegel and Heidegger. Kierkegaard here is both the one who critically transforms Hegel’s phenomenology and the primary source for Heidegger’s subsequent critical transformation of his existentiell/religious problematic. Of paramount importance to Pattison, however, is that, as claimed by Heidegger, although Kierkegaard offers the phenomenological investigator important psychological material, he does not himself treat that material in a phenomenological way but merely as an existentiell question of how one can become a Christian ([34], pp. 190–191). Pattison concludes that, “On this view, Kierkegaard is of value to the project of a fundamental ontology of existence arrived at by means of phenomenology—but only insofar as he is read in a non-Kierkegaardian way” ([34], p. 191). This is because Kierkegaard himself is not interested in practicing philosophy in some phenomenological way; instead, his role is that of a Christian moralist, one whose main goal is to awaken the consciousness of individuals ([34], pp. 204–205). Kierkegaard, as Pattison understands him, is therefore not a phenomenologist in an essential sense, despite having a distinctive and significant place in the history of phenomenology; nevertheless, he adds that “a full self-accounting on the part of phenomenology would require reckoning with his role” ([34], p. 191).

Welz, in her response to Pattison’s argumentation, agrees that calling Kierkegaard a phenomenologist in the 20th-century sense of the word would constitute an anachronism. At the same time, she notes, however, that although the Danish philosopher was not a phenomenologist in the theoretical sense, it could be said that he practiced phenomenology as a manner or style of thinking ([35], p. 457)—and that he is a phenomenologist at least insofar as he had a sense of the abiding questions of phenomenology ([35], p. 458). Welz believes that Kierkegaard’s Works of Love can be interpreted as a “phenomenology of love” insofar as phenomenology is defined as a reflective method for describing phenomena ([30], p. 504). She thus comes to the conclusion that, in Works of Love, one can discern a certain project, namely, a “semiotic phenomenology of the invisible” ([30], pp. 471, 508–512; [35], pp. 443–444, 456–457)6. This would mean that Kierkegaard provides the tools necessary to understand how that which is invisible (the spiritual) manifests itself in experience (in consciousness), thereby becoming the essential object of human self-knowledge (though not in a scientific, Hegelian sense but rather in a practical or individualistic one, closer to contemporary visions of phenomenology) ([30], pp. 482, 487, 502–503, 508; [35], p. 443).

Welz’s account here seems to be a major inspiration since it follows from it that transcendence, as Kierkegaard understands it, despite not being directly phenomenological or appearing in immanence, does in fact affect how the individual interprets their own existence, where this influence can indirectly manifest itself in the personal attitude of the individual ([30], pp. 471, 502–503, 506–507, 509–510). In this sense, it is precisely that which is invisible (transcendence)—as one’s inner experience of the presence of God that alters how a person’s life and world appear to them—which manifests itself in an individual’s existence by means of the emotions and actions, thoughts, and speech through which the attitude of the believer is communicated ([30], pp. 510–511). The aim of this type of phenomenology, it being a kind of ethical project dealing with the existence of the individual, would thus be a reflexive description of the phenomena constituting the existential content of a person’s experience ([30], pp. 471, 482–483, 504–505, 508–509; [35], pp. 442–444).

Welz’s vision could be partially adopted for the needs of the phenomenology of religious attitudes described here, where this phenomenology could find its grounding in Kierkegaard’s theory of the stages of existence. In order to make such a move, however, Welz’s account would need to be expanded. To this end, the assumption would have to be made that a phenomenology of the invisible (that is, of the spiritual) would necessarily concern the broadest possible spectrum of humankind’s relation to transcendence. It could not therefore be limited to Kierkegaard’s figure of the one who loves and to what it stands for (the phenomenon of spirit’s love) (see Works of Love) but would have to assume that every relation of a person to transcendence in fact manifests itself in some way, even if transcendence itself does not manifest itself in this relation. Thus, it could be posited that there exists an entire spectrum of religious attitudes within which a person relates to transcendence and that this relation will always be communicated through the actions of a given individual. In this sense, what is more important than whether transcendence actually appears as some absolute truth in what an individual communicates is what appears in their communication, which, in turn, determines what type of religious attitude the individual in question has. In this sense, the individual, in their actions, does not so much reveal transcendence in and of itself as reveal what it is to them and how they relate to it in their existence.

The phenomenology of religious attitudes proposed here will thus occupy itself not with proving the real existence of transcendence (understood in Kierkegaard’s view as the reality of a living God) but with examining how human beliefs about existence or nonexistence thereof manifest themselves in the world—that is, how humanity’s grand ideas of religion and God interact with human consciousness and produce in it various objects of experience, around which people build their existential and religious identity.

It must be stressed here, according to Pattison’s criticism, that no argument will be made to prove that Kierkegaard in fact created some form of early phenomenology or a proto-phenomenology in the 20th-century sense (as some researchers do) or even to ascribe to him a phenomenological way of thinking (as Welz does). Instead, an argument will be made that Kierkegaard’s analyses can be interpreted through the lens of a certain phenomenology of religious attitudes. Though Kierkegaard himself created no such phenomenology, his analyses could be understood in such a way that they become starting points to examine how one can describe phenomenologically, from an anthropological–existential perspective, how human religious attitudes differentiate and reveal themselves existentially.

3. Kierkegaard’s Theories of the Stages of Existence and Subjective Truth

In the first phase of Kierkegaard’s writings, up to and including Postscript, the Danish philosopher creates a certain vision of the inner development of human beings as self-aware existential subjects. Of central importance are the theories of subjective truth and the stages of existence7. The former addresses what it generally means to become the subject of one’s existence—a person who chooses a certain form of truth around which one’s self is shaped and one’s existential identity is constructed. The latter introduces a certain order into the variety of human attitudes found in the world, attitudes that reflect the various possible ways one can realize subjective truth in one’s life.

Both these theories arise simultaneously. Kierkegaard makes no clear effort to distinguish one from the other, with the two linked together in his writings. Despite this, it is eminently visible how both function at two different levels of his thought. It could be said that the theory of subjective truth is horizontal since it relates to all human attitudes (stages of existence) and offers an array of categories by means of which one can describe how a human being relates to themselves as an individual endowed with inner freedom. The theory of the stages of existence, on the other hand, is vertical, for it clearly orders human attitudes into a hierarchy, indicating which manners of self-realization are more or less profound in the spiritual sense. In order for this hierarchy to be possible, Kierkegaard must assume a certain order of values that exists independently of specific individuals. It is in relation to this order that it is decided what kind of person one is8.

Insofar as the theory of subjective truth is concerned, one assumption is paramount: that a person themselves makes decisions about their existence, that they choose what kind of person they are and how they are to lead their life ([38] CUP1, pp. 33–34, 203, 320–321, 323–325). Of course, every person’s life is impacted by certain facts and circumstances over which one can have no control, yet this, for Kierkegaard, is of secondary importance. In his view of subjective truth, it is not external circumstances, independent of one’s particular life, that most matter but the fact that every person may choose—and in fact somehow does choose—that which is to them most important ([39] EO2, p. 259; [38] CUP1, pp. 338–341, 432–433).

In Kierkegaard’s view, how external reality affects an individual’s existence is decided under the influence of a previously made personal choice about the type of person one wants to be ([39] EO2, pp. 164–169, 176–178, 211–225, 247–252; [40] FT, p. 69; [38] CUP1, p. 134). This means that the decisive factor is always the interiority of the individual—their relation to themselves—and not the external world, in relation to which only the prior inner choice of the individual is reflected ([39] EO2, pp. 327–328; [38] CUP1, pp. 341, 382). It is irrelevant here whether someone is an aristocrat or a member of the lower class, whether someone is a doctor or a farmer. What matters is the way in which someone becomes who they are—and this, Kierkegaard holds, flows from the decisions every individual makes in the course of their life ([39] EO2, pp. 163–164; [38] CUP1, pp. 488–489). This means that every single person develops a certain truth of their own about what it means to be human, a truth for which they are ethically responsible, that being the subjective truth of their existence ([39] EO2, pp. 248, 251, 258; [38] CUP1, pp. 199, 207, 218, 230, 254, 343).

What determines the kind of person one is can be reduced to two factors: firstly, what a given person defines as the goal of their existence ([39] EO2, pp. 251–252, 274–275; [38] CUP1, pp. 130–188), and secondly, the degree to which one pursues the realization of this goal ([38] CUP1, pp. 72–74, 86, 91–92, 314–317, 325, 349–360). This is thus not about any type of declaration, such as, “I will do whatever it takes to become rich”. It is about whether a given person truly devotes their life to pursuing the existential goal they choose. Of course, these goals may change, but the measurement of one’s existential power lies in whether they are conscious of the goal chosen and whether they truly pursue it.

The problem, however, is that one can be an existentially committed doctor, athlete, or social activist just as well as one can be an existentially committed Nazi or murderer. Thus, commitment alone does not determine the moral quality of an existential subject. The second element mentioned is still necessary, that is, the goal. Kierkegaard is looking for an absolute point of reference against which all human goals could be properly ordered and hierarchized. If the totality of the human world is defined by immanence, then only something that is beyond the world can be a point of reference for it, something from which the world emerged, something which the world is directed by. This is transcendence—somehow present in every human community, usually in the form of religious beliefs—which, for Kierkegaard, sees its highest expression in one’s personal relationship with God, particularly as seen in the model of Jesus Christ, that is, in Christianity ([40] FT, pp. 55, 70, 82; [4] SUD, pp. 29–30; [41] PC, pp. 238–240).

Hence, Kierkegaard’s existential hierarchy of human attitudes is created in relation to the Christian world of spirit. In his view, every immanent and subjective truth is subject to verification in relation to whether and to what extent transcendent and absolute truth is revealed in it ([42] PF, pp. 13–22; [41] PC, pp. 203–207). The closer the individual is to revealing the absolute truth of transcendence within their subjective immanent truth, the closer they are to the ideal of humanity and thus to existential fulfillment ([2] UD, p. 193; [43] CD, pp. 74–75; [5] WA, pp. 44–45).

It is precisely the tension between the transcendent (the spiritual) and the immanent (the psychophysical) that constitutes the fundamental dialectical tension of Kierkegaard’s thought ([40] FT, pp. 69–71; [42] PF, pp. 37–48; [38] CUP1, pp. 262, 295, 532, 561–586). In relation to this tension, Kierkegaard presents the dynamic of the stages of existence, thereby creating a hierarchy of human existential attitudes—that of subjective truths. For while every person has their own path to walk and the truth of their life is non-repeatable, the actual spiritual mechanism shaping this truth operates the same way for all people ([1] CA, pp. 43–44; [4] SUD, pp. 13–14). This allows Kierkegaard to distinguish several types—stages—thanks to which it is possible to assign and describe the content that different human life paths exhibit within a framework of certain formally identical categorical schemes, defining the relations the people who make up a given existential type have with each other, the world, and transcendence.

It is worth noting ] that the concept of an existential attitude is not equivalent simply to an individual’s worldview but constitutes something more like a holistic stance. Such an attitude has an ethical dimension rather than an intellectual one ([38] CUP1, pp. 194–205, 281, 318–343). In this sense, different, even contradictory worldviews can be expressed within a single existential attitude by different individuals, for a worldview here is the content of one’s consciousness, and an existential attitude is the form of this content. This content, the way people express themselves (the visible), here informs the form behind it (the invisible). Thus, the degree to which someone is spiritually developed (form) determines how they reveal the content of their consciousness9. These forms of consciousness are precisely what is meant when speaking of stages (attitudes) of existence, these being the means by which Kierkegaard organizes the countless plurality of human subjective truths, reducing them to several primary types.

Although these types can of course be further differentiated, a task Kierkegaard partially completes, for the purposes of this paper, it will suffice to focus on several fundamental types and to profile them10, making it possible to then show how religious attitudes are superimposed upon existential attitudes11.

Kierkegaard distinguishes three main stages of existence (existence-spheres), offering a description of the inner development of the individual—starting with the stage in which a person remains unaware of their spiritual self (the aesthetic stage), moving on to their spiritual awakening (the ethical stage), and ending with the stage of their spiritual fulfillment (the religious stage) ([44] SD, pp. 435, 476–477; [38] CUP1, pp. 294–300; 501–502)12. The religious stage is further divided into religiousness A (pathos-filled religiousness) and religiousness B (paradoxical–dialectical religiousness), where only religiousness B counts as fully authentic in Kierkegaard’s view ([38] CUP1, pp. 555–561). Kierkegaard also highlights the attitudes of spiritlessness and the demonic. These attitudes, despite failing to be mentioned with other stages of existence, figure as an essential complement to the entirety of his vision and will be included in the interpretive scheme developed here. In the approach adopted here, an attempt can be made to place spiritlessness below the aesthetic stage ([1] CA, pp. 93–96, 157, [4] SUD, pp. 41–42, 44–47, 101–102, 104, 116; [44] SD, p. 440; [38] CUP1, pp. 322–323; [43] CD, pp. 66–67). The demonic, on the other hand, can be considered a kind of reversal of the entire ladder of development of human spirituality, where said spirituality takes on the opposite vector—that is, it concerns a subject who builds their identity not in relation to good but to evil13.

The scheme developed here will be presented in top-down fashion, meaning from the highest realization of subjective truth in existence to its lowest form, that is, in the following order: religiousness B, religiousness A, ethical existence, aesthetic existence, and spiritlessness. It is worth noting here that, according to Kierkegaard, humankind’s existential attitudes essentially function within two main states: the state of faith, understood as the realization of the truth of transcendence in the immanent life of the individual (religiousness B), and the state of despair, in which the individual to varying degrees is unable to express, through themselves, the truth of transcendence (religiousness A, ethical existence, aesthetic existence, and spiritlessness) ([4] SUD, pp. 49, 82). Within this scheme, the demonic must be considered a third state14, one which does not belong to despair (in which a person continuously finds themselves within reach of existential sense and in some way strives to implement it in their life by relating to the good) but which constitutes a tragic negation of the purpose of human existence (by basing it on evil)15.

Religiousness B16. This is, for Kierkegaard, the highest possible stage of human existence, one in which the individual experiences in their life the living presence of God (what Kierkegaard calls the second immediacy or the later immediacy—[40] FT, p. 82). In other words, one can speak here about the full mediation of the individual’s immanent existence by transcendence, which is transposed into one’s immediate experience of God’s presence and brings to the believer a sense of the fullness of the meaning of humanity17. A person at this level of spiritual development is someone who realizes the Christian ideal (the ideal of holiness) in the human world—they are someone who truly becomes a Christian, that is, a follower (an imitator) of Christ. A follower of Christ is able to completely subordinate all relative (immanent) goals and all human values (including the value of their own life) to the realization of the absolute goal: to bear witness to God’s revelation in the world. Hence, this is a way of being in which the individual’s immanent subjective truth is combined with absolute transcendent truth, where the former manifests (reveals) the latter in the world. Such a person realizes the ideal of love for one’s neighbor, spreading forgiveness and mercifulness to everyone they meet, where one’s neighbor is understood not as collective humanity but as a particular individual encountered on life’s path regardless of the relation between them in temporal reality. In Kierkegaard’s view, such a person is commonly persecuted by the human world, for they negate its earthly values and expose its hypocrisy ([2] UD, pp. 328–331, 338–339; [41] PC, pp. 63, 172–173, 196–198; [47] JFY, pp. 116–117, 140–141, 169).

Religiousness A18. Religiousness A, separated from religiousness B by an infinite qualitative difference and the paradox of faith, represents the maximum spiritual state that a human being can achieve by themselves. It is everything that a person can be, in a spiritual sense, without having actually experienced true conversion. This type of religiousness is therefore represented by a person who is wholly oriented toward transcendence in their life and who strives to follow its guideposts (such as in the form of revelation) but whose relation to transcendence remains ideal rather than real on account of not having yet experienced the living presence of God. To put it differently, in the existence of such an individual, their life is mediated not by living experience of God (Christ) but by the idea of God, by some imagined picture of God, by some projection of God that may have cultural sources (delving into the existing religious tradition) or be related to a capacity for mystical insight into the world’s essence ([38] CUP 1, pp. 556, 558–561). As a result, however, such a person tends in some way to use transcendence to change the immanent world, to benefit from transcendence’s somehow to serve the value of temporal life, confirming it. Authentic religiousness, however, must cut itself off from immanence and make transcendence the only real content of human existence. Therefore, a kind of secondary mediation of transcendence in immanence occurs in religiousness A, something that distorts in some way the relationship between a human being and God ([38] CUP1, pp. 570–574, 578–579). Admittedly, in religiousness A, the individual no longer pursues typically imminent ends characteristic of people at lower levels of the spiritual development ladder (as represented by ethical and aesthetic existence), yet, at the same time, they do not fully die to themselves and the world (though their existence in ideal terms is already oriented toward this end), and for this reason, sin (despair) continues to dominate their existential reality. This individual no longer desires this sin (no longer wills to be themselves) but they are also incapable of fully negating their position in the world, to stop being who they are in the typically human sense.

The ethical stage19. The ethical stage encompasses people who become what they become ([39] EO2, pp. 178) thanks to mediation by an immanent element of the world—by something that surpasses the immediacy of their existence and thereby opens up before them an opportunity for their inner development. Most often, this element turns out to be social community, which they decide to serve of their own free will, thereby choosing some determined shape of themselves. Therefore, the ethical person in the first instance is not led in their life by their private desires, and they are able to give up their own prosperity for a higher goal that surpasses their own interest. As a result, this must be a person who acts in accordance with principles that a given community adheres to, who, at the same time, develops said community in some particular way. The ethical person is thus an individual who possesses a kind of generative power in the social sense, a person who pursues some type of common good and attains fulfillment precisely in this good (which is equal to being mediated by it). The common good is understood here very broadly; it can be any kind of value that is of importance to a given community, such as justice, patriotism, helping the needy, education, service, among other things. A person is ethical when, in the area of the values they profess, they are generative, committed, and able to sacrifice their own life comfort to advance that particular value. In principle, any individual will become an ethical person when they carry out some social role and, in doing so, transmit the ideal of this role and the values that it embodies. In practice, what is required here is a certain kind of ethical testimony and selflessness in material and social terms. In contrast, anyone who chooses to use their social capital for their own private purposes and their own success in life will not be an ethical person.

The aesthetic stage20. The aesthetic attitude is demonstrated by a person who lives only according to the immediacy of their existence, not going in any way beyond that which inherently defines them (in terms of intelligence, talent, social status, etc.). Such a person simply uses the possibilities given to them according to both their biological nature and y the social conditions which they were born into. They do not create, however, any new possibilities because they do not mediate their existence according to anything that would require in some way surpassing (negating) these initial existential possibilities and discovering other (higher, spiritual) possibilities for self-realization. Therefore, an aesthete does not make any choice that would allow them to go beyond what they are (for themselves) ([39] EO2, pp. 176–180). As a result, this kind of person is guided in life by passion, which develops only themselves. For one to be considered an aesthete in these terms, this person must display commitment to realizing their existential goal. This goal, however, is entirely determined within the immediacy of their existence and thus is egoistic, disconnected from the good of others, and more reminiscent of a life passion one seeks fulfillment in without any regard for the good of others. Furthermore, the fulfillment of this life passion may entail the desire to be liked by others, to be respected by others, or to be deemed worthy of some social position by others. What must be noted, however, is that in order for such an attitude to have an aesthetic dimension in the proper sense, the individual must devote themselves wholeheartedly to the object of their interest and strive for excellence in the relevant domain. There are manifold examples of what this may look like. An aesthete may take the form of an athlete for whom sport will serve as a trampoline to celebrity but for whom sport in and of itself will not constitute value in the context of the common good. They will not seek to develop the value of sport but rather to use its sanctioned value in society to become someone special in the eyes of others, thereby gaining material benefits in the process. On the same grounds, an aesthete can take the form of a university professor, one who is excellent in their field, for whom learning will be of value not in and of itself but insofar as it can help them make a name for themselves and be respected.

Spiritlessness. The concept of spiritlessness is applied by Kierkegaard to individuals who resign from existential self-realization. Such persons live only for what the external world can offer them; they do not engage themselves in any projects and are guided only by their own comfort and life prosperity. This is also why a spiritless person remains imprisoned in the immediacy of their existences. They do not seek any sort of private or personal fulfilment, either in that which surpasses their individual being (an ethical person) or in that which determines their inherent individuality (an aesthetic person). In some sense, they are an animal person, which is only determined by their biological nature in terms of looking for the instinctive satisfaction of the most basic life needs ([49] KJN9, pp. 320, 428–430, [50] KJN10, pp. 26–27)21. Spiritless people make up what Kierkegaard critically calls the crowd or the public ([51] TA, pp. 90–95, 100–101; [52] KJN4, pp. 126–128; [53] KJN7, pp. 37–38; [54] KJN8, pp. 424–425; [49] KJN9, p. 320; [50] KJN10, pp. 26–27), that is, a group consisting of members where each member does not relate individually to himself or herself, where each member does not reflect in any way upon his or her own life. Such people possess no thoughts of their own, no worldview, no views other than those which are imposed upon them by the outside world. For this reason, they are highly susceptible to being manipulated by others. Given that existing for Kierkegaard always implies an active state as a certain kind of involvement in one’s own life, it is worth singling out spiritlessness here as a separate stage of existence, indeed the lowest.

The demonic. As previously outlined, in the interpretation offered here, the demonic is demonstrated by a person who consciously chooses to serve evil and who constructs their self around this choice. This conscious effort to serve evil ought to be defined as a conscious negation not only of absolute truth but also of all immanent moral ideals (a negation of the purpose of humanity in all its possible dimensions). According to the expansion of Kierkegaard’s vision developed in this paper (see note 13), it seems, as stated earlier, that the demonic should be treated as a reversal of the previously mentioned hierarchical ladder, that is, as a separate state (the third possible state of humankind’s existence after faith and despair), and not simply as an attitude that is an offshoot of despair. This would mean that a person could serve evil indiscriminately (spiritlessly), aesthetically, ethically, or even religiously (or at least quasi-religiously). Evil here becomes a spiritual force, something that creates the value of life, something that fascinates, and something that provides existential power. It becomes that which a person begins to bear witness to (in the form of various attitudes) with his or her being22.

4. The Stages of Existence as a Model for Religious Attitudes

Having described (and expanded upon) Kierkegaard’s vision of the stages of existence as initial existential attitudes of a certain kind, this vision can now be used as a model to account for religious attitudes. In doing so, it must be assumed that each of the previously described existential attitudes may become a substrate upon which particular religious attitudes will develop. This does not mean, however, that every particular existential attitude will at the same time be a religious attitude in the case of every subject but that, if some religious attitude manifests itself in a person’s life, it will always manifest itself within the stage of existence that the person at that moment occupies and will express itself in a way that is characteristic of said stage of existence.

As a result of the theoretical expansion proposed here, apart from the strictly religious attitudes that Kierkegaard singles out as the highest form of human existence (religiousness A and B), it becomes possible to distinguish still other types of religious attitudes in the existential attitude scheme, religious attitudes which complement the complex picture of human religiousness23. In total, five initial religious attitudes can be distinguished in a fundamental sense: religiousness B, religiousness A, ethical religiousness, aesthetic religiousness, and spiritless religiousness. Demonic religiousness, on the other hand, can be considered a counterpart for which four attitudes can be distinguished—demonically spiritless religiousness, demonically aesthetic religiousness, demonically ethical religiousness, and a demonic religiousness corresponding to religiousness A. Religiousness B cannot, as a rule, occur in the domain of demonicity24.

Religiousness A versus religiousness B25. Proceeding now to undertake a brief description of these distinguished religious attitudes, it will be worthwhile to first establish a clear separation between religiousness A and religiousness B. Religiousness B consists of realizing the attitude of holiness (as embodied by a messiah, prophet, or martyr), that is, the way of being in which immanent subjective truth is combined with absolute truth and becomes its medium in temporality. Religiousness B is, in this sense, fully affirmative as an act of bearing witness to the truth of revelation, of expressing it through oneself in the world26. Religiousness A, in turn, implies a resignation from earthly goals on account of one having recognized the value of absolute truth, though without going so far as to pursue the fulfillment of this truth in one’s life. In consequence, religiousness A consists of a desire to withdraw, to atone for the absolute guilt one recognizes in oneself. It is equal to losing one’s temporal identity on account of one’s idealistic pivot toward transcendence—something Kierkegaard calls the infinite resignation ([40] FT, pp. 37–52). As such, religiousness A is a negative religiousness ([38] CUP1, pp. 432–433, 455, 461, 472, 524, 532–534, 571), one which may take the form of, for example, eremitism or monasticism in the human world ([38] CUP1, pp. 401–419, 461, 472–474, 481, 486, 499, 509)27.

In Kierkegaard’s view, a person characterized by religiousness B will never adopt the attitude of an eremite or monk, will never completely withdraw from the world, and will never become a spiritual guide for other people, understood as providing others with spiritual guidelines in life matters. Such a person should possess the gift of spiritually influencing others and converting them, as long as their interiority is of course ready for this28. In contrast, a person characterized by religiousness A is incapable of converting others such that they begin to realize absolute truth, for such a person themselves has no direct access to this truth, with them being—at the most—able to point others in the right direction29. In this sense, religiousness A can also include the religiousness of religious leaders or religious moralists who devote their temporal lives entirely to the guidance of the spiritual community. Such persons represent the highest possible human moral ideal; they are indeed subjects who are able to saturate the immanent value of being human with the transcendent ideal in a unique way but are unable (at least at some given point in their lives) to achieve the attitude of holiness30.

Ethical religiousness. Ethical individuals, as Kierkegaard understands them, are not religious persons in any meaningful sense, for, even if religion constitutes an important element of their life and worldview, it is not what they have chosen as their life goal (religion is not a value with priority over other values)31. Ethical people rather inherit religion from their ancestors, considering it an important element of their identity, while at the same time not developing it in any way. They consider it an encountered, ready-made whole, something socio-culturally fixed. Nevertheless, at the same time, if they consider themselves religious, they will fully participate in the religious life of the faith they profess, and their secular worldview will likely be penetrated by religious ideas. It will in some way inspire their social activity, where they will use the authority of religion to highlight the importance of the ideals they profess. Thus, if such people identity with some faith, they will be perceived by others as religious persons, and this religiousness will strengthen their authority in their community.

It should be noted, however, that this type of person will not take advantage of religious ideas to advance their own aims in societal life, such as bolstering their political position or attracting a greater number of supporters to their party. They will not do so because their primary aim is to develop the common good (however it is defined). They therefore cannot consciously act for their own benefit to the detriment of the community, this being precisely what the manipulation of religious values is meant to achieve. The epithet “ethically religious” will in this sense be aptly applied to anyone for whom religion grounds the purpose of human life and enhances one’s sense of a social mission in this world. An ethically religious attitude can also take the form of a kind of messianism, for instance, where the good of the community is equated with religious ideas or where a certain religious mission in this world is assigned to nations (as long as this does not involve harming other nations or harboring hatred for them)32.

Aesthetic religiousness. Religiousness which manifests itself in the aesthetic attitude is even further from the transcendental source of faith, though the light of absolute truth does get through to some degree. It is for this reason that an aesthetic person can also consider themselves a deep believer. Their aesthetic approach to transcendence, however, will be to treat religion as something that is, in a sense, owned—as something that serves their own life purposes, rather than something they put themselves at the service of33. Such a person can treat religiousness as a means to simply have a goal which will satisfy their existential need for fulfillment, all while they exhibit a superficial religiousness, proving to be a person who finds themselves in their religiousness but finds little else in it. Yet, the palette of aesthetically religious attitudes is broader: it can be considered inclusive of people who make themselves the face of religiousness, people who flaunt it (such as a bigot, but not a hypocrite). The label “religiously aesthetic” can be applied to instances where religion is used to garner some social favor for oneself but only if it entails a belief in the purpose of this religiousness and an existential commitment to the truth recognized in it34.

Spiritless religiousness. Spiritless people likewise can identify religiously, though in their case being religious will entail not a commitment to religiousness but an attitude within which there is a lack of faith in the religion one professes to believe in35. Here, one is religious because it is not right to be irreligious, because not being religious may be harmful. One is religious because it is fashionable, because it is useful in one’s life—with it allowing one to achieve something, to establish oneself in life36. In the case of aesthetic religiousness, using religiousness for one’s own ends was linked to a belief in the value of religiousness itself, to the fact that this religiosity constituted the existential framework of a person’s life. In spiritlessness, religiousness becomes merely a slogan, an empty word devoid of meaning, something that bears no connections to any demands: it only exists to be used37. In an existential sense, religious spiritlessness pretends and is hypocritical, though it is not yet demonic.

Demonic religiousness. Demonic existence takes on a religious form when religion becomes a real source of evil in the world, of human harm, and of misfortune; when, for religious reasons, one morally and physically destroys people; and when religion justifies violence and becomes a call to eradicate other human beings38. An example of this would be religious extremism, where religion is used as a justification to hate people with a different religion or worldview39. And, here, one can be demonically religious spiritlessly when one is simply an executor of someone’s religious will unreflectively, out of fear, out of a desire to create an outlet for one’s animal instincts, etc.40. Demonic religiousness will acquire an aesthetic dimension when one avows it for the sake of some personal goal, for one’s own benefit, the result being that one will believe in religiously justified evil in order to feel superior to others in this world41. At the ethical level, this type of religiousness will require that a certain social value be built around it, that an inversion be performed of the common good, one that integrates people and somehow becomes normative for them42. Demonicity in the context of religiousness A, on the other hand, would mean in this case total dedication to the service of evil to the point of negating all other temporal values; it would entail the construction of a kind of inverted religion—a religion of evil43. Demonic religiousness so understood, of course, will never relate to the value of evil as an overriding one, yet it will use the category of good in such a way that the good becomes inverted, manipulated, and presented such that in reality it will not (ever) serve the spiritual development of people but instead their spiritual downfall and self-destruction.

5. Conclusions

The proposal advanced in this paper—to expand Kierkegaard’s theory of the stages of existence as certain initial existential attitudes into a model capable of describing humankind’s various religious attitudes—is meant to build a framework for a certain general vision of human religiousness as viewed from an existential–anthropological perspective. This type of vision focuses primarily on the subjective side of human existence, that is, on how a person’s religiousness becomes an essential element in the construction of their personal identity and how this religiousness can differentiate itself depending on what initial existential attitude is manifested. Phenomenologically speaking, religiousness here is not understood or examined as a completely separate phenomenon but as a superstructure imposed onto the base of a preconceived existential attitude.

Kierkegaard’s deliberations on human religiousness are limited to those of the Old and New Testament. At the same time, however, his thought harbors the strong essentialist assumption that the spiritual sphere (as the moral sphere, not the intellectual one) is determinative of the functioning of human existence. Thus, it seems that the model of religious attitudes proposed herein, as an expansion of the Kierkegaardian vision of the stages of existence, can account for the religious behavior of people from all religious systems. For this to succeed, however, the assumption must be made that, at a certain fundamental existential level, all people are spiritually similar to one another since human spirituality is more built into the structure of human cognition than it is a product of one’s historical and cultural circumstances. Therefore, the research perspective delineated here is not related to content-oriented differentiation of the truths of faith (which is obvious and indisputable) but related to how individual people relate to them, constructing their own individual identity in relation to them. There are innumerable religious systems and truths of faith in human reality, but the range of moral attitudes that people adopt toward transcendence in the immanent world can be narrowed down to several fundamental existential types, which, in turn, of course, can be further refined and distinguished.

It should be clear that the model proposed here resembles the phenomenology of Hegel, which constituted a starting point for Kierkegaard and examined from the outside various types of human consciousness and their development, more than it resembled the analysis characteristic of advanced existential phenomenology. Nevertheless, it seems that this model may prove to be a useful tool for further existential–phenomenological research that focuses on people’s religious life. It introduces a preliminary order into the complexity of people’s religious attitudes and shows how they can be processed in the context of subjective truth and categories that serve to describe the dynamics of human existence. This article does not present how particular religious types can be described in detail using various phenomenological categories of human existence. This would require an immersion into the religious attitudes presented here, as well as a detailed, phenomenological analysis thereof. Undoubtedly, however, such a research aim would be worthwhile in reference to the thought of Kierkegaard, 20th-century phenomenologists (such as Scheler, Heidegger, Sartre, and Levinas), and the contemporary French phenomenologists responsible for the so-called “theological turn:” Marion, Lacoste, Henry, and Chretien. A proper phenomenological analysis would fill in the model presented with content and insight. This is a task that far exceeds the research scope of this paper, however.