Since Kierkegaard treated his life as a copy of Socrates, he thought Socrates as a true Christian prior than Jesus. This is the metaphorical evidence that Kierkegaard was actually criticizing to renounce the wrong practice of the Church at his contemporary. Therefore, his criticism is based on his opinions against the mainstream practices of the Church members those actually disregarded the injustice regarding to the class inequality of the society. The societies today in the world also display the same problem. The criticism to the Church is also true to the Populism today.
The first idea Kierkegaard learned is the critical attitude toward the common sense and culture. Kierkegaard addresses the Daimon of Socrates is not a higher truth, but as a concept for people to think. It’s won’t take you to a new positive result of constructing a new or final solution. That’s a negative attitude toward the existing system, culture or knowledge. In his Concept of Irony, he said, “this daimonian is represented only as warning, not as commanding” (p. 159). The critical attitude is truly provoking the ways of thinking to the modern world today. We always live our lives in a principle looking for better solution toward our own situations. which are subjective truth.
The other thing he learned from Socrates is the effective criticism always comes from the subjective point of view. Even toward the knowledge we select to acquire, we don’t really know how to distinguish the knowledge may be merely a belief from a more popular research. In this case, we may unconsciously ignore the facts which has less chance to be proven. Kierkegaard explains the Daimon of Socrates (the voice of truth) is not from the system inside. The one who can give effective advice from outside is “never involved in matters of the states” (Concept of Irony, p. 160). This causes a contradiction that how can one who don’t involve a certain matter of the state really knows the problem of the certain state. So the outsider does NOT mean someone who doesn’t belong to the state as a foreigner. What Socrates wants to emphasis a position “is that of subjectivity, of inwardness,” (Concept of Irony, p.163) that is, subjectivity. In addition, we know what we know. We don’t know what we don’t know yet. Kierkegaard tells the modern people that we always need to respect different opinions which is subjective.
Today, our postmodern world, we treat subjective opinion as a right to public domain. However, the modern people still suffer in variety kinds of mental crisis. People feel the estrangement toward the group as they are highly respected while they still look for recognition and acceptance from others. It’s a never ending trail for the modern people. Considering Kierkegaard and Socrates, inside the individual, there is the truth. In order to distinguish the voice is mere thoughts of our minds or the truth, people need to adopt in a critical way as Kierkegaard did. In short, Kierkegaard tells us that we always need to respect different opinions. In the modern world today, the populism makes the democracy somehow loses its value to protect the right of every people. We see the problems today, we have great schism in different classes and believes. The worst is the unfair treatment and policies to the marginal people. The injustice state makes them anger and pushes them to recognize the Terrorism and Racism.
In conclusion, Kierkegaard eventually encouraged himself to think about the justice of God, the life of Jesus, which is only revealed in Christianity. It is the greatest contribution Kierkegaard provides to the modern people reflecting ourselves in a critical way. The modern spiritual way of life is always based on tolerance of others and inter-subjective way.
