Autopsia: Self, Death, and God after Kierkegaard and Derrida (Kierkegaard Studies; Monograph)

372 Pages·2008·10.37 MB·English

by  Mjaaland

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For Jens Gunnar

Preface
There are certain things that can be explained, and certain things that
cannot be explained. This book will deal with the latter.
It is definitely a book about certain things – for example, that the
reader of this book, like the author, will die. If there is one thing about
which we can both be certain, it is exactly this: that we will die. But if
there is one thing we can both be uncertain about, it is precisely the
same fact: that we will die. Death’s certainty leads out towards the
uncertain, and death’s uncertainty leads us back to the absolute cer-
tainty of our own death.
In one sense, it is impossible to think death, since death eludes
our thinking. It eludes experience and rational explanation. And this
forces us to take detours, to circle around and circumscribe that which
is impossible (or the end of possibility), yet absolutely certain: that we
will die. And this can be done: to think in circumscriptions. For death
leaves traces behind: in the experience of a discontinuity, of a breach,
of an absence – it is all over! – in the experience of the fact that hu-
man beings die. Where others mark a conclusion, we therefore mark a
point of departure: at the graveside of a dead man.
Let me be the first to admit that this is not a simple topic for an
academic inquiry, not even an inquiry in the disciplines of philosophy
and theology. This is because the genre of a philosophical inquiry de-
mands distance and the possibility of ascertaining the correctness of
its conclusions. But on the one hand is it not always possible to hold
death at arm’s length; it cannot always be pushed out into the realm
of the undefined and thus uncertain. Anyone who has ever stood be-
side a grave knows this. And on the other hand is it difficult to define
death as an object of study; we are not in a position to ascertain the
correctness of death as one might do with another definition or an
experience (except perhaps the experience of certain dilemmas and
problems that thought seems unable to solve). But it is precisely their
insoluble character that makes these problems interesting to philoso-
phers and theologians. In my view, these dilemmas are inherent in the
viii Preface
first presuppositions of the sciences, in knowledge, in understanding,
in writing and speaking, in the construction of meaning. Neither phi-
losophy nor theology can pass these questions by, if these two disci-
plines are to continue to deserve the name of the first – and the last
– of the sciences.
After years of wandering along the Holzwege of Kierkegaard’s
dilemmas, there are many persons and institutions whom I wish to
thank. They have all left their traces on the present work. First of
all, I should like to thank the Faculty of Theology at the University
of Oslo and the entire academic staff there, as well as graduates and
undergraduates who have contributed to this work by discussing the
problems and asking difficult questions. In particular, I am grateful to
Professor Svein Aage Christoffersen, who has discussed the text with
me over the past few years. I also wish to thank the Søren Kierkegaard
Research Center in Copenhagen and its Director, Niels Jørgen Cap-
pelørn, for the fruitful six months I was able to spend there, with many
excellent discussions. Similarly, I am grateful to the department of
philosophy of religion at the University of Frankfurt, under Professor
Hermann Deuser, for research seminars as well as other opportuni-
ties for a critical debate about Kierkegaard’s texts. Finally, I ought to
thank all the members of the Nordberg School for friendship and for
academic debates on the highest level.
On the institutional level, I have many good reasons to thank the
Norwegian Research Council, which has financed this work, and the
German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), which funded a year
of research in Heidelberg. I am also grateful to the Fund for Danish-
Norwegian Collaboration, which has given me economic support for
a number of journeys to Copenhagen. I should also like to thank the
IPT connected to the University of Montpellier for treating me so
kindly while I was researching there in the summer of 2004.
There are many people who have meant a lot to me in the course of
writing this book, but only a few can be mentioned with warm thanks
here: Alastair Hannay and Jon Stewart for reading my text and for ac-
ademic discussions; Egil A. Wyller, Asbjørn Aarnes, and Per Lønning
for drawing my attention to the one and the other; Halvor Moxnes,
Rune Slagstad, Thor Arvid Dyrerud, Ådne Njå, Marianne Kartzow,
Brynjulv Norheim, Espen Dahl, Synnøve Heggem, and Thorbjørn
Geirbo for discussions and friendship – and that incorrigible apoca-
lypticist, Joar Haga, for reading through my text, for his objections,
for our conversations, and for what the prophet Isaiah calls “a feast
of fat things, a feast of wine on the lees.” My mother Jorun, my sisters
Preface ix
Marianne and Siri, my brother Svein, and the rest of my family de-
serve thanks for solid support and encouragement; thanks to Jonas,
Maria, and Tim for their great patience and for the indescribable joy
they bring to my life; and to Angela for deep love, a great and patient
heart, and an academic acuteness which is quite exceptional. Finally,
I wish to thank my father, Jens Gunnar Mjaaland, who awakened my
interest in philosophy and theology and who discussed Kierkegaard
with me long before this book began to take shape. I dedicate to him
this study of death, self and God, in love and gratitude, and with a liv-
ing hope that we will meet again.
Autopsia. The title may doubtless appear puzzling, since autopsy
is most commonly known as a pathological investigation of the dead
body – or a psychological analysis of the single individual. And this is
a book about death, it is a book about the self, but it is also a term with
a twist, and with different layers. Hence, I owe the reader an explana-
tion. The word autopsia is Greek in form and origin and means quite
simply “self-view.” Such a title may perhaps seem superfluous, since
the same “self” returns in the subtitle, only with “death” following it.
But perhaps it is not superfluous, precisely because death follows it.
For death wedges itself in between self and self, between looking and
looking, as a kind of double vision or ambivalence. For the self, death
is definitively – but decisively – other, just as God is definitively – but
decisively – other.
The reader must judge whether this explanation is less puzzling than
the title itself – and it is surely not always the cleverest person who is
the first to solve the puzzle. For what if the meaning of the puzzle was
that it was not meant to be solved, that it too was one of those things
which are not to be explained? Whatever the relation between these
things may be, when we speak of death and self-view, the essential
point is precisely an ambivalence of this kind.
Marius Timmann Mjaaland
Chicago, Yom Kippur, September 22, 2007