Kierkegaard learned from Socrates the importance of using questioning to help others arrive at truth independently rather than imposing knowledge on them. He saw Socrates' use of irony and feigned ignorance to avoid direct claims of knowledge as a model for his own critique of the Danish church. Like Socrates, Kierkegaard aimed to expose errors in others' thinking while avoiding asserting he had fully achieved the Christian ideal, keeping individuals responsible for finding their own path. Kierkegaard saw Socrates' example as highly relevant for addressing modern issues like relativism and nihilism by keeping existential threats alive through complex writing.

1. In this essay, I try to answer, as correctlyas I can, at the two questions about
Kierkegaard, or rather:
“What did Kierkegaard learn from his study of Socrates?”
“Why is this connection between Socrates and Kierkegaard still relevant
in the world today?”
Personally, I think that he learnedfrom Socrates that, even if he was a pagan
philosopher, he could embrace the Christian attitude and passion that we saw
nowdays in our Modern times. In Works of Love, a book that Kierkegaard
publishedin his own name, he attempts to develop a theory of Christian love.
He explores in some detail the meaningof the biblical commandto love one's
neighbor. In one passage, he tries to compare Socrates's practice with
Christian love. He claims that true love is to help the other person to be free,
to stand on their own. Socrates does this with his questioning. The goal of the
Socratic method is to show the that in fact he doesn't know the things he
thought he knew. Thus the view of the other persons are reduced to
absurdities and contradictions.Socrates attempts to show this not by telling
the other person what the truth is but rather by extractingit from the other
person by means of his questioning. As we learnedthis is what Socrates refers
to as his art of midwiferyor maieutics.In this way, Socrates can claimthat he
wasn't the author of any new knowledge or information, but rather, merely
assisted in its coming to the world, just like a midwife assists in delivering
babies. Kierkegaardemphasizes the point here, that while Socrates is helping
the other person in this way, he must remain as unselfish andas anonymous
as possible. Indeed, this can even be conceivedas an act of self-sacrifice on

2. the part of Socrates, who's helpingothers in this way, even though it often
leads to them being angry with him. No one likes discoveringthat the things
they hold to be true are in fact, confusedand mistaken. And the sense of
humiliation that this causes was a source of great hostility againstSocrates in
ancientAthens. For this reason, Socrates can't make a great show of helping
other people but instead must play down his own role and play up the fact
that the other person is reachingthe truth on their own. Kierkegaardrefers to
this in a somewhat odd way as, quote, deceivingthe other into the truth.
What he means by this is that Socrates' interlocutor doesn't reallyknow
what's happeningwhen he's talking with Socrates. He doesn't reallyrealize
that Socrates is helpinghim by eliminatinghis false beliefs and illusions and
leadinghim to stand on his own feet afterwards.In the end, he has Socrates
to thank for being free, but he's unaware of this. This seems clearlyto be the
model for Kierkegaard, for beingthe model for what he's doing with his own
writings.On the negative side, he's combating what he takes to be the
mistaken conceptions of Christianitythat come from the church, academic
theologians and philosophers or mainstreamculture generally. Then on the
positive side just like Socrates the midwife is enjoining each individual to find
their own individual wayto the Christian truth. In this way he believes that
he's helpingother people to stand on their own and be free. The Moment
Number 10 is an interestingwork since Kierkegaardreflects on his own
strategy and his attack on the church, and here once again we can see some
interestinghints of the figure of Socrates emerge. In the section calledMy
Task, Kierkegaardreminds his readers that he's not calledhimself a Christian
and that this is of the utmost importance that people bear in mind. This might
come as a surprise to some people since every introductorytext or
encyclopedia article on Kierkegaardbegins by sayingthat he is a Christian

3. writer. What then can he mean to say that he never calledhimself a Christian?
In the history of the Christian church, there have always been differentsects
and factions which claimto know about the truth of Christianityandcriticized
others for not knowing it. They thus took a kind of moral high ground by
claimingto be the true Christians while others fell short of the mark.
Kierkegaardis anxious to avoid this kind of relation where he props himself
up as the moral authority, claimingto be the true Christian andcriticizinghis
enemies for being false Christians. If he were to assert that he were the true
Christian, then he would open himself up to criticisms of his opponents who
could claimthat he was a hypocrite. In order to avoid this, he simply says that
he doesn't call himself a Christian. However, he paints a picture of New
Testament Christianitythat's so difficultto live up to that it ends up being a
kind of ideal that no one can attain. This ideal allows him to criticize whathe
takes to be the corruptand false Christianityof his contemporaries without
him having to commit himself to saying that he personallyembodies the idea.
In short, the ideal does the critical workfor him, and he simply has to point it
out to people. This is similar to the strategy of Socrates who never claims to
know the truth. On the contrary, he claims to know nothing. He then goes
aroundand asks others what they know just as Kierkegaardexplores the
Christianityof other people in Golden Age Copenhagen. Socrates then
discovers that although other people claimto know certain things, they are in
fact ignorant. Just as Kierkegaardsees that although his contemporaries claim
to be pious Christians,they have, in fact, a mistaken understandingof
Christianity. Socrates,however, keeps drivingat the truth and continues to ask
people what they know in the hope of one day findingit. It's as if he has a
conception or ideal of the truth that he can never manage to attain, just as
Kierkegaardhas an ideal of Christianitybut yet says that he does not call

4. himself a Christian. Neither Socrates nor Kierkegaardclaimthat they have
reachedthis ideal, but the critical partof their task demonstrates clearlythat
other people have not attained it either. Even though these same people
probably boast that they have done so. Thus, Kierkegaardwrites, the only
analogyI have before me is Socrates.My task is a Socratic task, to audit the
definition of what it is to be a Christian. I do not call myself a Christian
(keeping the ideal free), but I can make it manifest that the others are that
even less. This makes it clear that Kierkegaardused Socrates,a pagan
philosopher, in his attempt to criticize whathe took to be the mistaken
conceptions about Christianityin his own time. When Socrates was
confrontedwith the words of the oracle that there was no one wiser than he,
he interpreted this to mean simply that while everyone else claimedto know
something and yet was ignorant, he knew at least that he was ignorant. And
on this sole point he was wiser than the others. Similarly, Kierkegaardcan
point out that the version of Christianitythat the others are followingis
mistaken, although everyone else believes that they are pious Christians.The
difference between Kierkegaardand them is simply that he realizes that he's
not a Christian while the others continue to believe themselves to be so. Thus,
like Socrates, he avoids making the positive claim about his own status, but
instead his project is the negative one of exposingthe problems with the
views of others. The analogygoes even further. Socrates struggled againstthe
sophists in his own time. They taught for money, and they had no problem in
presentingsomething as true. Kierkegaardsees a pendant to the sophists in
his own day in the clergyand professors of theology. They, too, teach for a
fee, and they're financiallysupportedby the state. They claim to teach the
truth of Christianity, but accordingto Kierkegaard, the conception of
Christianitythat they produce is deeply problematic. So for Kierkegaard, these

5. are the modern sophists while he is the modern Socrates. Kierkegaardis
probably more relevanttoday than he's ever been before. We're only now
beginningto understandjust how prescient his diagnosis and criticismof
modern life actuallywere. A number of his insights have been corroborated
by subsequent thinkers,people like Nietzsche, Freud, Heidegger, Sartre and
Levinas.And I believe in this larger context, we can appreciate just how
forward-thinking, how prescienthe was. Thinkers like them are all known for
their treatments of subjectivism, relativismand nihilism. These are the issues
that dominate modern philosophy. You can see this in the schools of
existentialismandpostmodernism. In your mind, what contribution does
Kierkegaardhave to make in these modern discussions? Well, first of all, I
think it's importantto point out that Kierkegaarddidn't invent or introduce
these particular philosophicalproblems.They are rightly perceivedas threats
to the possibilityof an authentic existence. But his contribution was to
diagnose them and suggest a form or a manner of treatment for them.
Kierkegaardis perhaps most controversialfor believingthat these threats
need to be kept alive and vital within us in order to connectus in an ongoing
way to the fragilityand finitude of the human condition. So for Kierkegaard,
the goal could never be to vanquish these threats. That could only be
accomplishedunder conditions of self deception. The goal is rather to
address these threats in a way that galvanizes our passion for an authentic
existence. And so what specific aspect of Kierkegaard's writings do you find is
relevantfor his treatment of these issues of relativismand nihilism?I think
that his interests in keeping these threats alive and vital within the physic life
of the individual, that this is most evident to us in the literaryand rhetorical
complexity of his writings.He seems to be interestedin mobilizingall of his
literarytalents in order to make sure that these threats to the possibility of an

6. authentic existence are not allowed to submerge, or to disappear from the
scene. He wants to keep them front and center, and he understands just how
difficultit is for most people to keep these particular threats in view. Helweg
cites a sentence at the end of The Concept of Irony, where Kierkegaardclaims,
if our generation has any task at all, it must be to translate the achievementof
scientific scholarshipinto personal life, to appropriate it personally. What
does Kierkegaardmean by this? On the face of it, he seems to be making a
kind of protest against academic learningjust for its own sake. The point of
going to the universityand learningnew things is not just to understandthe
way the worldworks. Instead, this knowledge should be transformed or
translatedinto somethingpersonal. Each person must, as Kierkegaardsays,
appropriate that knowledge in the context of their own situation in life. So the
idea of appropriation is absolutelycentral to Kierkegaard's understandingof
the proper acquisition anduse of knowledge. But now here at the end of the
course, we can see that there's much more in this single sentence than what
Kierkegaardcouldhave realizedat the time. As we've seen, Kierkegaardhad
an early academic interest, namely Socrates and his conflictwith the Greek
world. He made this academic interestthe subject of his masters thesis. But
after this was done, he took the further step that he claims here is so
important. He appropriates that knowledge in accordance with his own
modern situation. He was attracted to many aspects of Socrates's thought
and decided to use him as a model. But the world of ancientGreece in which
Socrates livedwas of course very differentfrom Kierkegaard's golden age
Denmark. So Kierkegaardneededto appropriate the main elements from the
thought of Socrates and transfer them into his own time. So the key terms of
the thought of Socrates such as irony, ignorance, negation, aporia, maieutics
and the gadfly and so on, all came to take on a new meaningin the context of

7. Kierkegaard's own life and time. Helweg was entirely right. Socrates was for
Kierkegaardnot just an object of scholarlyinvestigation, but also a model to
follow for his personal life. But there's another aspect of Helweg's
observation. Kierkegaardwas familiar with the scholarlyfieldof theology,
which he learnedabout at the Universityof Copenhagen. Again, as we've
seen, in the Gilleleje entryin his journal, Kierkegaardis only interested to a
certain degree in theology, as an academic discipline. Insteadhe believes that
Christianityis not a doctrine, or an objective truth that can be taught in books
or in the classroom. Instead, Christianityis a belief that must be appropriated
by each individual personallyin inwardness andpassion. Christianityis all
about the subjectivityof each individual. There are no easy answers that each
person is obliged to appropriate the Christian message in one's own life and
context. So no one can tell another person how this should be done. So
Kierkegaardbelieves that Socrates can help us in the modern world. With his
irony and negativity, he can help us to undermine mistaken views and
modern illusions that people still suffer from. With his idea of maieutics or
midwifery, he can help us to understandthat each and every one of us
individuallyhas the truth within ourselves.Each and every human being has
an infinite value that should be respected. These are important messages for
us livingin the 21st century, regardless of whether we think of ourselves as
religious or not. We struggle to understandour role in the fast-moving
anonymous society aroundus. What is my importance? Whatis the meaning
and value of my life? Do I reallycount for anythingas a person, or am I simply
a number or a statistic? Kierkegaardis not just a figure locked into his own
time who with every passing day becomes less and less relevantonly to end
up an object of interest for a handful of specialists in the history of ideas. On
the contrary, I believe that every day, as society continues to develop, and

8. new technological innovations change our way of living, interacting, and
thinkingabout ourselves,Kierkegaardbecomes more and more relevant. He
might have died in 1855, but he's still very much with us today.